My thoughts on the Chicago Marathon 07
I woke up at 7:50 AM on Sunday morning thinking I must get out of bed to watch the Chicago Marathon. I knew a blood bath was about to start. No way could 45,000 runners to get the finish line without some serious problems. I told my daughter a few days before the race of the problems to come. I expected 400 runners in the hospital and thousands of runners to drop out due to the heat.
I had a very difficult time watching the race on television. This is not my cup of tea. I had to split-screen the TV and watch the discovery channel at the same time. I really wanted to see the end game for the men and women and I was not disappointed. I was not happy with the results I saw for either the men or the women. I could write another article on the “Rules for Engagement” for racing. It was exciting to see the finish for both races, but at the same time very sad. I did not like seeing the lead man trying to hold off the second place runner. And, I did not like seeing the second place women sneak around the first place women to win the race. I’m sure many will want to argue with me on that. But, on must move on to the bigger issues of this race. As we all know, this race will be talked about for years.
Like any typical TV viewer, I turned the race off after the lead women crossed the finish line. I had no idea until later in the day the race was cancel a few hours after it started. It sounds like runners under 4:30 had no problem with the course being shutdown. Runners beyond that had all kinds of confusion on what they could do or not do. When I heard they closed the race down, a mass amount of thoughts came to my noodle. How does one do this without major confusion and problems and fallout? And, it sounds like that is exactly what happen. Knowing lots of people in the race, I knew that I would get some firsthand knowledge of what happen out there. And, now I wish I had been there to see it first hand.
From my viewpoint, we only have 4 issues to talk about. But, do not hold me to this as I go forward in this article. They are as follows:
Let me start by saying I do not care about blaming race directors, or reading articles written by non-runners, or any news stories. I’m only interested in the down to earth runner-to-runner talk.
So, let me start with the first one. Should they have the race in the first place? Yes. I could see having the race only for the top 10,000 to 15,000 runners, and a fun run 13.1 mile run for the rest. But, I would let the runner make that decision. I would make it easy for the runner to make the correct decision. I would have a ton of buses waiting at 13.1 miles and 20 miles with refreshments waiting.
We all know what happened at the water stations. The runners used most of the water to cool down with (dump on their head). I do this all the time in any hot race. I try not to overdue this, but when you head is boiling, you do what you have to do. After talking to many runners, it sounds like they had water at most water stations, but ran out of cups to put it in. I would think recycling your cup would solve this problem. It would take extra time to wait for a refill, but life is rough on a hot day. If the water station was actually out of water that would be another issue to deal with. I have seen it in other races, and runners can be very hard on race directors that commit a crime like that. Running out of cups is also a hard one to swallow, no pun intended.
Closing the race down is the hardest for me to deal with. I do not support that decision. I could see encouraging runners to drop out and making it easy to drop out, but I would leave the decision for the runner to make. I would have buses waiting along the course to take them back to the finish.
I think that closing the race down is a result of not having the correct plan laid out in the first place. I’m sure the race organizers felt they had their backs against the wall and had to make that decision. I do not think it hurt the top runners, which is good. But, I’m sure it hurt a few people that had a chance of making it to the finish running at a pace they could survive at. I do NOT think it makes any sense to criticize how they shut the course down. I’m sure that was not well planned out in the first place. That decision was a result of a disaster or at least a perceived disaster. I do not believe it was a real disaster. People over react to a runner that is having trouble. I’m sure most of them just got over heated, and needed some time to cool down.
The fallout from what happen at the Chicago marathon is not completely known yet. How many runners will not come back to Chicago? My guess is about 60,000 people wanted to run Chicago. And, if they drop 1 /3 of the crowd, they will have 40,000 runners next year. Not a bad number to advertise.
Terry