By Moses Sawatzky
Bob Toews is pushing through a tough stair-climb up the Willis Tower in Chicago. ” You have to find a way to power through,” Toews told reporters. ” If you let yourself down in training, you’re setting a standard you don’t want to set.” The Willis Tower has one-hundred and ten stories and two-thousand one-hundred and nine steps. The thing Toews was running up it. It was a race. What a workout. “The energy level was pretty high,” Toews told reporter when asked about climbing up the Willis Tower.
Toews (54) is an amateur stairclimber. He is ranked forty-seventh in the U.S in stair-climbing. Although Toews is amateur, he trains like a pro. In the U.S. stair climbing is just for charity. You have to pay to get into an event, and raise a certain amount of money. Other countries give prize money, but not in the U.S. “In the U.S it is just for fun.”
Stair-climbing is a tough job, so of course he has to recover. “I usually lie down on the floor.” The day after a climb he won’t train at all. “I do pay attention to getting enough rest.”
Toews has been climbing up stairs for a long time, but he has been using them as a training tool since eighth grade. He used the stairs to get in shape for football and other sports. He would imagine climbing up tall buildings. Toews first began training for stair-climbing around 2006 when he had his first race.
Stair-climbing would be kind of scary if you sent everybody up the stairs at once. Toews does not participate in those events. He participates in the events where people are released one at a time. In these events climbers are released eight to thirty seconds apart. Toews said of the other kind of events. “It’s a mad dash to the door, and it’s insanity.” He does not want to participate in those kinds of events. Probably his favorite thing about stair-climbing is the sportsmanship. Toews told us a lot about that. “Most climbers climb on the inside.” Toews said about the sportsmanship.
Stair climbing is a very tough and grueling sport to play. I heard that from the forty-seventh best stair-climber in the U.S.A.