Vertical Running: Running up Skycrapers

There are no trails to follow here. No hills to climb up or down. And the weather does not play an important role in the final standings. But for sure the scenery you see when you cross the finish line is as spectacular as some of the mountain races you can sign up for. But the real motivation that takes some of the best mountain runners to participate in the Vertical World Circuit is the toughness of the event. What millions of tourists do everyday using an elevator, those strong athletes do it just using their legs… and using them fast. Running up the world’s tallest buildings is not your every day race.

Vertical World Circuit is put by the International Skyrunning Federation and includes 9 different races, 9 climbs of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. The ISF has chosen some of the most important and spectacular skyscraper races across the world and turned them into a championship, adding rules and a ranking system to elect the VWC champions. For a skycraper race to be included in the list, it must have a 100 meters or more vertical climb and more than 33% incline. Each race assigns points based on the winning men’s/women’s results according to the ‘VWC Ranking points breakdown’: 100-88-78-72-68-66-… down to 2 points. The top 30 men and 10 women are  ranked.

In this the first edition of the series, the inaugural race was held on February 3 with Empire State Building Run-Up in New York. The race was won by Thomas Dol, from Germany, with U.S. Rickey Gates in third place. Since then, six more races took place in some of the most popular skyscrapers (see for details):  Messeturm, Grattacielo Pirelli, Taipei 101, Park Inn Hotel, Sydney Tower and Torre Collserola. Two more will be held in November and December to complete this inaugural edition: Donauturm Run-Up, in Vienna, Austria and the Swissotel Vertical Marathon, Singapore.

Thomas Dold, Germany, and Daniela Vasalli, Italy, currently lead the men’s and women’s rankings with 400 and 128 points respectively. The current handicap for this championship though is to engage more runners to participate in more than one race. Most of them only run their local event and thus if an athlete manages to compete in 3 or 4 of them and has average results, that runner will most likely be topping the ranking. It is anyway another type of running competition, certainly one of the most peculiar there is and one that mountain runners are definitely adapted for.