Great read: Outstanding commentary on the Chicago Marathon in today's Tribune

Basically, the real ones at fault are the runners at the front of the pack who grabbed 5-7 cups of water at a time and poured it on themselves. They completely disregarded the fact that there were thousands of runners behind them who did not even have water to DRINK starting from the first water station.

This post is semi-sarcastic.

NO Way wrote:

I read the waiver. I also read the entry form. It PROMISES aid stations, water and Gatorade.

The waiver does no such thing.

Having "water and gatorade" at the "water and gatorade" stations seems to be a reasonable expectation.

Treating the lack of water and gatorade on such a day as some sort of gross negligence or "breach of contract", however is not.

Really, you people need to come back down to reality already. The race officials clearly made a MASSIVE effort to account for a day the likes of which the race had never seen before by ordering TONS of extra water and it STILL was not enough.

You are not guaranteed that disasters will not happen. ou are not guaranteed water at every stop. You are not guaranteed water at ANY stop.

The only legal document involved here is the waiver which all runners signed, period. It makes no guarantees about conditions or the availability of water. Race directors are expected make a good faith effort to take care of the runners and they clearly, did. Yet still the 12 year-olds here who think they are lawyers throw around terms like "breach of contract" and "gross negligence" as if they have any idea what they are talking about.

It is this sense of whining, I-must-get-what-I-want-no-matter-what-or-I-will-SUE entitlement that is unique to America and makes so many of them disgusting to the rest of the world. You people embarass me.

1. Did all stations run out of water or just some?

2. Which stations ran out of water and at what time did they run out?

3. Did they actually run out of water or were they not able to keep up with demand?

4. How many total stations were there?

5. Once the race was canceled, were the aid stations beyond the closed point obliged to keep filling water cups for runners who decided to keep going?

Actually pulled it word for word from Black's Law Dictionary. I did not intend for it to appear as an element and apologies if it appears that way.

Stated another way - gross negligence is negligence that is marked by conduct that presents an unreasonably high degree of risk to others and by a failure to exercise even the slightest care in protecting them from it and that is sometimes associated with conscious and willful indifference to their rights.

A conscious and willful indifference to someone's rights could also be seen as intentional. Again, does not make it an intentional tort, but one could misinterpret it that way.

You deny that provision of water and gatorade is a reasonable and customary expectation in a road race?

MNME wrote:

Basically, the real ones at fault are the runners at the front of the pack who grabbed 5-7 cups of water at a time and poured it on themselves. They completely disregarded the fact that there were thousands of runners behind them who did not even have water to DRINK starting from the first water station.

This post is semi-sarcastic.

i never asked for the volunteers to throw cups of water on me. actually I was pretty pissed that they did.

as for the writer. hes an old grumpy guy upset the cubs lost case closed.

I think you're splitting hairs. He's just saying that for negligence to be "gross negligence" it needs to be willfully reckless, not just reckless. In other words, if the race organizers were just poor planners, they're negligent. However, if they knew they didn't have nearly enough water and ran the race anyway, that's arguably gross negligence. That's my non-lawyer understanding of it, anyway.

Selassie wrote:

One thing the organizers screwed up is not moving up the start time to 6:00 AM. A huge notice and individual ones in each packet at the EXPO.

I think moving it TWO hours could have prevented most of what happened in Sunday.

What are you stupid? Do you think you can just snap your fingers and move a marathon up 2 hours in one of the biggest cities in the world?

Are you aware of the logistics involved? Preparations for the race occur months in advance and you can't just move it based on a weather forecast a few days before.

There's a little more involved in traffic control in Chicago, NY or Boston than Hooterville.

Quit talking out of your ass.

they should apply time qualifications...OK let's compromise: yesterday I said it should be 2:55 for men and 3:15 for women; let's adjust and make it 3:05 for men and 3:30 for the gals?

I recall when Boston was 2:50. We had guys in our club laying their guts on the line and popping 2:52, 2:53. These were mostly working guys with families who were training hard enough to get under 2:55 but not quite to 2:50.

What do you say?

That will never happen. The charities would scream bloody murder.

First they need to squeeze out the real cows, something easy like closing the course after 5 hours, then tighten from there if registration stays high.

But it will never happen. All it will take is one "I'm running for my_______ who has_____ and they will cave.

Yeah. If you believe that pack of lies from the Chicago mafia then you believe the U.S. is winning in Iraq.

I started the race with a couple friends who were going for a 5:30 marathon. I was originally planning for a 4:30 first marathon. We crossed the starting line at 8:20. I ran with them for the first mile and then began picking my way through the crowd trying to get to my pace.

I reached the first aid station at ~8:40 and slowed to a walk looking for water or gatorade. The volunteers were shouting that they had no water or gatorade and to go to the next aid station. I would estimate there were 10,000 people behind me at that point.

When I arrived at the second aid station at mile 3.3 at ~8:53 I came to a complete stop and swarmed with dozens of other people the last volunteer hold a 5 gallon container of water. I got one glass of water. I assume that everyone after me got no water. Again at least 10,000 people behind me, if not more. I had picked my way up to the 4:45 pace crowd.

