Posts tagged Asheville

This weekend was filled with things I love: birthdays, babies, friends, family, delicious meals and plenty of laughter. It was also filled with a crazy-ass marathon in freezing temps that gave my husband a briefly scary case of “mild hypothermia” … spoiler: he’s fine :)

Friday night and Saturday morning were spent in a cozy Black Mountain rental house to celebrate Alex’s 30th birthday. We played games, ate birthday cake and soaked in the hot tub late into the night…and when I woke up Saturday morning there was a precious little bundle waiting to play with me! I hadn’t seen Asher since New Year’s and in the past two months he’s grown so much. He crawls all over the place and is surprisingly close to standing on his own.

We met up with the Harrells, Madisons and Travis for lunch at the delicious White Duck Taco in the River Arts District.

And then went to our spot at the Grove Park to enjoy some beers and hot cocoas as it started to snow…

Saturday night I made a big spaghetti dinner for our three marathoners and we all sat around my parents’ kitchen, mostly listening to my dad tell ridiculous stories like the time he and my uncle had a western adventure in their 20s, picked up a hitchhiker and ruined their only family car.

Sunday morning we were up at 4am, out of the house by 5:15 and pulling into Biltmore at 5:30am. We were lucky enough to park in Antler Village where the start and finish was, which was enormously important after the race when we needed to get Ben, Andrew and Lydia heated up immediately. We waited in the tents from 6-7 and talked entirely too much about bodily functions. The race started 15 minutes late at 7:15am. It was a deceptively beautiful morning. Temps in the 20s, but in reality more like 8 degrees with the wind chill.

Once they were off I walked up to the Inn at Biltmore and sat in the lobby, drinking hot coffee and reading my book until Eli came to meet me for a gluttonous breakfast buffet. I (almost) felt guilty about my relaxing and cozy morning while the runners struggled in the outside conditions.

Around 10:30 we went to sit on a bridge a half mile from the finish line. Eli was a champion co-spectator and I can’t imagine what we would have done without her help, especially towards the end…

Ben crossed the finish line like a boss at 3 hours 57 minutes. 150th out of ~1300 runners. And I think he said 19th overall for his age group. So definitely not too shabby for his first marathon!

The overall winner, among others, had been taken to the hospital with hypothermic symptoms including “confusion, weakness and severe muscle cramping,” so you might think they’d be super vigilant in monitoring the runners after they finished. Wrong. After Ben crossed, he was checked by the medical personnel and they (apparently) thought he was fine. I gave him a kiss and handed him his jacket, and he seemed okay to me, too. I was waiting to get pictures of Lydia as she finished when I got a call from a very confused and scared Ben. He didn’t make a lot of sense but managed to tell me where he was and that he needed me.This was about 15 minutes after he stopped running.

I found him sitting in the corner of the (UNHEATED) medical tent, eyes bloodshot red, shaking cold with bright red skin. His hands were the worst, and he was likely in initial stages of frostbite. He couldn’t stand on his own and just kept saying “it’s too cold. it’s too cold.” Eli went to get the car and bring it to us, and Ben literally could not bend his legs to get into the car. We had to fold down the backseats and he rode all the way home with his head in the trunk and legs on the folded-down backseat. I was THIS CLOSE to taking him to the hospital, but he was starting to warm up and normalize, so I just kept going home. After a hot bath, some cocoa, a warm change of clothes, and a plate of BBQ he was feeling better.

So, he’s fine, but I think the lesson in this is that the race organizers failed to do a couple of key things with respect to the conditions. 1) They needed more heated tents. It’s ridiculous that the tents weren’t heated and there was literally nowhere for the runners to go to warm up. 2) Have hot beverages available immediately! Again, like with point #1, there was no way for the runners to warm up after the race. They provided blankets, but that’s just not enough to warm up their core temps. 3) They should have been more vigilant in identifying runners that were suffering from hypothermic conditions after the race. It’s not enough to just check them as they cross the finish line. It’s even more important to check them after they cool down! I can’t imagine what Ben would have done if he’d been there alone.

In closing, if you read all the way to here, you are awesome. Sorry I rambled. It was a great weekend and the race was well organized in many ways, but mostly it was just bad luck that the race fell on (literally) the coldest day of the year.

the truth.

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