Racing to the Top

At floor 50, PJ Glassey starts to lose his hearing.

Five more floors up, and he begins to see everything in shades of gray.

By floor 60, he becomes so oxygen-deprived, his peripheral vision disappears. Glassey is looking through a tunnel.

On the final floors, the tunnel narrows. When it’s the size of a basketball, Glassey knows he has about three floors left in him before he’ll pass out. He aims to finish the race, and hit the top of the staircase, when he can only see a baseball-size window in front of him.

At that point, the climb is over. Glassey collapses to the ground. His breathing calms, but the burn in his legs begins. The quads feel like they are on fire. His hamstrings seize up. For a full five minutes, Glassey writhes on the ground in pain.

This is the sport of tower running.

“It’s excruciating,” Glassey said. “To be a tower runner, you have to have a screw loose.”

Glassey and other elite tower climbers around the world thrive on the self-inflicted punishment of tower running. Competitions held in skyscrapers across the country allow athletes to push themselves to the brink. An entire race may last fewer than 10 minutes but those are 10 minutes of pure suffering.

If Glassey meets his goals, he’ll rank in the top 10 in the world in the sport. This year, he made it to the top 40. Glassey is 44, which is not over the hill in his sport. The best tower climbers are in their 30s and 40s, which Glassey attributes to mental strength developed over age.

Many talented athletes in other sports don’t succeed in stair climbing. Marathon runners, Glassey said, lack the muscular strength to attack the stairs. Bodybuilders run out of steam and are throwing up by floor 10. Tower climbers need strength, cardiovascular fitness and endurance, Glassey said.

Tower running involves more than simple conditioning. To succeed, competitors must also learn how to be aggressive on the stairwell. Many participants simply step to the side when they see they are about to be passed, but others hold their ground and refuse to budge. Glassey learned he needed to shove someone out of the way if they tried to block his path.

“You can’t be a nice guy,” Glassey said.

Some of the myths of tower climbing don’t play out. Many people think of staircases as musty, hot or humid places, but in most, the air is just like the air in the rest of the building. Organizers of competitions often place fans at doorways to keep the air cool and moving. 

The sport of tower climbing continues to grow, with new stair-climbing competitions popping up each year. TowerRunning.com keeps track of races and ranks the top 500 athletes around the globe.

Here in the Puget Sound region, Glassey and others helped launch the inaugural 2010 Fight For Air Climb at Bellevue Towers last . Two other local competitions, The Big Climb at the Columbia Tower and the Washington Tower Climb at the former WaMu building, have a longer history. The Big Climb, which takes place in March, always fills all available 6,000 spots. All three climbs welcome novices and walkers.

Curious potential tower runners can check out the local stair-climbing blog or visit the X Gym’s stair climb page for training tips. To see what tower climbing looks like, check out this video link, for which Glassey strapped on a head cam during a run.

Glassey first tried tower running four years ago. He had heard about The Big Climb and figured the intensity of the sport would compare to the short, challenging workouts he leads clients through at his West Seattle and Kirkland clubs, The X Gym. Glassey also licenses a third X Gym location, in Belltown, to a separate owner.

“I had a hunch the X Gym workouts would translate to stair climbing,” Glassey said.

His hunch proved correct. He entered The Big Climb, ran the 69 flights of stairs at a comfortable pace, and finished in the top third of competitors. Glassey knew he could push himself much harder. He decided to train for tower running.

The next year, Glassey dropped his time to nine-and-a-half minutes, good enough for 22nd place. The year after, he made it up the stairs in eight-and-a-half minutes and nabbed sixth place. To make that time, he kept a pace of about seven seconds per floor.

Glassey since has traveled to multiple races and become acquainted with the tower-running community around the country. Glassey calls fellow elite tower runners “amazing,” and says he has yet to meet a jerk. When Mexican tower climber Javier Santiago couldn’t afford the airline ticket to compete in the Bellevue Tower Climb, other tower runners pitched in to bring him here.

Glassey plans to do 10 tower climbs in 2011, including the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. He hopes to make it to Europe soon, where shorter buildings play to his preference for quick, fast races.