Heatwave fires up the Schmersal team

“Running to celebrate 70 years of Schmersal.” That was the slogan that spurred on the Schmersal team for their fifth attempt at the Schwebebahn run, an annual event that follows the route of the suspended railway in Wuppertal. The 2015 event took place on Sunday 5 July, with this year’s runners experiencing some very tough conditions as the thermometer had already hit 31 degrees Celsius when the runners made their way to the starting line. Despite the heat, the Schmersal team performed even better than the previous year, achieving a top time of 18:12 minutes for the men and 23:26 minutes for the women. This took the Schmersal team into fourth place for the ranking of the quickest teams.
This year’s event also saw a rise in the number of participants: A total of 91 Schmersal employees took part in the race in 2015 (compared to 70 in 2014).  The company is aiming to reach the 100-member mark for 2016.
The company race had a five-kilometre course and saw 4,100 runners from 227 businesses at the starting line. The Wuppertal opera house was both the start and finish line at this year’s event. The new route took runners through the historic section of the city’s Friedrich-Engels-Allee and past the Engels-Garten park.