Chicago marathon cancelled mid race?!!

[limewave]

I watched the WGN (Chicago) news last night. The race organizers said they had plenty of supplies and had brought in a bunch more the day before to address the heat...then the first groups of runners started coming through the water station and grabbing 5-10 cups of drinking water each to dump on their heads. The later runners were left with nothing.

DH admitted he would drink about 3 cups and dump 3 MORE cups on his head early on to cool down. The Chicago Marathon people brought in an additional 250,000 servings of water for a total of 1.8 million for 35,000 runners. More than 10,000 runners didn't even show up.

[Running Mommy]

Something else that made e take pause... They said that there was only 15 aid stations on the 26.2 mi route??
Knowing that the heat was going to be what it was, I think they should have made sure there was an aid station every mile. Maybe hard to do at the last minute, but they did know of the weather for about a week from what I'm hearing.
Also, maybe it's time to cap the # of entrants. With THAT MANY people it would be hard to control.
Just a sad sad day for many runners. To train so hard for something and then to have mother nature intervene.

[anakiwa]

I was there- it was quite an experience! I finished at 4:21 (about a half hour slower than I had meant to run and a personal worst) but given the conditions felt pretty good. It was just really really hot (at mile 20 there was a bank thermometer reading 91 degrees- and that would have been before noon). I knew in the first few miles that it just wasn't the day to push things and slowed down.

From what I saw the race was extremely well organized. I never had a problem getting flluids (though that said I was in one of the earlier start corrals and the masses were behind me). If the organizers made a mistake, it was in letting the race get too big. Stopping the race and redirecting people to the finish was clearly the right thing to do (as it was the ambulance sirens at the finish never stopped).

[Pax]

I was there- it was quite an experience! I finished at 4:21 (about a half hour slower than I had meant to run and a personal worst) but given the conditions felt pretty good. It was just really really hot (at mile 20 there was a bank thermometer reading 91 degrees- and that would have been before noon). I knew in the first few miles that it just wasn't the day to push things and slowed down.

From what I saw the race was extremely well organized. I never had a problem getting flluids (though that said I was in one of the earlier start corrals and the masses were behind me). If the organizers made a mistake, it was in letting the race get too big. Stopping the race and redirecting people to the finish was clearly the right thing to do (as it was the ambulance sirens at the finish never stopped).

Glad you finished without injury!

[Zen]

Here- http://www.sportsgeezer.com/sportsge...shorter-o.html