Mark Soueidi scaled 94 stories as quickly as possible Sunday to make sure other people could breathe.
Moments after he finished, he barely could himself.
Beginning at 7 a.m., thousands of runners had already climbed the stairwells of Chicago’s John Hancock Building, depleting the oxygen. When Soueidi started in the afternoon, there was little left.
“Because I left so late, I could hardly breathe,” said Soueidi, the box office manager at Northwestern’s Pick-Staiger Concert Hall. “Right now my lungs are burning so much I can taste blood.”
Soueidi was one of 3,800 participants who raced up the stairwells of the John Hancock Center, 875 N. Michigan Ave., during the American Lung Association’s seventh-annual Hustle up the Hancock race. The Sunday event drew a range of participants, from endurance athletes to first-time climbers, who entered into two divisions: the 94-story climb and a 42-story climb.
In the end each climber contributed $75 to the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago and its efforts to curb smoking, educate the public on asthma and lobby for a “Smoke-Free Chicago,” said Katie Davis, the organization’s special events coordinator. Davis said officials are still calculating this year’s total but hopes to surpass the $400,000 raised last year.
Soueidi, an avid cyclist who bikes between 60 and 70 miles at least twice a week, said the race environment was taxing. Climbers were assigned take-off times between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. in order to prevent hallway congestion.
Last year, Soueidi lined up for the race looking for a novel way to test his endurance.
“Last year, I wanted to do something that I could tell my grandkids about,” he said.
This year, he wanted to improve.
“Actually, this time was harder,” said Soueidi, who ran in a sweat-soaked WNUR T-shirt. “I kind of knew what to expect, and it is not easy.”
Sitting in the Hancock Building’s 94th floor SkyWalk, catching his breath while looking over Chicago — the lung association’s promised “breathtaking view” — Soueidi said he came back this time with a goal of climbing the 94 stories in as close to 13 minutes as possible. He thinks he did, but he won’t know for sure until today.
Mike Peters traveled from Goshen, Ind., with other goals in mind. The 41-year-old real estate and small-business owner works out six days a week and wanted to finish in the top 10. Peters has developed a specific stair-climbing regimen that develops the blend of aerobic and muscular strength necessary to compete with the best.
“This is really an anaerobic event,” Peters said. “You can be a great runner and no good at this.”
Chicago resident Alec Lilliebridge, 25, took a much more relaxed approach. He put in no specific training and ran the race with friends.
“I stopped every 10 floors to catch my breath,” he said. “Once I got to 40, it was a matter of, ‘Keep going, keep going, keep going.'”
As participants emerged from the stairwell on the 94th-floor observatory, some walked, some stumbled and some strained to cut one extra second off of their times. But no matter what their goal in the race, they all ended up in the same place.
“I figure if you’re going to go, you might as go all the way,” Lilliebridge said.