Monday, October 8, 2007

Rantings of a Mad Coach

In what had to be an absolute runner’s nightmare, the Chicago Marathon was cancelled at 12 noon!

I’ve been reading a few accounts of what transpired and it sounds like the race officials were caught with their pants down. There are stories of fluid stations with overturned tables and no water or sports drinks, runners purchasing their own fluids from nearby gas stations and stores.
Now I’m sure that everything possible was done to ensure the safety of each participate during the race and it was a tough decision to call the race and I give them credit for doing that.

Are there things that could have been handled better? Sure, but how could you tell ten thousand people that spent countless hours and steps into training that their day was over? I would venture to guess that a lot of TNT athletes were a part of this goup!

I was trying to imagine how I would have handled the situation from a TNT coaching perspective and it scares me.

How do you tell someone you’ve seen start from almost nothing to abandon their dream of
crossing that finish line, even if it is for their own good?

I can’t even imagine what the mood was like at the victory party!

Having participated in a few warm weather endurance events, we always try to protect the athlete.

Which leads to the question of when is enough, enough? When do you shutdown the competitive fire within and just succumb to the realization that you can’t continue?

Okay, I’m sure that quite a few of the disappointed will find another fall marathon to sign up for and not let their training go to waste. Then there will be the other side that just wanted to complete one marathon and banish their shoes to the back of the closet and call it a career.

But as I always tell my team during their training, the one thing you have no control over is the weather!

5 comments:

Pat said...

If I had to forego either a years training or the goal marathon, I would pick the marathon. Now I know, on marathon day I might not feel that way, but in a more rational moment, that's what I would choose.

I hope many of the runners on Sunday come to that conclusion and I hope they all lace up their kicks and get back out their as soon as possible.

Oh by the way, you still need to pick a women to fill out your biggest loser team.

Hope your knee is doing well.

Sonia said...

Weather is unpredictable, you get lucky or not. Those people got very unlucky. I still think its amazing there was over 10,000 people who DNS! I am so happy I had a great first marathon experience, I have no idea how I would have reacted being there for a first...

Runner Leana said...

If that was my first race I would have been horribly dissapointed. All of that training - I'm not sure that I would have wanted to quit, but hopefully I would have known enough to slow down and take it easy. I would like to think that if I could find another race to run reasonably soon that I would opt for that route. I would have to say, if I were out on the course, I suspect I would have a tough time being told to call it a day...

TNTcoach Ken said...

Running Jayhawk has a great post on her actual race. Check it out.

Jenniferlyn said...

The stories from the runners... both those who finished and those who did not were amazing to read.

So inspiring. My heart dropped when Denise (MN Firefly) texted me to tell me that Josh (Full metal Lunchbox) was going on, but they had cancelled the race.

How crazy.

 
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