Interesting article, applicable to firefighters. Dr. Brent Ruby took Brian Sharkey’s place at the University of Montana Human Performance Lab, and has done extensive field studies on Hotshot Crews. He’s a qualified Type 2 firefighter and has spoken at numerous Wildland Fire Safety Summits.
From the Missoulian:
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Maximum high temperatures are predicted to reach 86 degrees on Sunday, a day when thousands of runners will take to the blacktop for the third-annual Missoula Marathon.
Fortunately, they’ll have crossed the finish line before then.
Many runners undoubtedly monitored the weather forecast in preparation for race day.
Not University of Montana researcher Brent Ruby, though. He is less concerned with Sunday’s outdoor temperature than he is with the temperature inside – a runner’s body, that is.
During the marathon, Ruby and his team of researchers will test the core body temperatures of about 10 female runners tackling the grueling 26.2-mile course.
For years, Ruby, director of the Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism, has tested the core body temperatures of firefighters, ultra-marathon runners, and most recently, of climbers on Mount Rainer in Washington. This will be Ruby’s first all-female project, however.
“There are more and more women doing endurance events,” he said. “That number has been growing for several years.”
Also growing is the number of participants in the Missoula Marathon. By noon Saturday, more than 2,200 runners were registered for Sunday’s various races, with six hours remaining for last-minute registrations. That’s compared to about 1,300 runners last year.
The largest increase is in half-marathon registrations, where 1,323 runners are signed up for the 13.1-mile route. That’s 473 runners more than 2008.
Runners have traveled to Missoula from as far away as Bermuda and Belgium. Runners representing 44 states are signed up.
However, the largest crux of runners is from Montana, and more specifically Missoula.
“People see people are doing that and they say, ‘Oh, I can do that,’ ” said registration director Vic Mortimer. “If a slimmer mayor can walk the half-marathon and lose some weight, they think, I can do that.”
On Sunday, expect 17 aid stations, two starting lines and a finish area. The race begins at 6 a.m. – marathoners in Frenchtown, half-marathoners at Blue Mountain.
Luckily, air temperatures shouldn’t reach peak temperatures until mid-afternoon after the race is well over.
However, it was the record high temperatures during the Missoula Marathon’s inaugural year that sparked organizers’ interest in studying athletes’ core body temperature. On race day two years ago, the mercury in Missoula hit a record 103 degrees. In July alone, there were 11 days in which the temperature hit triple digits.
The medical tent the first year of the Missoula Marathon was busy with runners who had overheated. That same year, hundreds of runners in the Chicago Marathon required medical attention at the end of the race because of heat-related stress caused by unusually high temperatures for October.
The next year, organizers moved the Missoula Marathon starting time up half an hour to avoid the heat as much as possible. But the events in 2007 got race organizers curious about athletes and their body temperatures during marathon races.
“We’ll get good information in a hot environment about how women’s bodies handle that kind of heat,” said race director Jennifer Straughan.
Knowing information – such as at what mile a runner’s body begins to overheat – can put organizers “in better position to make sure we know how to keep people safe,” she said.
Only in the last five years have Ruby and his research assistants been able to get into the field to test core body temperature. That’s because of the advancement of wireless transmitters.
Before, the only options were small wire devices that were either inserted down the nasal passage or up the rectum.
Obviously, “we’ll never recruit anyone to run a marathon with a rectal line,” Ruby said.
On Saturday evening, the women in this year’s study swallowed a jelly-bean-size temperature transmitter, which moved through the stomach and into the intestine. On Sunday, they’ll carry a data logger (the size of a new BlackBerry) on their hip or waistband when they run.
The transmitter and data logger will record the core body temperature of the athlete during every minute of the race. Researchers can then compare that minute-by-minute data with the mileage, pace, air temperature and humidity throughout the duration of the marathon.
In the many years that Ruby has studied core body temperature, he has discovered that the most dominant factor affecting body heating is how hard the athlete works.
In 2007, Ruby and his team monitored the temperatures of men running the Tri-Fecta during Missoula’s YMCA River Bank Run. On a day where the air temperature was in the upper 50s, most registered core body temperatures between 103.5 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is extremely hot, Ruby said.
“I was so taken aback by the temperatures of these guys and how ridiculously hot they got, given the air temperature was so low,” said Ruby, explaining the difficulty of knowing what to expect from Sunday’s research project. “I think we’ll see some high temps, but I don’t know if (the women will) get as hot as the guys did.”
It’s typical to see body temperatures reach 102 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, but clinically anything above that is worrisome, Ruby said.
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Thanks Dick
