A runner is dead after collapsing at the finish line of the annual Brooklyn Half Marathon Saturday, authorities said.
The 30-year-old runner, who was not identified, was crossing the finish line and collapsed. FDNY spokesperson Frank Dwyer told The Associated Press the runner was transported to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead.
Or maybe not.
Let's dispense with the obvious: Yes, people do die at these events. Not all the time, but it does happen.
The weather was reportedly brutally hot on a comparative basis, and from what I can tell the skies were clear -- so add the sun to that, and that's not a small factor. Six other runners got in trouble and wound up in the hospital at original report but there are multiple reports that the number was much higher.
I'm only half-crazy so I limit my running stupidity to 13.1 miles and have done several of them, with the last being Yellowstone last year and one in front of me in a few weeks. If you didn't train for it in the heat (and who did given this time of year?) then getting hammered on race day is a not-nice situation. Getting behind the curve with hydration and/or electrolytes can result in serious trouble.
But what's missing was what were the conditions on the course at the time the runner collapsed? Yes, it was hot later in the day but how about when he was running and had the event? This is a very large event so the starts are staggered, but someone in reasonable (but by no means "competitive" in a field of that size) physical condition will finish a half marathon in somewhere around 2 hours and in a "competitive entry" event (depending on the field size) I'll bet the cutoff is between 1:30-1:45 depending on age. If you started with the temperature in the lower 60s and when you finished it was in the mid 70s that's a world apart of starting with it in the upper 70s and finishing when its 90F out in full sun! In point of fact about 2 weeks ago I did a training run for my upcoming half that was over 10 miles and started with 72F temperatures -- in full sun, running on a sidewalk with zero tree cover. It was 80ish by the time I finished over an hour later and while it did suck it wasn't life-threatening.
Update: There is a comment below that CNN reported he was found collapsed at 9:00 AM, so that means he started with the early groupings, it was in the low-to-mid 70s at the finish when he collapsed and it was not dangerously hot at that time. The media is lying trying to lay this off on the weather alluding to it being smoking hot (which it was later on) at the time. Those media folks running that bull**** should be disassembled for doing so. 60ish is nearly perfect running weather and low to mid 70s, while a bit uncomfortable, aren't inherently dangerous.
Note that the sponsoring organization, New York Road Runners, required you be jabbed to compete and prove it, which is wild-eyed stupid since all such races happen outdoors. Even if you believe the jabs work and are safe there is zero argument for such a requirement outside of flat coercion and if this guy collapsed and died due to cardiac damage from the jabs the organization should be destroyed with every one of its board members and employees, along with their families, financially and personally ruined.
Who wants to bet on them shaving what should be a mandatory autopsy to find the root cause of this gentleman's collapse given that if indeed there's evidence of clotting dysfunction or myocarditis from the jab that left him with an impaired cardiac state you certainly should be able to find it. There's no means to force public release of course and I suspect his family will be just as interested in not bringing that forward, if in fact that's what happened, as is Fauci, Biden and the executives from Moderna and Pfizer.
I will say this however, given what we know about the apparent very significant increase in these type of events since the jabs rolled out -- but not prior to that, from Covid itself: If you are involved in sustained and serious cardio exercise events, especially events like distance running, and got jabbed (no matter how many times and how young and apparently-healthy you are) you'd be very wise to go have a full cardiac workup done -- right now.
I'll wager that a very significant percentage of the people who took these jabs got some level of cardio-pulmonary damage from them and that you haven't "noticed" doesn't mean it didn't happen. Plenty of people have heart attacks with no prior warning so if you think it can't happen to you...... yes it can.
If you find something you don't like in that work-up there's probably nothing you can do about it except to cease participating in those sorts of events. It sucks to have to give up something you love but there's a price to our actions and this may well be yours.
It sucks worse, I remind you, to be dead.