European Championships to be held in Warsaw

The event will also include Poland’s towerrunning championships for firefighters and the sixth annual Run to the Top of Rondo 1 race for amateurs. ‘Eurobuild CEE’ is the media partner of the event which is to be held on March 12th, 2016.

The contenders of the amateur race will have to tackle 826 steps (38 levels) at one go, while the European Towerruning Championships will feature three stages. The first, sprint one will be held at a 20-floor distance, and the remaining two runs will require climbing up the full distance of 38 floors each time. The scores of all the three runs will determine the final results.

“The European Championship status confirms the high profile of Rondo 1 and places it among the world’s most famous buildings that host towerrunning competitions,” says Marek Jakubiak, the head of real estate, Central and Eastern Europe at Deutsche Asset Management, which is the owner of the 192ml Rondo 1 building. He says that the promotion of ecological use of the buildings was also important when applying for the European Championships host status.

Two Polish runners: Piotr Łobodziński, the current world champion in towerrunning who will also be defending his 2014 European champion title, as well as Dominika Wiśniewska-Ulfik, the current brown medallist of the World Championships, have a great chance of standing at the podium during the Towerrunning European Championships 2016. They are both numerous mountain running champions.

“38 floors is a medium distance in towerrunning. There are also runs of app. 90 floors such as the Empire State Building run, in which you have to go up 83 floors,” Dominika Wiśniewska-Ulfik tells ‘Eurobuild CEE’. Apart from the length of the route, the size and the layout of the staircase are also of paramount importance for the towerrunners. “I train in a right-handed staircase whereas the one in Rondo 1 is a left-handed one. Also, it is very important what level the handrails are placed at, whether they are on both sides of the stairs, whether you can pull yourself up on both sides, because the pulling up is very important here, just like pushing yourself away from the wall. The size of the staircase also counts, particularly if you, for instance, run with someone or you want to overtake somebody,” she adds.

The event, which is to support the SOS Children’s Villages in Poland Association charity, will also include Poland’s championships for firefighters. The registration for the amateur run, which can be attended by any adult, started today on www.biegnaszczyt.pl. This year’s participants limit is 500 people and in the previous years all places were taken after just 30 minutes from the start of the registration.

And how can a beginner towerrunner get prepared for such a run? “It is best to start training in some taller buildings. I usually train in a ten-storey residential building and I think it is a good place for a complete amateur who is only starting to run up towers. You start from a few ascents, preferably four and you try to run this distance. Of course, if somebody is an amateur runner in general, it will be difficult for them to cover this distance at one go, so you can start from a fast march and try to climb up as fast as you can,” recommends Dominika Wiśniewska-Ulfik.