How hot is too hot?

[ValleyHawk22]

With Central Iowa temperatures hitting the upper 90s over the next couple of days, is anyone cancelling meets? Shortening courses, not attending a scheduled meet, doing anything else out of the ordinary? At what point do you call it off?

 

[cc coach]

Charles City cancelled theirs for tomorrow night. I wish they would have had it, but I can certainly see why it is getting cancelled - there is always a greater sense of responsibility if you are the host. So, the call makes sense.

I think it largely depends on the coach. Had we competed tomorrow night at Charles City, our runners would have been under strict instruction to basically run threshold pace for the first 2/3's of the race and then feel free to pick it up from there on in if they felt good. If we had kids that do not handle heat, we would not run them. If we saw kids that did not look good, we would stop them. We would never go to a meet on a 95 degree day and "race" as hard as we could. That is not going to accomplish anything at all productive, and there is a chance it could be harmful to the kids.
However, temps are really no different now than they are all summer long for baseball, softball, early practices for CC and football before school starts, etc. You have to use common sense and always try to be a little too cautious. But, just because it is hot does not mean that you can't do anything at all. There are still ways that you can have a productive night and get some experience without "going to the well" trying to "win" at a time of year where it just does not matter.

 

[Who Are You]

Ames cancelled their meet for today (8-30). Last season a few kids went down at that meet in similar heat. So I am sure they just didnt want that situation again.

We moved practice to 6:30 for the HS today, and the JH is going to go to the "lazy river" at the aquatic center and run in there.

 

[ValleyHawk22]

Thanks for the responses.

I was on the fence for our home meet today, but with temps forecasted to hit 99, our AD and I decided to cancel too.

 

[cc coach]

Yeah, each day the forecast high has worked its way up. Early in the week they were saying 90, now they are talking mid to upper 90's. Plus, lots of places are supposed to have high winds in the 30+mph range. That would just be horrible. 95 degrees and a 30mph wind would feel about like being in a furnace. I would think most/all meets would pull the plug tonight. Not too many positives that could come out of races tonight. Hopefully next week will be better.

 

[RglTck]

We actually ran last night in Iowa City. Cancelled the Jr High and combined varsity and JV to just one girls race and one boys race and ran later in the evening. Two teams opted not to come but still had 8 teams who were all happy we ran. I went back and forth with it all day, last year we postponed but the heat index was over 110, this year the heat index was not a factor because of low humidity. It was 91 at race time with 30% humidity and 10-15mph winds from the SW. We were in close contact with the head of the U of I Sports Medicine Department through the decision making process, who advised us to postpone last year and recommended the scenario we went with this year. We also communicated with all the participating schools on there thoughts of running or not and all but one were in favor of running with the schedule change and the other team decided not to show with out notifying us. It's a tough call, last year felt confident in postponing, this year I'm glad we ran, it ended up being 83 by the end of the boys race and the sun had set as we were doing awards for a nice evening.