Taipei 101 Run Up | 台北101垂直馬拉松

May 3, 2025

Today, I ran up all the stairs in Taipei 101! There’s not much more to say about it, although you may be wondering why in the world I’d actively choose to run up 91 flights (2046 stairs) on a Saturday afternoon (many of my coworkers and friends have also wondered, and sometimes I wonder too). 

Through Princeton in Asia, I’ve gotten looped into the Ivy League alumni association in Taipei which organizes a team every year (it’s kind of hard to get a spot in the race outside of the team). When they opened registration, I called up Sam and Jason and said, “hey, want to do this with me? Not sure if I’ll ever do it again, and it’s kind of a wacky and fun thing to do once,” to which they said, “sure!”

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been running stairs at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall in preparation for the race. Another important aspect of race preparation was purchasing the matching FamilyMart socks that Jason, Sam, and I wore for the race. 

My goal was to finish the race in under 35 minutes, and I did it! Yay! Would I do it again? Maybe in a different tower, but I don’t really feel the need to go all the way back up the stairs in Taipei 101. The race course itself was kind of boring since we were just climbing the emergency staircase, but the view from the top was fun though!