Getting In · Iconic road race
Empire State Building Run-Up
Eighty-six floors of stairwell in a building you have seen your entire life. The Empire State Building Run-Up invented tower running in 1978 and remains the one every stair racer wants. Twenty minutes of work that hurts more than a marathon.
- Distance
- 1,576 steps86 floors, ~1,050 vertical feet
- Field
- A few hundred
- First run
- 1978
- Winning time
- ~10 minutes
- Typical finish
- 15 to 25 minutes
- Best door
- Charity, then the lottery
The event is deceptively brutal. You enter the lobby, hit stairwell B, and climb for somewhere between ten minutes for the elite tower runners and half an hour for everyone else. There's no pacing subtlety available: your legs fill with lactate in the first ten floors and then you negotiate with yourself for the remaining seventy-six. The stairwell is hot, close, and dimly lit, and the payoff is stepping out onto the 86th floor observatory with the city underneath you.
It's also the birthplace of a whole discipline. Tower running is now a global circuit, and the Empire State Building is its Boston.
How to get in
- LotteryThe general lottery
The public entry route. Registration windows are announced in advance and the field is only a few hundred people, so demand outstrips supply substantially.
- CharityTeam CAF and partners
Guaranteed entry with a fundraising commitment, most notably through the Challenged Athletes Foundation. This is the dependable route.
- Time qualifierElite invitation
The professional tower running field is invited based on international results.
How to train for a stairwell
- Find a tall building or a StairMaster. Specificity matters more here than in almost any other event. Running fitness transfers poorly.
- Use the handrail. Every good tower runner pulls on the rail with their arms on the inside of every turn. It's not cheating, it's technique, and it's worth minutes.
- Double-stepping is faster for most people above a certain leg length, but only if you've practiced it under fatigue.
- Train the heat. Stairwells are hot and airless. Do some sessions in more clothing than feels reasonable.
- Expect to feel awful at the top. Coughing, dizziness, and burning lungs are normal outcomes of maximal effort in a confined space.
Questions runners actually ask
How long does the Empire State Building Run-Up take?
Elite tower runners finish in around ten minutes. Most participants take fifteen to twenty-five minutes for the 1,576 steps.
Can I guarantee entry?
Charity entry, most commonly with Team CAF, is the guaranteed route and comes with a fundraising commitment.
Go to the source
Entry rules, dates, standards, fees, and odds change every single year, and the interesting races change them the most. Use this guide to build the plan; use the official site to confirm the details before you book anything.
If this is your kind of thing
Need the races in between? The hard part of a bucket list year is everything else on the calendar: the qualifier, the tune-up, the long run with a bib on.