Hundreds of runners from around the world sweat their way to the top of the Empire State. It’s not the usual morning crowd in the lobby! And the runners are off! They make a dash for the stairs. The goal: climb up to the 86th floor and get there first-first out of 315 contestants from around the world. After 10 minutes and 7 seconds of one foot-in-front-of-the-other, German Thomas Dold crosses the finish line. He beat his own winning time from last year by one second. "The pain is just for the few moments and the victory is just for many years. So four times winning this race, four consecutive titles that's really unbelievable. Nobody in Europe has done that before." It's 1576 steps up to the observation deck, where the race ends-and weaving through the stragglers to get there can be a perilous exercise. "At the start there were a couple women who were too aggressive and one of the runners was injured pretty badly and you can't do that." Among the women, defending champion Suzy Walsham of Australia kept her title, despite a lip injury during the scuffle to pull ahead. As for Linda, she was just concentrating on making it to the top. Lynda Hubbard "When am I gonna get to the 86th floor? When am I going to finish? Just breathe in, try to control my breathing and just step each step carefully. Just pulling myself up, pulling my body weight up." Ginette, originally from France, scaled the tower in just over 20 minutes. How did she do it? Ginette Bedard "Will power. Will power. Mental. You have to have a strong mind. Cause if you're very strong mentally, then physically will follow." Since the Twin Towers fell in 2001, The Empire State Building has been the tallest building in New York City. Hundreds of thousands of tourists make it to the top every year.