Bunhill: Step training

IN WINTER, the stairwell of the Kleinwort Benson tower in the City echoes to the clattering feet of Gavin Mailer- Howat. A Middle East specialist in the private banking division of KB, Mailer-Howat, 32, toils up the 24 floors (720 calf-wrenching steps) of the building in preparation for marathons when it is too dark to train at home.

'One starts pretty enthusiastically for the first few flights,' says Mailer-Howat, who also eschews the lift at Bank tube station. 'but it gets pretty tiring by the seventh floor. After that it's always a bit of a struggle. It would be poetic licence to say I run all the way up.'

His next big race is the New York marathon, when he is hoping to raise money for Whizz-Kidz, the London charity that provides adapted wheelchairs for disabled children.

Whizz-Kidz raised pounds 225,000 from 115 sponsored runners in New York last year and is now aiming for pounds 300,000 from 200 runners. As an incentive, it will pay for the flights of runners who raise more than pounds 1,250 in sponsorship. Interested? Call Queenie Copping on 071-938 4600.