4 Died on the Course.

I wondered when I saw this on google yesterday who would post it here.

It is a sad and puzzling event.

Quoted message said:

On Sunday in the UK was the world's largest 1/2Marathon, 25,000
people...4 runners died on the course. This has gotta be a record for
deaths in a single race that was less than a Marathon I would think.
18C/70% humidity I think....tough..but not entirely oppressive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1573747,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4263090.stm

Well on the positive side, one guy was a fat pig (cop), so it was
worth it.
TBR

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and
more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day
the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the
White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
"Anyone with degrees from Yale and Harvard is presumed to be intelligent,
but George W. Bush has managed to overcome that presumption."

Quoted message said:

On Sunday in the UK was the world's largest 1/2Marathon, 25,000
people...4 runners died on the course. This has gotta be a record for
deaths in a single race that was less than a Marathon I would think.
18C/70% humidity I think....tough..but not entirely oppressive.

Wow, that's pretty freakish.

Story actually said 50,000 runners, though only 38,000 finishers - only
about 76%, which sounds awfully low to me. And those numbers don't
read like especially tough conditions, more like "not ideal but not
bad" - that's a dew point of 14C or 57F. I suppose the conditions
inside a tightly packed herd of runners get a bit steamier; but still
this is no Badwater or Marathon des Sables or even this year's
Manhattan 21k, which despite being way muggier (10F hotter, and
sometimes reaching 100% RH) than this English race, still represented a
relative break in the weather we'd all been training in here for weeks.

Was this just exceedingly bad luck or is there some common thread?

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Quoted message said:

On Sunday in the UK was the world's largest 1/2Marathon, 25,000
people...4 runners died on the course. This has gotta be a record for
deaths in a single race that was less than a Marathon I would think.
18C/70% humidity I think....tough..but not entirely oppressive.

True for us but it sounds like unusually warm conditions for them. If
they are used to 30 then 70 is a large delta. I often bump into a race
early spring in Virginia that gets to 75-85 and after doing my training
runs in 0-30(F), it toasts my ass. 75-80 after acclimation is almost
comfortable.

I would be interested in the autopsy results. It could be 4 totally
bizarre deaths for four unrelated conditions. After all, there were
50,000 runners. Maybe it's mad cow.

-Doug

You make it sound like a bad thing.

i say any race that doesn't kill a few people isn't worth running.