Running Hot

Hot as hell?

Ask runners of yesterday’s Boston Marathon and they’ll tell you that Lucifer himself was volunteering at a water station near Heartbreak Hill.

Freak 30 degree-plus temperatures meant 2,2000 people ended up in the medical tent or worse, (Twice as many as normal), an estimated 4,000 took the Boston Athletic Association up on their offer of deferral, Boston marathon record holder and 2011 winner Geoffery Mutai dropped out at the 30k mark, and poor Bachelorette contestant Ryan Sutter lost his shirt (again).

Now I’ve written before about how to handle the heat when you’re out for a run, (if you missed it, here it is again — these guys really took the “stay hydrated” tip to heart: )

but there’s more to it when the first major scorcher of the year happens to be race day. More than a dozen members of my run group were amongst the die-hards who ran yesterday. And, thanks to the heat, most missed their goal times by 20 to 60 minutes, some didn’t finish. Needless to say mixed in with any enjoyment they got from the event and the pride of just being there, there was some disappointment.

Nevertheless, our chronically positive leader Dr. Stevil says they shouldn’t be discouraged — because we runners, if we know anything, it’s how to take a beating and move on.

“Resilience is not just a great colour on most people, it is actually a state of mind that we can choose to have more or less of,” he told me yesterday. “We can choose to reflect on the disappointment in a negative way or in a way with more of a silver lining. Where’s the silver? Well, most of our runners had the courage to start, most of our runners felt well prepared for the 42.2K distance, and most of our runners are drunk right now.”

Dr. Stevil has a point. Alcohol really does solve your problems.

What’s more?   The heat wasn’t all bad. There was some fun on the course. One friend, for example, finished a good 25 minutes behind her PB, but kissed boys and drank a beer en route. Fair trade, right?  “The Crowd was amazing!,” she says. “We had ice given to us (a saving grace), popsicles, freezies, oranges, bananas, fig newtons, pretzels, fudgesicles and I’m sure more.  The college kids were crazy. What an awesome day!”

Talk about a silver lining.

On the elite level,  Canadian Josh Cassidy, broke the men’s wheelchair marathon world-record by two-seconds winning the race in 1:18:25 and Canadian Diane Roy came third in the women’s wheelchair race.  Kenyans took the top three spots in both the men and women’s races.

Want more happy thoughts? More examples of determination? Check out the video of the finish line at the top of this article — I’ll be practicing the hand-stand trick at my next track work out.

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