Running up 37 flights of stairs can be comparable to cleaning your lungs out with steel wool or setting your thighs on fire.

But when you finish, the feeling is exhilarating.

Just ask anyone who runs the annual Bop to the Top, an 805-step stairclimb at the OneAmerica Tower in Indianapolis that is now in its 25th year.

“A friend told me once that it’s like putting your mouth on the end of an exhaust pipe and sucking it in. That’s how I feel after I run it. Your lungs feel the same either way,” said Brachen McCurdy, who has participated for more than 10 years in the stairclimb.

The race, set for today, draws nearly 1,000 boppers. The course record is 3 minutes, 20 seconds for men and 4:26 for women. Some run in teams; firefighters often run while wearing fire gear.

McCurdy, 46, runs the Bop with his son, Zach, a student at Anderson University. The McCurdy family operates Yule and Killbuck golf courses and the Anderson Sports Center.

Even with sports facilities at hand, McCurdy doesn’t practice for the lung-sucking 7 minutes that it takes for him to reach the top.

“There’s not a lot of training your can do for it,” he said.

Runners start off individually, sent from the first floor in 20-second intervals. Times are collected at the top floor and then compared to determine winners.

First-timers are easy to spot. They’re the ones coughing for an hour following the race. The air gets drier in the higher stories.

“The coughing. That’s what bothered my daughter the most,” said Debbie Woschitz, 42, of Anderson, who has run with her daughter, Marissa. “It seems like there’s something in your throat that doesn’t go away.”

She trains by running stairs in buildings and by running on a treadmill with an incline.

Maciej Kaszynski, 32 of Pendleton, is a firefighter with the Indianapolis Fire Department.

“When I finished last year, I said, ‘Never again.’ Here I am a year later, running again for one reason or another. The air is terrible and it affects

your lungs for two days.”