Leaping Gazelles

The time for the fastest man (a 26yo) in this year's "Skyrise Chicago" stair-climb at the Willis Tower was thirteen minutes and nine seconds to get to the top of a 110-story building. (see the rest of the results here). That's 2, 109 steps.

The fastest woman (age 40, who has claimed the title for the past eight years) clocked in at 15:08, and the fastest kids (both age 10) were at 22:26 and 22:51, respectively. Last year, a firefighter did it in full gear.

They must have been taking the stairs two or three at a time and leaping, gazelle-like, from landing to landing, is all I can figure.

Just to put it in perspective, this is from a poster on one of the forums I frequent:

"To give you a point of comparison, the first time my firm did a post-9/11 fire drill, where folks wanted to actually go all the way to ground level to prove to themselves they could, even the people who bolted way ahead of everybody else took twenty minutes to go only sixty floors, and they were going DOWN!"