"Notre Dame...more like Notre Lame."

Oh, BC, you card. That's my favorite part of this clip.

I don't have much love for BC. In fact, the exact opposite of love. And it is that four letter word that has wrapped itself in maroon and gold and taken up residence in the blackest part of my heart.

Here's why.

It still hurts! We were #1 in the country and only had one more task...to beat crappy Boston College. During this clip, if they pan to the audience, you might see me drying my tears on the arm of a flannel shirt tied around my waist and wearing a football jersey.

Why, oh why, didn't anyone tell me how awful this was, and shun me as a sloven? Sometimes I really wish I could go back in time and have a talk with that girl. Poor doe-eyed Joey Lawrence fashion victim.

But, I will give BC their due...this is funny and pretty true: Hopeless Notre Dame Fan»

Apologize already. Sheesh!

In Chicago there is an ongoing debate about who is to blame for the marathon going as poorly as it did. Some people think the weather. Some people blame the runners for not knowing their limits. Some people blame the marathon committee. And, that would be me.

The weather, to be sure, was terrible. The runners, some of them I'm sure were morons and pushed themselves into illness, and those people have only themselves to blame.

However, the fact that the marathon didn't provide almost a quarter of its runners with any sort of liquid for the first eight miles...is frankly, dangerously negligent.

This is the quote from the 2007 Chicago marathon race director, Carey Pinkowski, that makes my blood boil:

"Is there anything we could have done better? No," Pinkowski said, taking a nervous sip from a water bottle. (Not kidding.) "We anticipated the weather. I'm very proud of the way things went."

Here's the full article. This is so ridiculous.

Here's some video footage where you can see basically the same thing I saw.

The only thing they did right was end it.

They claim that there was enough water...but...in talking out of both sides of their mouth...they say, if there wasn't, it was because earlier racers poured too much drinking water over themselves to cool down. Then...they said there was water, but we were too impatient to wait for people to pour it.

Considering everyone around me was walking after mile 7, I'm pretty sure no one was so worried about their "time" that they couldn't wait for someone to fill up a cup. Such bunk.

Spin. Spin. Spin.

Doesn't anyone care about the truth anymore? If I were the Olympic committee, what would give me pause is the excuses and denials they are making, rather than sincere concern...or the willingness to make things better.

The race director is also apparently shocked and surprised that racers would pour glasses of water on themselves. Um...that happens in any 5k over 65 degrees to bring heart rates and core body temps down. If you don't know that in 90 degree heat people are going to douse themselves with the only water available on the race course, then you are clearly incompetent and shouldn't be allowed to run a race like this.

This event was so grossly mismanaged, and the best part is they've been nothing but insulting ever since, pointing absolute blame at the athletes. And people are jumping on the bandwagon...people who basically admit that they don't know what they are talking about. I love this guy from the Tribune. What a maroon.

Don't get me wrong. I understand where that opinion comes from, and I would probably feel the same way if the race had provided everything they promised would be there, and people were pushing themselves into illness anyway. But, that's really not how things went down.

First of all, water and Gatorade isn't a luxury that the event is being nice enough to provide us with. It's a necessity...and we paid for it. (The race took in $5,000,000 from the racers alone, not counting any other sponsors or advertisers.) Gatorade and water is tantamount to air in terms of being essential to compete in an event like this.

I'm not sure I would have started the race had I known their promises of ice and misters weren't actually going to be there...and certainly wouldn't have if I'd known about the lack of fluids.

And, frankly, I'm disgusted by Carey Pinkowski's continual finger-pointing at the athletes. Why wouldn't you just say, "Hey, there were clearly reported problems and we're going to have an independent investigation to look into what went wrong so it doesn't happen again." And then...investigate it.

You should WANT to know where you screwed up. How can you get better if you don't know what went wrong in your plan? Stop sitting there shrugging your shoulders and trying to spin this disaster into a victory of some kind. It's a train wreck! You need to apologize, take stock, and make certain this never happens again.

Just to give you some perspective of how truly ridiculous this was, here's the quote from one volunteer at mile 19 aid station.

"We only had two bags of ice to begin with," he said. "We thought we'd get more, but then we found out that was our whole supply for the day."

2 bags of ice...let's see. 2 bags of ice, in 90 degree heat over 6 hours, divided by 36,000 runners. Hmmm...yeah, that sounds right. Are we sure we need two whole bags?

Then this:

Jay Shefsky, volunteering at the 10-mile point, said runners were arriving parched.

"Almost whenever I was handing out Gatorade, often I would hear the runners say, 'This is the first Gatorade I've gotten,'" he said. "And this was the 10-mile mark."

Sharon Pines, 57, also passing out drinks at the 10-mile mark, said volunteers were forced to refill a 2-foot water cooler at a nearby restaurant and reuse cups runners had thrown to the ground. After scrambling for almost an hour, she said, volunteers discovered a truck full of supplies parked nearby -- but by then most of the runners had passed.

Yes, I mean...clearly Carey Pinkowski should be proud of the way things went.

Yikes.

What he should be is ashamed of himself for his post-race comments, and frankly, out of a job.

Update: Chicago Marathon

A 35 year old man died on the 18th mile.

Brendan had to fight off a woman whom he was trying to help on mile 25 because she was falling into scaffolding and couldn't stand up. But, she seemed to think she was okay...but she couldn't stand up, she was so out of it, and was literally fighting him off like he was attacking her when he was just trying to hold her up to prevent her from collapsing.

