Chicago Marathon Disaster

Interesting to see how the press is jumping on the opportunity to trash this event.

I was in my accustomed role as a "tangent rider"- on a scooter in front of the field, ahead of the lead men, trying to show them (and the camera crew) the shortest way around the course. My work was done at about 10:15. I was wearing workout pants, and a race windbreaker over a t-shirt. IT WAS HOT. Last year it was so cold that I was wearing gloves and long underwear.

Anyway, after I finished and turned the scooter in, I walked back to my hotel, which was near the point where the course turns west by the Sears Tower- a little over 20 km into the race. I left the hotel around 11 AM to head back to home in the suburbs. The course was still packed with runners 3 hours after the start, and these people would be on schedule to finish the race in about 6 hours. apparently about half an hour later, they closed the course just west of thaere and told the runners to walk back to the start.

Numerous runners complained about not having water available to them but the race director stated they had 1.8 million cups of water available to the runners. That's almost 50 per runner.

This obviously won't be good for the event's reputation, but it remains one of the best organized events in the world. Not sure what you do with 40,000 runners and almost as many volunteers when the weather is hotter than it's ever been on this date. There's a lot of second-guessing going on, but you have to think the changes they make for next year will be few because there just isn't a lot more they could have done.

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Interesting to see how the press is jumping on the opportunity to trash this event.

Agreed. CNN had a runner on this morning complaining about the lack of water. That's where I saw the report about runners fighting with police.

Apparently 10,000 runners had the good sense not to even attempt the run in the heat, so the cups-per-runner number jumps to 60. That's in addition to the open hydrants and spectators volunteering their garden hoses.

The Kenyans must have felt right at home.

CNN did show the cops on the rooftops with bullhorns, directing emergency crews to downed runners, so it's clear they were on top of it. Or at least as much as they could be given the situation. What more can you do? Cancelling the race beforehand is out of the question.

This is shades of Boston '07, but in a different key. Instead of a Nor'easter, Chicago had to deal w/ potentially deadly heat.

Neither race considered cancelling, but at some point a major race will face conditions - e.g. a Katrina-level storm - where allowing the race to go on would be a case of gross negligence and endagerement.

There are so many people running this event who have prepared by running 20-30 miles/week. Simply running 26 miles, at any pace, in good weather, pushes them to their physical limit.

Didn't Boston have similar weather several years back? Most of those runners were doing at least 50-70 miles/week, and I don't remember hearing about people dropping like flies there.

I bet the vast majority of the people treated for heat problems at Chicago were training less than 30 miles/week.

As an aside, I was downtown this morning and at about 8 AM it was about 50 degrees F with a nasty gusty north wind off the lake. There wouldn't have been a lot of heat injuries, but there would have been very slow times for the first mile, and from mile 2 to about mile 8, and from about 23 to the finish. Next year's Chicago Marathon is a year from tomorrow- October 12.

Most of the people who reached the water tables after the water was gone were the 6 hour marathoners. The people who whined that "I spent 18 weeks training for this". I have little respect for the Tribune's Olypmic Sports columnist, but can't help but agree with at least some of what he opines here...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/columnists/cs-0710...coll=chi_sports_util

I'm thinking maybe a soft cap is in order. Let's say you allow 25,000 or 30,000 runners to enter no questions asked, and then close the field to all but runners who can demonstrate a certain level of proficiency like having run a 4 hour marathon or 2 hour half marathon within thee last couple of years.