The key to winning races up narrow stairwells, should you find yourself in a vertical sprint to the roof of your condominium, is to think of it as running with a dose of wrestling.

Push, wiggle, squeeze by — do anything you can to get past the people in front of you. Are they holding on to the railings, arms outstretched like a rope barrier? Duck under those sweaty armpits like a party crasher.

That's a strategy that helped Christopher Miller, a Honolulu firefighter and one of the best stairwell racers in the state. Miller represented Hawai'i this winter in a race to the top of New York's Empire State Building, but he'll understand if you've never heard of the event, or its obscure cousin, the Hustle Up the Hyatt in Waikiki.

"Most people don't run up stairs," he said. "It's a crazy thought, actually."

Miller, 33, has competed in a variety of sports — triathlons, marathons, trail running, wrestling, bodybuilding — but he considers stairs the most painful.

"The stairs are relentless," he said. "Of all the sports, that one hurt the most. And it hurts quite a bit if you go all out. You are fighting so much against gravity."

The race up the Empire State Building, a frantic dash from the lobby to the observation deck, covers 1,576 steps. Miller finished 44th out of 235 men and women.

The Hyatt race is far shorter — only 480 steps — but you have to win it in order to be invited to New York. Miller will enter this year's Hyatt hustle, which will be held May 13 and is only open to law enforcement and emergency services personnel.

Miller grew up in Montana but moved to the Islands in 1994 to attend the University of Hawai'i, where he was a member of the cheerleading squad. Although he ran track and cross country in high school, he quit running while in college and lifted weights instead.

He found running again after college and today draws inspiration from the memory of an older brother, a champion runner who died in a car crash in 2001 in Las Vegas.

"I run to stay connected to him, I guess," Miller said. "I feel he left a bit of that in me when he passed away. That's why I got into running, to get a better feeling for what he was doing."

For much of the year, Miller remains a dedicated runner. The core of his routine, it helps with his cardiovascular fitness and leg strength, but he still has to throw himself at stairs and steep hills to prepare for a stair climb.

Last year's Hyatt race was his first stairwell competition, and Miller didn't have a lot of time to prepare. He tried running up Koko Crater, with its 1,106 steps made of old railroad ties, but ran it so hard and fast — in about 10 minutes — that he was too sore to train.

On race day, Miller flew up the stairs on the heels of a guy who had won it twice before.

"We both stumbled to the finish at the same time," he said.

Organizers needed to consult their computerized timer to determine a winner — Miller was second, losing by eight-one-thousandths of second. But the winner gave the New York trip to Miller because Miller had never raced there.

Afterward, Miller adopted a better routine. Some days he would sprint up a short, steep hill behind the Koko Head Avenue Fire Station, where he works in Kaimuki, and some days he would race up 15 flights of stairs in his condo a dozen times.

Miller said he'll never win a marathon. But he thinks most marathoners would do poorly in a stairwell race because they lack the required muscularity. The stairwell event is his niche.

"The stair-climbing actually suits me fairly well," he said. "It involves some strength in your legs. You can't be super wiry. And if you have some upper- body strength, that will help you. When you get tired, you actually start grabbing the rail to pull yourself."

That's when tactics become important — and manners run a distant second.

"The thing about stair racing is you have to pass early," Miller said. "You can pass late, but you have to surge and there is a technique to it. You can say to someone, 'Passing on the inside,' and some will hold back and let you pass but some just zone you out and you just have to be a little more aggressive."