You could have been running the Chicago Marathon today and gotten stopped on course.
Whew! I sure wouldn't want to be the race official to have to stand in the middle of the road and tell 5,000 runners they couldn't continue on course!
It's about 91*F with heat index there right now (3PM local).
Update: One fatality reported. Whew, a 35-year-old guy started the race at 8AM, and was pronounced dead at 12:50PM. Only 4000 of the 36,000 entrants finished the marathon, officially. 302 hospitalizations = nearly 1 percent of entrants. There were a total of 10,934 DNFs.
Update2: There was another runner fatality today at the Army Ten Miler in Washington, DC, where I heard they ran out of water on the course.
7 comments:
I was going to say that those of us who train in that kind of weather would be pissed. Then I noticed that they were allowing anyone who had passed mile 13 by noon to continue on. Given that start time was a little after 8:00, anyone who hadn't reached the midpoint of the course by noon was probably not from the Gulf Coast or some similarly hot and humid place.
It was for the best.
brutal conditions. I'm sure we'll hear more from folks who ran it (or tried to). Tragic to lose even one runner.
They haven't released any details yet about the man who passed away in the Army 10 Miler, but people I know who where back of the packers and said they had no water from about Mile 5 on. I can't imagine what that must have been like. Race officials are going to be in some serious trouble if it is determined that the man's death was caused by dehydration or overheating. It was just brutal out there, especially the last 3 miles that had absolutely no shade.
That's exactly what I heard, no water at all at miles 6 and 8, AND they were handing out concentrated Gatorade, just to make things worse.
Very sad.
AND the results promised by 7PM yesterday are still not available, 14 hours later.
What a mess.
To run out of fluid at an event this huge...well, I bet they don't get sponsored next year.
I think these 40,000 people events have just gotten way too out of control. My opinion only.....!
and we STILL don't have the identify of the runner who died. he was 25. so much for all those who were betting he was old and fat.
it was a terrible day, and they made the right, if tough, call in chicago from what i hear from the people who ran it.
There was no water at Mile 6 but there was water at Mile 8 when I got there and that was within 15 minutes of the bridge cuttoff so I am surprised to hear that others got no water there. It was a tough hard, hard day in terms of unexpected heat...I actually stopped and bought a bottle of water from one of the vendors on Independence Ave. because the front of the pack was telling us not to expect water at the mile 6 mark... I filled my water bottle and passed the rest of my excess water to a runner heading in the opposite direction...my race karma for the day....
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