Meghan, my sister, and my father saw people lying in dirty gutters--no medics had gotten to them yet, but the crowd was trying to help--and one guy was just screaming.

And after I "finished" there were guys in these towers with bullhorns screaming, "runner down" "another runner down" "we need wheelchairs!" "Another runner" "Someone get over here NOW."

And, then the race director came out and said publicly that they had more than enough water. Bull.

I understand that they are afraid to make an apology, but can't they just say clearly something went terribly wrong, and they are going to make sure this never happens again? Open an investigation? Instead of scratching your head and saying, "It was hot. What do you want us to do? Change the weather?"

And the Emergency medical staff, and all the police and firefighters and doctors and ambulances. God bless them. They were great. As were the volunteers.

I just don't understand why the race was so unprepared? Weather is notoriously unpredictable, and they had a week's notice that it was going to be unseasonably warm.

If they didn't have the proper implements in place, they should never have started it. It was, in a word, irresponsible.

Race report: 2007 Chicago Marathon

Spell debacle. M-A-R-A-Okay, I won't bore you with the spelling.

So, I started the marathon...and I finished the "race" but...I only ran 18.5 miles. How is that possible, you ask? Isn't a marathon 26.2 miles?

Yes. It is! But this marathon got cancelled, and turned into what announcers began calling a "fun run".

Note the photos of the people in wheelchairs.

Brendan Gately, 34, who finished the full 26.2 had this to say, "I don't think there was anything fun about it."

We had an unexpected heatwave for October...fine...but the race organizers KNEW that it was going to be really hot as of early in the week--and in fact, even issued heat advisories--and they assured us there would be misters, extra water, extra gatorade, ice, icy sponges...

Not the case. Not even close. Certainly not even close to enough. I mean, I can't believe how bad this was.

First of all, they should have arranged to have water at every mile once they knew it was going to be 90 degrees...but they stuck to their plan of every 2 miles. And, as someone who is trying to run a 5 hour marathon (not fast) all of the water was gone by the time we got there.

Mile 2: No water. No gatorade.
Mile 4: No water. No gatorade. NOTHING.
It's about 83 degrees at this point. We're RUNNING.
Mile 6: Some water, but they would only pour you a tiny amount, and they were clearly going to run out.
Mile 8: Boystown. Awesome. They were great. Enough liquids. Drag shows, cheerleaders, gay drill team, disco music. It was fun at this point.
Mile 10: People were out with their hoses, hosing us down. Old Town was amazing. There's this one mansion that was blaring Metallica, and another that looked like a frat party blaring the blues brothers. It was fun, and great, and I mean, they were all out to support, cheering. But, the stop was very short on water again....and hard to get cups.

I won't bore you with the details here..but you're seeing a pattern right? This was all the way through to Mile 15 where they did at least seem to have enough. But, way too late!

You can't run 15 miles with no water no matter what the weather is. You can actually die--as in lose your life. Period. You certainly can't run it in 90 degree heat.

So, after the debacle that it was, they sent us back to Grant Park and told us it was over. People were walking as early as mile 5...because they HAD to. There was no water. People were literally splashing water from gross fountains...just to be clear, not drinking fountains...fountains in front of buildings with duck and algae prevention chemicals and who knows what else...in their face and I'm assuming some drank it, because how desperate do you have to be?

I actually was fine because my sister and father met us twice with a backpack full of beverages...gatorade, water, etc...and then there was the kindness of strangers. Fire departments opened up fire hydrants. And the spectators were really wonderful. I do love Chicago. They all had hoses, sprinklers, and people went and bought trays of water at coffee shops to hand out, cases of bottled water, and I saw bags and bags of ice and cases of water they were buying with their own money.

THAT was worth seeing, and all told, I had a fantastic race. I did. Up until they re-routed us when they broke our spirit and told us all to walk and not to bother. But I understand now why they had to.

I learned from Brendan, who did the whole thing, that when he got to mile 19 or 20, they clearly weren't going to have enough water.

I'd really like to know what happened. I mean, when people don't have water mile 2, wouldn't you make sure that mile 6 and everything past that was stocked? At the very least you could catch mile 8. (We're not that fast. I could have gotten in a car, driven to costco and back and delivered a truckful of water in the hour and a half it took someone like me to go that distance.)

They were supposed to have misters, things you can run under and they cool you off...on mile 19, 20, 21, 23, 25 or something like that. Brendan said he saw one guy with a hose--no misters.

Nevermind the fact that that's WAY too late in the race to suddenly cool us down...

They were also supposed to have icy sponges...and apparently they did somewhere Brendan passed by in the 19mile + range...but only two people were handing them out ...for 45,000 people. Two.

They were supposed to have icy towels when you finished. Nope.

Instead of water, ice, gatorade...what do you think the first thing they handed you was? No..go ahead guess.

The aluminum foil-ish "blankets" designed to keep your body heat in during cold days. But, people didn't know, so they were wrapping themselves in them...cooking like baked potatoes, essentially.

The best part was, in order to re-route us, they had us run through the "recovery" area--basically backwards to get to the finish...with no one to let any of the people who had just finished the actual marathon know that we were coming through, so we were having to dodge all of these people who were basically fainting.

We didn't hear the ambulance sirens stop from the time they re-routed us until we left to go home...and when we jumped on the highway, we saw one marathoner sitting on the ground on the side of the highway with with his wife state troopers and fire trucks because he'd obviously either gotten sick or had a medical emergency.

It was terrible.