At 8:00am on October 6th, I will be racing up the 1,500 stairs of the US Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles. The US Bank Tower is the eighth tallest building in the US and the tallest building in California. Standing 1,018 feet high, it is also the 26th tallest in the world, and is the tallest skyscraper west of Chicago and east of New Zealand. Until the construction of Taipei 101 in Taiwan, it was also the tallest structure in a major active seismic region; its structure was designed to resist an earthquake of magnitude 8.3 on the Richter Scale. More importantly, this race is the second of the big three tower races of the year. The others being the Chicago’s Sears Tower (2,109 stairs) in November and the New York City’s Empire State Building (1,576 stairs) in February.
To prepare for these brutal events I’ve had to come up with a very demanding training regimen designed to increase leg strength and speed endurance. Two weekly mountain runs of 60 to 90 minutes give my legs the vertical endurance they will need. Two weekly all out bursts of 10 minutes on the stairmaster at the gym are giving me strength and speed. Lastly, one weekly double ascent of the 55 storey Wells Fargo Tower in downtown L.A. is giving me the leg strength and mental toughness needed to excel in one of these monster climbs.
