"It wasn't the heat..."

[Uncle Cracker]

Medical Examiner's report on the off-duty policeman who dropped dead yesterday while running the Chicago Marathon says he had a heart condition, and emphasized that it wasn't the heat. Surprise, surprise! Did anybody really think that the Chicago city fathers would have it written any other way? I suppose all the 49 people hospitalized, including 2 critically, also had "heart conditions", not to mention the 250 people treated on site. What a spin job...

[Hellrazor]

It wasn't the heat... it was the runner who couldn't deal with the heat.

[Uncle Cracker]

It wasn't the heat... it was the runner who couldn't deal with the heat.

That is probably the case. Nobody forced those people out in that heat (although there were many complaints that there were not enough drinks and cool-down points on the course). What I can't fathom is the immediate Coroner's report emphasizing that it wasn't heat-related, when there was too much widespread misery to discount that the weather was a major factor in it all, and people should have been better informed and protected, but weren't. It's a shame. They seem more willing or capable of quickly mobilizing the spin doctors to protect their image than they were about protecting the participants.

[Hellrazor]

True. But everyone made their own decision to compete. If they didn't feel safe they should have withdrawn.

[Black wallnut]

How hot was it? As someone that has expierenced heat STROKE, I know that it is lack of hydration on more than just the day of the event. Running a marathon is more than many otherwise healthy runners can do. Runners have a term, or at least they did back in my youth when I was a distance runner called "hitting the wall" that many marathoners experience somewhere between mile 17 and the finish, which is where the body has used up all of the easily available energy. After this point the body must make energy from stored fat or muscle. Simply put many that start a marathon are not capable of finishing one.

Just like in track there are really great sprinters that could never break 5 minutes in the mile and 4:20 milers that could not be competitive in the 100, simply not fast enough.

I would not be so quick to jump to the conclusion that the remark is spin. Many runners must have finished without ill effects from the weather. Perhaps the dead guy's body was just not capable of doing what he asked of it.

[JR]

I would not be so quick to jump to the conclusion that the remark is spin.

Nah, Mark, in this case it probably is spin. It was unseasonably warm at 88 degrees, with high humidity. They had hundreds of runners falling out, eventuallly shutting the whole thing down afer four hours.

Of course that doesn't address the fact that if you had trained properly for a marathon, 88 degrees shouldn't stop you. But that's a whole other story.

JR

[Uncle Cracker]

When the autopsy report is ready the next day, and the ME calls a press conference where the first words out of his mouth are "it wasn't the heat", then that's spin. I would be very surprised if the report was not carefully worded with the help of the city attorney and PR machine.