The next aid station was at mile 5.8. Now I'm estimating that 10,000 runners were provided with no water. Assuming an average pace of the runner behind of near 5:30 that equates to (with time to cross the start line) ~ 1:40 on the course with no water provided. That is why I saw dozens of runners swarming the public fountain in Lincoln park to drink the water.

At mile 5.8 was the third aid station, finally there was water and gatorade. There were distribution problems (ie too many runners desperate for water, too few volunteers) but they had water and gatorade. This was the case for the next three aid stations. However, I don't handle the heat very well and I was already experiencing the shivers of heat stress. So I slowed down.

I reached the 5.8 station at ~9:18; the 8.2 station ~9:45; the 10.5 station at ~10:15; the 11.9 station at ~10:38. At the halfway point I was so far behind my time goal and it was getting hotter so I walk/jogged most of the next 5 miles.

The next aid station was 13.7. I reached it at ~11:01. It was out of water and gatorade. The next aid station was at 15.6. I reached it at ~11:28. They were out of water but were resourceful and were using a business to fill the gatorade 20 gallon jugs with tap water. They were out of cups. I had to dig a cup out of the gutter and use it to drink the water. It was sometime between mile 16 and 17 that the police started to inform us that the race had been cancelled. They kept on saying that buses would come and take us back to Grant Park but they never materialized. The next aid station was at 17.9. I reached it at ~12:08. It had no water, but it had gatorade concentrate. I refused to drink it because I couldn't remember what the consequences would be. Better to be safe than sorry. The next aid station was at 19.2. I reached it at ~12:30. The rerouted me off the course at mile 20.2.

Now that's not to say I only got one cup of water after mile 13.1. The fantastic residents of the southside of Chicago came out in force and are the main reason there weren't dozens dead on the course. Also the drone of sirens was constant from the halfway point on.

That's the story of my marathon. For documentary purposes. Bib number 43707. It wasn't just ill prepared runners caught up in this. I was prepared. I had trained for eight months. I ran a half marathon in 1:56, five weeks before the marathon. But if you started in the latter half of the pack you were put in serious harm by not being able to get water until the third station. For slow runners that might have been nearly two hours after the gun went off. How can that not be negligence?

Take some personal responsiblity for the consequences of running a marathon when the temperature is twice the typical forecast. The organizers provided hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and Gatorade. Where is the "negligence"? I got news for you complainers: There wouldn't be "negligence" even if the organizers didn't provide a single glass of water or Gatorade to anyone.

You complainers should sue the other runners for drinking all the water and Gatorade before you got there. You should also sue the weather forecasters, the fire department, the ambulance drivers, the EMTs, the City of Chicago, your neighbors, the tobacco companies and George Bush.

Hmmm. Did the high temperatures had something to do with this? Sue the sun, mother nature and God while you are at it.

But wait!!! It. is. someone. else's. fault. "They" were negligent!

Tom Buller wrote:

How can that not be negligence?

Have you ever run a marathon in that weather? If not and you chose to do so after you were warned via e-mail, at the expo and at the starting line of the unusual hot weather, is that negligence on your part?

Will you sue yourself for not paying attention to the extreme conditions and warnings?

thanks Tom best 1st hand account I have heard so far.

Jackie Chiles wrote:Will you sue yourself for not paying attention to the extreme conditions and warnings?

I don't think the race gets off the hook because they provided notes saying the weather would be hot. If they said the race will be hot, we may run out of water and fluids at the aid stations so therefore you should bring your own fluids' then yes, I think you can put the blame squarely on the runner. But I'm pretty sure this wasn't the case.

For the record, I had plenty of fluids along the way but I dropped out at half way. It wasn't a hard decision for me but at the same time I can see why some people (like my friend) decided to gut it out and finish. They paid a lot of money to get down to the race, felt they were well prepared and decided to just tough it out.

I spoke to 2 different people in the airport who did not receive any fluids at the first 2 aid stations. This was not due to a lack of volunteers as Asterix suggests. They were quite happy to pour their own but there just wasn't any available. One of them actually went into a gas station to purchase some water and gatorade. Apparently there were many others doing the same thing but I can't confirm this.

I think the race did the right thing in forcing people to stop. But I also think that the race has a responsibility to the people who have paid to run the race to have some fluids available at all of the advertised aid stations.

Does some responsibility lie with the actual runners? For sure. Does some of the responsibility lie with the race? Definitely.

There wouldn't be "negligence" even if the organizers didn't provide a single glass of water or Gatorade to anyone.

Really? That's a profound legal insight. You've actually concluded that the race organizers could sponsor and conduct a marathon with 45,000 entrants and 36,000 actual participants, and not even bother to provide a single glass of liquid refreshment on the hottest and most humid October 7th ever recorded in Chicago history, and NOT be considered negligent for having done so.

As amazing at it would seem, this may be this single dumbest post in the history of letsrun.com. And man, is that ever an epic achievement. Kudos, my friend, for a job well done.