Non-Race Report: 2023 Twin Cities Marathon

This morning, I was scheduled to run the Twin Cities Marathon, which starts in downtown Minneapolis and finishes in front of the state capitol in St. Paul.  This would’ve been my 15th time doing this race.  Unfortunately, the race was cancelled.

This would’ve been my second of five consecutive weekends with marathons.  I don’t usually stack them this close together, but this is a hometown race, so it didn’t involve any travel.  It’s hard to resist when it’s one of your favorite races, and you get to sleep in your own bed.

This race usually has cool weather, but this year it was unusually hot.  The overnight low was in the upper 60s, but it was forecast to get up to 88 degrees in the afternoon.  I can’t remember a year that was warmer.  In 2007, the temperature climbed to 79 degrees during the race.  After the race, I heard a rumor that they were going to stop the race if the temperature hit 80.  That was the same day that the Chicago Marathon stopped their race.

A few days before the race, I received an email to all runners from the race’s medical director.  Here’s an excerpt:

The letter went on to give tips for running in hot humid weather.  After reading this, my biggest concern is that the race would be cancelled if the temperature and/or humidity reached a certain threshold.

I’m of the opinion that a race should never be cancelled because of heat or humidity.  Three weeks ago, I ran 51 miles in hotter conditions.  Ultramarathons are never cancelled because of hot weather, yet marathon sometimes are.  I’ve also run marathons in Belize, Thailand, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Singapore, and other locations where everyone knew it would be hot and humid, because it’s always hot and humid.  Those races never cancel because of the heat.

That said, if you’re going to cancel a race for weather, you should do it before the race starts.  Once people start running, shutting down the race doesn’t do anything to make the runners safe.  It just leaves them stranded in unfamiliar neighborhoods without support and without a plan for getting home.  Everyone knows how they’re going to get home after finishing the race, but hardly anyone has a plan for getting home from some random spot along the route.

I had that experience in 2015, at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Savannah Marathon.  It was somewhat hot and humid, but no more so than it is every year.  We had conditions that were normal for Savannah at that time of year.  I actually felt surprisingly comfortable.  Then a runner who was doing the half marathon collapsed and died.  After that, someone in charge panicked and they pulled the plug on the race because of the unsafe conditions.  It’s tragic that a runner died, but I question whether it was related to the conditions.  The runner in had not run that far, and it was early enough in the day that it wasn’t that hot yet.

Once they made the decision to pull the plug, runners doing the half marathon still continued with their race.  Runners doing the marathon who had not yet reached the point where the courses diverge were forced onto the half marathon route.  Runners who were beyond that point continued along the marathon route, but they removed two out-and-back sections.  We all still had to make our way on foot to the finish area, but instead of running 26.2 miles, we only ran 20 miles.  I don’t see how that made anyone safer.

Getting back to the events of this weekend, I went to the expo on Friday.  At the expo, I saw a sign describing the Event Alert System.  The wording for “black flag” conditions was different from the email I received on Wednesday.  Instead of saying participation would be stopped, it said the race wouldn’t start in black flag conditions.  That subtle change in wording seemed encouraging.

When I got home from the expo, I saw another email from the medical director.  This one clarified that they would only start the race if they were confident that the conditions would be red flag (or better) for the entire race.  I got the impression that they wouldn’t stop the race once it had started.

The letter also said they still expected that they would be able to hold the race.  That was encouraging, although I was a little surprised.  Earlier in the week, the forecast high for race day was 83 degrees.  By Thursday, it had been revised to 85 degrees.  By Friday, it had been revised to 88 degrees.  I didn’t know exactly what combination of heat and humidity would be considered unsafe, but this was going to be much hotter than 2007.

The letter told us what measures they were taking to help keep the runners safe in hot conditions.  Among other things, they were going to have more water than usual at the aid stations, and they were going to have cooling or mist stations.  I was happy to see that.  When the Chicago Marathon was shut down in 2007, a major contributing factor was aid stations running out of water.  It was up to the runners to pace themselves appropriately for the conditions, but having plenty of water is one of the main things the organizers could do.  This letter also told us how many medical personnel they were going to have along the route.  They were planning to have enough that they would have eyes on every part of the route to look for runners in distress.

When I woke up on Saturday, I saw an email that had been sent out the night before.  It told us that the Saturday running events, which included a 5K and a 10K, would take place.  I got the impression the final decision on whether the marathon would take place was going to be made Saturday evening.  We were told to expect an email by 8:30 PM.  I didn’t want to see the race cancelled, but if you’re going to cancel, that’s the appropriate time to do it.

After dinner, I waited to get what I assumed would be the final word on the weather.  At 8:20 PM, I got an email saying they still expected to hold the race, but they would keep monitoring the weather and send another update at 5:30 AM on Sunday.  This email also suggested that they could still cancel the race at any time if conditions changed.

I slept well at first, but I woke up at 2 AM, and I couldn’t get back to sleep.  After laying awake in bed for the next hour and a half, I finally got up and had an early breakfast.

I got dressed for the race, but I wasn’t going to leave the house until I received the expected email.  When it arrived, I was shocked.  Here’s the email:

What made this so shocking to me is that the forecast had not really changed since the night before.  Maybe, they were already expecting to cancel based on the previous forecast, but they were hoping it would get better.  More likely, I think, is that the race officials sincerely believed they would be able to hold the race, but one of the cities forced them to cancel.  Race organizers are always at the mercy of the city governments.  They can only hold the race if the cities will grant permits, and the cities can always rescind those permits.

