I had managed to blag an elite entry to the inaugural World Tower Running Championships at the spectacular Torch building in Doha, Qatar and with the globe’s best tower runners flying in my main aim was to vaguely justify my status, which meant making it through the first heat.
My secondary aim was a re-match against ‘local’ runner Andi Jones. The top 30 men from the first heat (time trial) would progress through to a second heat later that day (also time trial). The combined times from the first races would then determine the positions on a starting grid for the same 30 in a mass start final the following morning.
The fact that I had to assume the recovery position and spent the next hour thinking I was going to puke confirmed I hadn’t left much in the stairwell after heat 1. My official time was 7.08, a depressing 51 seconds behind the leader Piotr Lobodzinski (Poland), but only 8s and one place behind Emmanuele Manzi (who’d beaten me in my only other tower race, in Dubai six weeks earlier), and most importantly 26 seconds ahead of Andi. My time put me in 10th place which was great, although I now started to wonder if I’d gone too hard. This was confirmed in heat 2, just the 30 floors this time, but my legs were still trashed and my time of 3.55 was just enough for 15th place, meaning I slipped one place to 11th on the starting grid for the final and only just maintained my 100% record against Andi (by one second!).
From a Grand Prix style grid the final started with a 200m sprint gently climbing to the hotel lobby where an ornate staircase funneled the runners towards an internal fire escape. It was then up 30 floors, before exiting the stairwell, running half way round the building on a terrace, entering another fire escape and then 20 more floors to finish at the revolving restaurant at the top of the Tower. The pre-race chat of competitor’s track times meant I was glad to be only caught by 3 or 4 on the sprint, but was aware that Andi was right on my shoulder as we entered the staircase. There he stayed for the next 30 floors before I found a kick and pulled away just before the terrace, and then managed to keep pushing and reclaim a few places before reaching the line in 7m38s, 12th place overall, 3rd V40 and 1st Brit! Piotr decimated the field winning in 6.35, while Austrian mountain runner Andrea Mayr narrowly won the ladies race in 7.50.
Simultaneously one of the most enjoyable and painful weekends of my life. Oh, and did I mention I beat Andi Jones?
Paul Faulkner
Results, official write-up and all sorts of other nonsense can be found here: http://towerrunning.com/