Big difference, I think, is twofold. The first is that people are expecting IMTX to be hot. Most people signing up for a marathon in Vermont in May are not expecting significant heat. The second is that, despite our own relatively elitist opinions here on ST, most people who sign up for an Ironman are reasonably well prepared and expecting a big day. Marathons have become a much more recreational pursuit, and I'd say that you likely have a lot more people who are barely prepared to even walk 26mi.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

I somewhat agree with your first point. I'm just from around the area and northeast at this point is always unpredictable weather wise. I'm doing IMLP again and it's been freezing some years and hot others. We had snow last week and 80s this whole week, which isn't unusual (I'm sure Dev can attest to this too). I would like to think that would be taken into consideration when training.

A little bit of selling headlines there, I think a temp of 85 and dew point of 63, that is debatable whether that is "excessively hot".

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The orhganizers could not move the start time to earlier in the morning? But seriously though, 88 is considered too hot to run? Last year's LA marathon saw some 90 plus temps and none of the run-walkers that tend to finish in the 5:30 plus range died.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

That's the benchmark for success of any endurance event.

Chicago Marathon has done this too. I think they pulled the plug after the temps reached a certain level and after a certain number of people had been taken to the hospital.

Another factor may be that if the weather was cool until this week, people in the race would have no ability to acclimate. A race like Vermont City, I imagine, has mostly local residents and a large percentage of hobby joggers. Probably a good call to cancel this one.

The wussification of "endurance" sports continues.

Too hot, too cold, too windy, too wavy, too rainy, too sunny (might get sun-burn) wahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

To add to what Rapp said, basically up here in the "north" this is the first warm weekend all year. Here in Ottawa the marathon went off today, but there was talk of cancellation right up to last night. Most people are not ready for the heat this early in the year. To give you some context the RD for the Ottawa Marathon, John Halvorsen ran in the 10,000m finals in the Seoul and Barcelona Olympics so he is as pointy end former elite as it gets, so if someone is not going to cancel it will be him. But out of the 50,000 or so racing, there are 10 runners in the caliber he used to race in, so he has to look out for the support and medical staff load and first responders who are going to be carting off a lot of people to the hospital who may or may not be ready for a massive influx (and we are moderate size Canadian city of 1 million with pretty decent hospital infrastructure).

By the way, I see that for the Ottawa marathon around 4:30 into the race they cut off 10K and shortened the race distance for the later finishers.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-race-weekend-winners-1.3605564

It looks like at 4:30 into the race they diverted people at 27K in and skipped 27-37k markers and directed them into the final 5K. The bulk of the field should have been onto the 27-37k loop by then.


Dev

I do not know if this is the case with Vermont, but the Chicago Marathon that was canceled part way through was due to the city running out of ambulances. Now you may think your endurance sport is important, but I think that an event should not overwhelm the emergency services of a city putting at risk someone that has a heart attack, but no ambulance was available because nobody wanted to cancel a marathon.

These races are not canceled because they are worried they are too hard, they are canceled because the participants will keep going long after they should have stopped and then need medical care. This has nothing to do with people being wusses, this is in fact the opposite.

Ottawa did a good job on communication, misters and nutrition this weekend. To be fair to the organizers, anyone at the 27k mark after 4:30 was borderline to miss the 7h cut off. I ran the half this morning (which started 45 minutes earlier than originally scheduled) and found it warmed up noticeably as the race went on. You have about four minutes of shade on the entire course...

To the person who talked about wussification: The heat probably affects the slower/less fit runners more than you. But take out all the people that finish behind you in a race and you will have: a) fewer races; and b) more poorly organized races because those slower people bring buckets of cash to events.

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I ran the half-marathon yesterday in Ottawa. They moved the start time from 9am to 8:15. They made that decision Saturday and it was all over the local news, social media, etc. They still allowed people to start at 9am if they wished. We had cloud cover until just after 10am, and the weather was not bad. A little warm but not enough to slow people very much.

I think the organizers may have made the water stations larger/longer. There were lots of volunteers handing out Nuun and water. There were also a lot of spectators with garden hoses (and a few kids with super-soakers).

After 10am, the sun came out and it warmed up quickly. It was a good decision to cut the course short for later finishers. The marathon started at 7:00am, so by 11:30, it was getting much warmer. The course design helped - the full marathon course has a loop from 27Km to about 37km, so they just directed later people towards the last 5 km instead of going out around the loop.

They also changed the start time for the 10km on Saturday night, from the traditional 6:30 to 7:00pm. It is not much time, but it worked out very well. There was a heavy downpour partway through the race which cooled people off a lot.

There had been a lot of warnings and discussion about the predicted hot weather for several days before the race. I changed my strategy for the half, and ran pretty conservatively for the first few kilometers, increased pace a bit from 6 or 7k to the 10k mark and then tried to race from there. I suspect a lot of people also changed strategy a bit and paced themselves better for it.

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run well, run happy
george