Severe weather has become key safety concern for marathon organizers
Krista DuChene was only 12 kilometres into the 2013 world championship marathon in Moscow, when her legs gave way.
One of the country’s most finely tuned runners was succumbing to heat exhaustion. While she recalls insisting to Canadian team coaches she was good to keep running, she’d already fallen to the pavement and was having trouble even standing up straight.
The next hour was a blurry ambulance ride. She vomited repeatedly. Russian medical officials stuffed smelling salts up her nose.
The 40-year-old from Strathroy, Ont., was one of 23 women who didn’t cross the finish line on that sizzling afternoon in Russia. DuChene feels for the 5,000 runners who registered for this weekend’s cancelled Montreal Marathon, but she knows all too well that crazy variations in weather are a serious health hazard in one of sport’s most punishing events.