SOLOQUEST .wtf
LOG
race

Empire State Building Run-Up

New York, USA · Oct 6 · Main quest length: 1 day

Race 1,576 stairs to the top of the Empire State Building in about the time it takes to order and drink a coffee — 86 flights, a few hundred runners, and a finish on the observation deck with the whole city spread out below you as the reward. It's less a marathon-scale trip and more a sharp, strange bucket-list stunt you can slot into a New York weekend without rearranging your life around it.

The field is tiny and the format is pure individual-clock racing — no pack tactics, no drafting, just you against a stairwell and your own lungs. That makes it one of the most naturally solo-friendly races anywhere: there's no team logistics to coordinate, no pacing group to find, just a start corral, a climb, and a view. Most entrants are already New York-based or tacking this onto other city plans, so it slots easily into a solo trip that has other things going on too.

Ten to fifteen minutes of genuine suffering, then one of the best views in Manhattan as a reward — hard to overstate how efficient that trade is.

Solo Intel

5 entries · verified by players who went alone

  1. 01 Entry runs around $204 — the main cost, since no multi-day travel is required if you're already NYC-based for other reasons.
  2. 02 Training matters more than you'd expect; stair-specific fitness is a different beast from flat-road running fitness.
  3. 03 The field is small (a few hundred runners) — arrive on time, since the start is quick and low-ceremony compared to a big-city marathon.
  4. 04 Combine it with a broader NYC weekend — this race takes minutes, not a full day, so build other plans around it.
  5. 05 The observation deck finish is the payoff — bring a phone or camera, the view is worth documenting immediately post-climb.