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17:42 for the official time. This felt quite a bit easier than my training runs where I was running 15-20 flights at a time and then taking the elevator down.
Logistics: our company had 33 people signed up to run, with just about all of them doing the "full" run rather than the "half" run. We were assigned to the 7AM start this morning. They staggered individual runners every ten seconds. As far as I can tell, it was the large corporate blocks (our company is a sponsor) that went first, rather than an "Elite" group of runners.
I found myself passing more "runners" than passed me. I use quotes on runners, as I did not run a single step. I did take the stairs two at a time, and pulled myself up by the railing the whole way as well. The etiquette suggests that you move to the right if someone wants to pass, but that was rarely observed in the time I was running. There was enough room for two people to be side-by-side but no more than that. I only had one time where I had two people in lockstep in front of me impeding my progress.
Goal time was 20:00, with the idea of starting at 4:00 for the first 20 flights and then doing a negative split for each of the following 20 flights. Looking at my run detail in Strava, I came pretty close to that negative split goal but was a bit faster going out than the 4:00 despite trying hard to keep myself slow initially.
I'm sure I could shave time off this run with repeated efforts. I was 8th among people from my company; my wife and daughter both are amused that two women beat me. The fastest time from our group was just over 15 minutes and the top five or so overall finishers are under 10 minutes.
Happy to answer any other questions about format. All in all, glad I did it and will probably do it again next year with my company. But I don't think I'll ever sign up for a stairs race on my own or ever really invest in meaningful effort to gear up for this race at the expense of my standard training.
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