If you think you are having a tough day, then spare a thought for runners taking place in the Empire State Building Run-Up organised by the New York Road Runners Club.

So here are a couple of scary facts:

There are 1576 stairs from the lobby to the 86th floor, now if that doesn't scare you.. The fastest Male, Paul Crake can get up there in 9min 33 seconds. The fastest Woman, Suzy Walsham won the race in 2007 with a record time of 13min and 12 seconds.

This year ( Feb 2nd) sees 315 Runners competing in the 33rd Annual Empire State building RUN-UP. The international line up will see runners from Australia, Belgium, Bermuda, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Slovak Repuplic, Spain, Switzerland ad the United States take their place on the start line.

Thomas Dold from Germany Four time winner and defending champion will be there to defend his title. He will be joined by two Brits John Summers, 54, of Hungerford, Berkshire will be participating in his first ESB Run-Up. He will be participating with Keith Smibert, 52, who is from the same village (Chilton Foliat). Keith and Summers train on the same hills and old airfield where the American forces trained before liberating Europe in WWII.

We hope to bring you an update on the race tomorrow with a web clip - so be sure to check back with us.

For those of you that may be reading this and thinking you might like to give it a go, entry to the event is by invitation only! - but who knows you might just get an invite, and if you do, email us and tell us all about it.

To contact the NYRRC go to http://www.nyrr.org/

Main picture on home page: Suzy Walsham and Thomas Dold winners of the 2009 ESB Run up.

Picture above and left: General Runners, on their way up!

Pictures courtesy of New York Road Runners Club.