Arkansas Blog

I wonder how many folks would show up if they had to run a few miles (to the boat) before starting a Bass tourney? I can think of one new product line now.... Strenuous.

What a wonderful pic. I was beginning to think there weren't that many slender people in the entire state.

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In my book, everyone who participated in the marathon is a winner.

How about an update on the person who died just after crossing the finish line? Any details yet?

27 year old guy from Wisconsin.

It's a shame, I was at the finish line for a while, they had medical crews right there - if anyone even slowed down they were on top of them asking if they were alright, if they seemed slightly off they rushed them to the medical tent. early on a older woman feinted as she came across the line - she never hit the ground - the crew already had her.

I was serving as a volunteer near the Finish Line when the young man went down. The medical staff got to him immediately and aggressively began CPR and defiberilation (sp?). All of us really keep an eye out for runners in distress and every year I wind up grabbing 10-15 people to make sure that they ar OK.

Most of the runners that I confronted if they didn't have their legs under them said that the conmbination of the heat, the hills and the high wind made an already tough course really brutal. A buddy of mine who fell into my arms was muttering "the wind...the goddamn wind..."

As we all know, weather is a crapshhot this time of year around here. Yesterday the high was in the 70s. Tomorrow they are calling for a chance of snow. It was 28 at the start of last year's race. People who have not trained in this type of heat are simply more at risk of some sort of heat related injury no matter their physical condition or experience.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing, though rare, happens from time to time. Indeed, a man died at the Finish Line of the Firecracker 5K @ 10 years ago and that race ends about a 9 iron away from UAMS. A man who was an All Big Ten runner at Northwestern died during the last running of the NY Marathon.

I can assure the readers that the LR Marathon is as safe as such an event can be. The medical staff and volunteers are hyper-vigilant about looking out for signs of abnormal distress in the participants. Every year somebody is pulled off the course whether he wants to quit or not. This young man's death is an unspeakable tragedy and the sort of worst case scenario that keeps the organizers awake nights. And I would imagine that they, along with the medical people, will be running this incident around in their heads for a long time as they consider what they might have done differently.

Even if they come to no different conclusions.

I think one thing that can be done is to move the starting time up to 7 a.m. instead of 8. If it is cold, it won't make that much difference, but if it is warm, it could be significant. And I don't think the earlier start time would be an issue for runners. In fact, the out of state people might prefer it because it would get them home quicker.

My wife, some friends and I ran in the Evansville (IN) Half Marathon the same day as the Chicago Marathon that had all the heat-related problems. Both those races began at 8. By 9 a.m. the temperature was in the 80s and it was brutal. A 7 a.m. start would have been much better.

Apparently, there has always been an element of risk in running marathons:

The Battle of Marathon -- http://www.lakepowell.net/marathon.html