No mountains? No problem. Runners training for trail races in the middle of a city can build real climbing strength using nothing but stairs, parking garages, and a steep sidewalk.
Quick Take
- Coaches and race organizers say stairs can replace outdoor hills for trail-race training.
- Salomon recommends short, intense city workouts mixing stair climbs, power hiking, and one long weekend run.
- The Leadville Race Series built a specific stair workout as a direct swap for a 200-yard hill.
- Run-walk intervals, surface changes, and treadmill incline fill in other gaps city runners face.
Why Stairs Became the City Runner’s Best Friend
Trail races pile on elevation gain that flat city streets simply don’t offer. Runners training without hills have turned to stairwells, parking garages, and stadium steps to fake the climb. One guide calls stairs “one of the simplest ways to build climbing strength for the trails,” since the up-and-down motion mimics the muscle demand of a real mountain grade.
The Leadville Race Series, which runs one of the toughest trail events in the country, built an entire workout around this swap. Their plan calls for a roughly 200-yard hill but notes it “will work” just as well if swapped for a long staircase, ideally around 200 steps. That’s a direct endorsement from a race organizer, not just a fitness blogger’s guess.
Salomon’s Structured Plan Turns the City Into a Gym
Gear maker Salomon published a detailed city-training model for trail runners stuck without wilderness access. Their plan keeps weekday sessions short, around one to one and a half hours, but demands they stay intense enough to spike heart rate into anaerobic territory. That intensity builds the power and muscle strength a runner would otherwise get from miles of natural climbing.
The weekday sessions focus on fast uphill efforts followed by easy recovery on the way down, paired with stair drills and alternating stretches of power hiking and running. Salomon then recommends a longer run on weekends to build the endurance base that shorter weekday workouts can’t provide alone. The combination targets both the explosive strength and the staying power trail races demand.
Other Cities, Other Tricks for Finding Elevation
Not every city has a 200-step staircase sitting around. One training guide suggests hunting down a 30- to 50-story building and climbing it repeatedly, breaking the effort into groups of about ten floors at a time. Runners can vary the pace, going slow on some climbs and pushing hard intervals on others, to train different energy systems in a single workout.
Bridges and footbridges offer another option for runners chasing longer, sustained climbing efforts without a true mountain nearby. Mixing surfaces matters too. Cobblestones, gravel, grass, and pavement each force the legs and ankles to adjust differently, which builds the kind of stability trail footing demands. Looping through a city block that hits several surface types in one run adds variety that a single paved path can’t.
Treadmills and Run-Walk Intervals Round Out the Toolkit
For runners without any real hill or staircase, the treadmill incline becomes the fallback. One ultrarunner’s favorite workout sets the incline to 15 percent, pushing hard for 1,000 feet of elevation before dropping the grade and repeating. Beginners can start much lower, around six to eight percent, and still get a meaningful training effect from the steep angle.
Run-walk intervals also have real science behind them for distance racing. A 2016 study in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport found that marathon runners who mixed walking into their race reported less muscle pain and fatigue, while finishing in times similar to those who ran the whole way. That pacing strategy translates well to trail races, where steep climbs often force even elite runners to power hike anyway.
What Urban Training Still Can’t Fully Replace
None of these substitutes claim to be a perfect copy of the real trail experience. Stairs, inclines, and surface changes build the cardiovascular fitness, climbing strength, and pacing skills trail races demand. But technical footing, long descents on loose dirt, and the unpredictable conditions of an actual mountain trail still require some exposure to the real thing before race day.
Runners who live nowhere near a mountain don’t need to give up on trail racing. A city skyline full of stairwells, parking decks, and steep sidewalks can carry a runner most of the way to the start line prepared.
Sources:
menshealth.com, sportsshoes.com, salomon.com, haimont.com, cimalp.com, runnersworld.com, leadvilleraceseries.com
