Weather For Chicago Looking Grim

Sunday's race could be a 26.2-mile experiment between fitness and the ability to manage ones environment

The LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon has been blessed with great weather for marathon running for more than a decade. The weather forecasts for Sunday's race don't fall anywhere near that category. While most runners fear the heat, Sunday's weather if it fits the forecasts of cloudy, cold, windy, and wet presents all 40,000 entrants and the race volunteers along the course with a much different challenge, said Professor David Martin, an emeritus regents professor of health sciences at Georgia State University in Atlanta, who has helped US elite marathoners prepare for performing at their best in major competitions.

"This isn't about time," said Martin of running in the adverse weather predicted for Sunday. "It's a 26.2 mile experiment between your fitness and your ability to manage your environment. Those who don't take into account the environment with pay the price."

The cold, windy, wet conditions are exacerbated, said Martin, by the fact that most of the country has been unusually hot and humid this past summer. So, while most runners would be acclimated to heat, they are not as prepared for the cold. And most advice is geared toward managing the heat, not dealing with adverse cold conditions. "You've got four strikes against you," said Martin of the challenge. There is the cold, the wetness, the wind, and a negative mind set that those sorts of conditions promote, he said. "You worry more about having problems (in such adverse conditions)." "I've experienced hypothermia and it is something I never want to experience again."

Being cold is uncomfortable and demoralizing, Martin said. The solution: Planning. "You've got to plan," Martin said. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." What do you do? Martin said that the various conditions present a variety of problems and potential solutions. You need to dress for the end of the race, not the beginning, Martin says. By this he means you need to manage your energy expenditure carefully so that you have the ability to generate heat late in the race. You need to dress as well as you can to hold in the body's heat, rather than the usual strategies of attempting to dissipate the heat.

The cold itself is not as complicated to deal with, said Martin, it is even a potential advantage to the very fit athlete. Khalid Khannouchi, in fact, set a world record in 1999 when the start time temperatures were near freezing. "The reason he set the world record was because he was fit enough at the time that he could produce enough heat to stay at equilibrium. It was something of a laboratory for the proper level of fitness and the physics of heat transfer."

Like heat, you can manage the cold in part, at least, in the way you dress. First, however, in any severe weather careful management of pace is very important. If you run too fast because you feel cold at the start of the race, you won't have the energy to run fast enough to keep your body warm at the end of the race. Then the decrease in speed gets compounded by the fact that as you slow, you cool, as you cool you get stiffer, go slower, and the downward spiral continues. So, Martin advises, don't go out too fast. Manage your pace so you have enough left at the end of the race, a good strategy for all races, but one that is especially critical in severe weather conditions.

With all the high tech fabrics and advances in heat management clothing, the low-tech plastic bag can be your best friend as accessory clothing at the start of the race, said Martin. Wear the bag prior to the start and/or when you start to hold in your heat. Get a long sleeved T-shirt and cut off the arms, put them on and use them as arm warmers. Constantina Tomescu-Dita sported a pair of blue, wool arm warmers that she wore during her victory in 2004. When asked at the post race press conference if they were a fashion statement, Tomescu-Dita said, no, she was cold and she used them to manage her body heat.

In the 1995 national championships Martin was providing advice to Keith Brantley. While the race was held in North Carolina, the conditions on race day were frigid. Brantley, who lived and trained in Florida where it was hot and humid, asked Martin what he should wear. A long-sleeve, black New Balance wicking fabric shirt, said Martin (Brantley was sponsored by New Balance). "But people are going to think I'm a wimp," Brantley told him. "Maybe, but it'll help you win the race," Martin responded. "If you get to 23 miles and look at the guy next to you and he only has a singlet, you'll still be warm and able to accelerate and he'll be cold and stiff." Turns out that is exactly what happened, as Brantley pulled away from Ed Eyestone, who was wearing only a singlet. Eyestone admitted in the post race press conference that he was stiff when Brantley made his move and could not respond.

The wicking of the fabric also created a unique sight during the early portion of the race. The beads of sweat wicked to the outside of the shirt and froze in the early race breezy and sub-freezing temperatures, turning the black shirt partially and temporarily white. "What sort of shirt is that," the observer on the press bus asked, said Martin, who was riding with them.

Another adjustment to consider in cold, windy days is tights. A pair of black tights will aid heat retention. The only negative being that if there is rain, and they get wet, they might lose their insulating properties. So, choice of fabric is important, as a wicking fabric is better than one that absorbs and retains sweat or rain. That type of fabric should not be worn anyway as the fluid retention adds to body weight that is otherwise lost when it wicks away and is dissipated in the air away from the skin.

Shoes and socks can also be an issue, especially if it is raining. He advises that athletes "test drive" their footwear after dousing them with water, mimicking what you would experience on a rainy day. The reason for this being that these wet conditions can promote blisters--another undesirable result. Again, planning is vital to getting the results you want, Martin emphasized. "Good athletes are good businessman." "You see it in training. You see it in racing. If your business is running, it's bad for business if you are frequently injured, if you don't train properly for a race. You learn to manage your assets properly."

That is the challenge not only for the participants in Sunday's race, but for the race medical staff. The 10,000 volunteers that are vital to the success of the race management are also put under greater climatic stress, and they don't get to run around to generate heat. "Some of them use the ambulances," said race medical director Dr. Greg Ewert. Periodically, the volunteers will jump into the ambulances and crank up the heat, he said. When he heard the weather forecasts, he began to implement "Plan B," Ewert said, which called for extra tents with heaters near the start finish area. Most runners running in the race are housed in nearby hotels near the start in Grant Park, and they stay inside until close before the race on inclement days, minimizing the exposure to the elements.

Just as planning is important for the runners, it is critical for the race staff as well. One element that concerned him was that, although the race entry limit was 40,000 race organizers will often allow more entrants, over the announced threshold counting on the fact that many runners who register do not show up at the starting line. Ewert knows there were more registrants in Chicago, but he doesn't yet know exactly how many. If the numbers were small, it wouldn't be as much of an issue, but one year as he was going to the starting line, he noted a runner with a starting number on his bib that was 37,000. At that time the entry limit was 35,000. So, there were at least 2,000 more potential finishers. This year the number registered could be closer to 45,000, which has to be considered in the planning for the medical staff.

As the old saying goes, "you plan for the worst and hope for the best." Ewert says that the weather forecasters have told him that it will be cold and blustery, but that the rain may have stopped by then. He hopes so, he says, but the race planning will be for the worst, and hopefully the runners will also plan accordingly. Ewert noted than in the book published of the proceedings of the landmark 1976 New York Academy of Sciences meeting on the Science and Medicine of Marathoning that the organizer, Paul Milvoy wrote than in the future there would be 50,000 people running marathons. Milvoy meant in one year, Ewert noted, not on one day. Thus illustrating that in the past 30 years the sport has grown beyond what even the best minds thought years ago and so have the challenges of dealing with it.

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