When the marathon isn’t a ‘go’

Marathoners flat-out love to run.

They run in the midnight sun in Norway, at the North Pole, across Antarctica and on the permanent ice cap of Greenland. They’re only too happy to dodge lightning bolts, flash floods or packs of snapping dogs if that’s what it takes to complete the 26.2-mile race.

So when organizers of the Chicago Marathon began directing runners off the course shortly before noon Oct. 7, a collective gasp went through the running community.

Cancellations and closures are incredibly rare even for smaller marathons -- and for the major marathons, they are unheard of, says Ryan Lamppa, a researcher for the last 15 years for Running USA, a nonprofit national organization that promotes running.

Nobody wants to shut down a marathon. But organizers have to be ready if they need to.

“Canceling the race is something we don’t want to think about,” says Marc Chalufour, communications manager for the Boston Athletic Assn., which manages the Boston Marathon. “The repercussions are many.” Sponsors, organizers, vendors and even the runners are all heavily invested in the event, which may have been scheduled to be televised. There is potential loss to the event’s image, costing future sponsors.

The Chicago Marathon was shut down by executive director Carey Pinkowski as more than 300 runners were stricken by heat, which by 2:30 p.m. topped 85 degrees (with more than 85% humidity) -- a record for that race. One runner, Chad Schieber, 35, of Midland, Mich., who was later determined to have had a heart condition, died shortly after the race. The organizers declined to comment on the events leading up to the cancellation decision.

Hellish weather of a different kind assaulted the more than 20,000 runners six months ago at the Boston Marathon as weather forecasts hinted at gale force winds and temperatures in the 30s, and marathon officials scrambled to anticipate the effects of harsh wind and freezing rain.

At the 38th running of the New York City marathon Nov. 4, organizers are expecting nearly 40,000 runners and planning for just about anything, including fluke weather.

For the most part, marathon organizers think in terms of managing potential problems, not canceling a race -- but they do prepare for that contingency.

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A web of services

Putting on a marathon is an enormous operation for a large, metropolitan area, involving a web of organizers, police, fire, emergency medical services, transportation, sanitation and parks and recreation departments, among others, who send staff to observe the event for potential problems.

Representatives of city and county agencies will often be stationed at a central command post, where they consult with organizers throughout the race.

Major marathons have liquids stations about every mile as well as more than half a dozen medical aid stations along the way and at the finish line. Volunteers and medical personnel stationed at these sites are in constant contact, via radio and cellphone, with the medical director and others to report problems.

“Most of the big races will have radio communication and documentation of the type of illnesses that are being seen,” says Dr. Brian Krabak, a sports medicine physician at the University of Washington and Children’s Hospital in Seattle, who has served as medical director for marathons and ultramarathons nationally and throughout the world.

“There will be a coordination of services so if someone is pretty sick and needs to go to the emergency room, they’ll be taken away by ambulance. All of this is being communicated to the head medical director,” he says.

There may even be emergency medical technicians roaming the course, Krabak adds, “so you are always dynamically testing what’s going on. It’s a big communication system.”

At large races, the marathon team will have spent months planning the race and anticipating the needs of the runners. In the final weeks before the race, they look to the sky and say a prayer.

In the case of the Boston Marathon, the initial reports were grim. “About two weeks out we started to get long-term forecasts of a gale blowing in, heavy rains, near-freezing temperatures,” Chalufour says.

Race officials had to anticipate the effect of freezing weather not only on the runners, but also on the 5,000 volunteers, who wouldn’t have the benefit of running to stay warm, and on the race infrastructure, which could be blown away.

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Weather updates

Their preparations included e-mail updates to all entrants on the potential weather conditions and information about hypothermia.

“What it came down to is, as late as 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. [on the day of the event], there were heavy, heavy winds, but then it died down,” Chalufour says. “By the time people were showing up, it was dreary but not unsafe.”

On race day, officials increased the number of buses on the course to accommodate a larger number of dropouts and identified buildings at the start and along the course that could serve as shelters. There was even a last-minute purchase of thousands of ponchos for the volunteers.

Of the 20,646 runners who braved the rainy, windy and admittedly nippy course, estimated at 47 degrees at the start, 20,338 completed it.

As the New York event approaches, “we’re continually reviewing our plans,” says Mary Wittenberg, president and chief executive of the New York Road Runners and race director of the New York City Marathon. “We saw at this year’s marathons torrential rain, really bad winds and heat, all live and in action.

“In the three weeks up to the race, we are evenly focused on, not only extreme heat, but extreme wind, rain and ice, because the odds are good that we could get one of those.”

If heat is an issue, officials have plans that include altering the water and Gatorade on the course, putting salt out to help runners replenish electrolytes and adding cooling stations.

“The key to handling whatever comes along is preparing -- having ordered the extra water, extra blankets, extra salt,” she says.

The Los Angeles Marathon, which attracted more than 26,000 runners March 4, has never been canceled in its 22-year history, although there have been some scares.

Just before the start of the 2002 marathon, a suspicious package was found at Mile 3. Organizers had to decide whether to alter the course -- an enormous decision given the complications of changing the route after it had been sanctioned, and moving aid stations.

Fortunately the package was found to be harmless, and the race went on after a brief delay.

There have been other notable events affecting the start. In 1989, a balloon burst at the starting line, as the runners were lined up. The elite runners, thinking they’d heard the starting gun, took off, followed by more than 18,000 entrants.

The police were about a half mile up the road on their motorcycles and had to steer the runners back to the starting line, recalls Marie Patrick, co-founder and executive vice president of the Los Angeles Marathon.

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Truckloads of ice

Los Angeles organizers start tracking weather four weeks in advance of the event. If the weather is extraordinarily hot, Patrick says, the organizers have plans to bring in truckloads of ice and 33,000 sponges for the runners, supplementing 60,000 gallons of bottled water.

Fire hydrants will be open, extra cups will be provided, and the Fire Department may elect to set up hoses as giant misters.

Even the spectators get involved, Patrick says. “People get their garden hoses out and spray the runners.”

Despite two races in which heat rose into the 90s, “we never had a conversation about stopping a race,” she says.

Organizers say that determining how hot is too hot to run a marathon is both an art and a science. “It depends where you live and when your race is,” Wittenberg says. “What may be too hot and too humid in New York may be a different number from what’s too hot and too humid in Singapore and Honolulu.”

Runners vary too, in their stamina and their conditioning. For example, runners who’ve been training in hot summer conditions will be better prepared for a hot course than those who’ve trained under cool or moderate conditions.

“For these extreme races you might have people in the Gobi Desert wanting to run in 120 degrees,” Krabak says. “We’ll shut down the race and they’ll say, ‘But it’s only 105!’ ”

Any decision to cancel a race, regardless of the reason, will generate at least some strong disagreement among runners, because the urge to complete a race runs deep. Just ask Philip F. Newberg of Long Beach.

The clinical psychologist collapsed at the 23-mile mark of the Long Beach Marathon in 1991 and was taken to a local hospital, where he was placed in intensive care.

By the end of the day, he was back on the course, walking the final 3 miles.

“We’re obsessed,” he says.

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janet.cromley@latimes.com