Originally Posted by
Graham Breeze
I applaud this report from Mounsey because if this can happen to an elite runner on a relatively low level, short and flagged route (which I have run): then there but for the grace of God...
To my acute embarrassment I have been hyperthermic in a race and I remember the efforts of Mrs Scoffer and others in trying to stop me shivering, get heat back into my body core and get my brain working again to leave its inarticulate state: all inside a relatively warm café at the finish area.
The FRA/RO, and rightly, can have rules about carrying kit but it cannot (yet) control whether or not people put it on, or put it on early enough in a race and, of course, once you become hyperthemic your brain stops functioning as well as it should, especially in race conditions.
I have a photograph of the start of the 2012 Buttermere Sailbeck race. Some runners are wearing enough kit for the Arctic but of the dozens of runners in the picture only a single person is setting off in a vest and shorts. That runner had done the race several times before and he had the required kit in his bag and much later in the race he eventually put in on. The reasons for the death of Brian Belfield cannot be reduced to one simple, trite factor and runners have different metabolisms and will be "out" for different times in a race, etc; so there can be no simple rules.
But all the tragic deaths in fell races - Bob English, Ted Pepper, Judith Taylor, Carol Matthews and Brian - were associated with hyperthermia (and going off-route); not from overheating for wearing too much kit or putting it on too early in something as trivial as a mere fell race.
As others have said, Mounsey should be congratulated for sharing his experience on here.