One reason I believe this is that they didn’t just cancel the marathon.  They also cancelled the 10-mile race.  There was absolutely no reason for that.  The marathon wasn’t scheduled to start until 8:00 AM, but the 10-mile race was scheduled to start an hour earlier, when the temperature was still dropping.  An hour into the race, it would only be 66 degrees.  By the time the temperature got back into the 70s, almost everyone would be done.  Even someone who walked the whole way would be done before it got out of the low 70s.  There’s just no way you can make a compelling argument that conditions were dangerous for the 10-mile race.

I find it hard to believe that the race organizers would be so callous as to cancel the 10-mile race just because it would be inconvenient to still hold one race after cancelling the other.  It’s far more believable that one of the cities pulled their permit, and that forced the cancellation of both events, since they took place on the same morning using many of the same streets.

I was already up, and I was ready to run.  Since I couldn’t run a marathon, I figured I might as well get out for a training run.  I was tracking a friend who was running the Spartathlon in Greece, so I waited to see his result before starting my run.  I got started a few minutes after 8:00, which is about the same time the marathon would’ve started.

As I started running, I was surprised how cool I felt.  Where I live, it was 68 degrees, and there was a strong breeze.  After about five miles, I started to notice the humidity.  It was sticky, but no worse than any day during the summer.

I didn’t run a marathon distance.  There was no reason to run that far If I wasn’t racing.  I ran 11.25 miles, which is just a little farther than my average training run.

The rationale for cancelling today’s race was that conditions were dangerous.  I don’t believe that.  I ran far enough this morning to conclude that conditions weren’t going to get any worse today than they did for most of my training runs.  I live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, so I’m pretty familiar with our weather.  Was this an unusually hot day for October?  Yes.  Was it as hot and/or humid as the weather in July or August?  No.  Not even close.  Anyone signed up for these races who lives in this area would’ve done the bulk of their training during the summer, when conditions were worse.  They should’ve known what these conditions feel like and how they affect their bodies.  If they were doing long training runs in August, they should’ve known how to pace themselves in these conditions.

I’ve run more than 50 ultramarathons, and most of them were summer races.  I’ve run 100-mile races where the temperature got into the 90s.  I’ve run at least one 50-mile race where it got up to 100 degrees by the time I finished.  I’ve run 12-hour and 24-hour races with temperatures in the 90s and high humidity.  In one of those races, the heat index was well above 100 degrees.  Was the race cancelled?  No.  Were any of the runners hospitalized?  No.  Ultrarunners know how to take care of themselves in the heat, and they’re running much farther than a marathon.

Maybe some significant percentage of marathon runners are too inexperienced to make good decisions when racing in hot weather.  Alternatively, maybe the people making decisions to cancel races just don’t give the runners enough credit.  I’m sure every city official who issues a permit wants to avoid a situation like Chicago in 2007, but that isn’t really aa fair comparison.  At that race, the aid stations ran out of water.  That was an avoidable situation.  The race officials knew it was going to be hotter than normal, and they should’ve realized thar runners would be using more water, yet they had the same amount of water that they had other years, when it was cool.  Once they ran out of water, runners started dropping like flies.  So many needed to be taken to hospitals that the emergency rooms were overwhelmed.  We’ll never know what would’ve happened that day if they had an adequate amount of water for all the runners.

Since large marathons in hot humid climates never need to be cancelled and smaller races also never seem to get cancelled, I really think the problem with the large urban marathons is city officials who are overly cautious.  Maybe part of the problem is also a need for more education within the running community.

I ran the Boston Marathon in 2012, when it was 89 degrees and sunny.  That race didn’t start until 10:00 AM, so we were running through the hottest hours of the day.  The race officials knew all week that it was going to be hot.  What did they do?  They were well aware of what happened in Chicago in 2007, so they had four times as much water as they normally would.  All week long, they were encouraging the runners to adjust their goals and just run at an easy pace.  During the race, there were road signs with flashing messages telling us to slow down.

Another thing the Boston Marathon organizers did was to give runners the option to defer their entry to the following year.  It’s tough to get into that race, and they were justifiably concerned that some runners might feel compelled to run in conditions they weren’t prepared for, because it might be their only chance.

There were some runners that year who tried to run too fast and struggled in the late miles.  Most runners, however, managed the heat appropriately.  They probably had more runners than usual needing medical attention after the race, but it wasn’t a disaster like Chicago in 2007.

Because I didn’t have to travel, the only thing I lost out on was the opportunity to run another marathon.  I ran one last weekend, and I’ll run one next weekend, so it’s not that big of a deal.  I feel bad for the runners who traveled from out of state just to do this race.  They not only lost an opportunity to run a marathon, but they’re still out all the money they paid for airfare and hotels.

After the race, I read comments online from a few runners who will never do this race again.  That’s a shame, because it really is a good race.  Unfortunately, it’s now a race that carries the risk that if could be cancelled if it happens to be unusually hot.  There are races I’ll never do for the same reason.  It’s just not a risk you want to take when you’re traveling to a race.  I can handle the weather.  I just want to have the opportunity to do the race.