Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll find out what the prospect of temperatures near 80 will mean for the Brooklyn Half Marathon on Saturday. We’ll also get details on a group that has raised $1 million to challenge Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s agenda.
For the Brooklyn Half Marathon on Saturday, two things are likely:
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The weather is likely to be “toasty,” as a spokeswoman for the New York Road Runners put it. The forecast is calling for a high near 80 degrees.
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The race director is likely to order yellow flags raised along the 13.1-mile course, signaling caution to the 29,000 runners.
What should the runners be cautious about?
“Proper hydration,” the race director, Ted Metellus, said. “Proper preparation as far as your attire, wearing light-fitting clothing. And also, ultimately, pacing yourself through the day and realizing, ‘OK, I perform better on cooler days than I do on warmer days.’”
“Or, there are some people that perform better on warmer days than they do cooler days,” he acknowledged. “Only you would know that.”
Hot weather is a concern for race organizers who have seen two deaths in the last five years. In 2022, a 32-year-old runner collapsed and died after finishing the race on a 65-degree day. Last year, when the temperature was 69 degrees at the finish line, a 31-year-old first-time entrant went into cardiac arrest around Mile 8. He was given CPR and taken to a hospital, where he died.
This time, besides installing air-conditioning in the medical tent at the finish line and handing out ice at medical tents along the way, organizers will have a new temporary life-support machine standing by, although the Road Runners’ medical director hopes it will not be needed.
The device, an ECMO, is on loan from Maimonides Medical Center, where the medical director, Dr. Matthew Friedman, is an emergency medical physician. The acronym stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygen.
Friedman said candidates for ECMO are people who have not responded to chest compressions and stimulation from an automated external defibrillator. Younger runners are more responsive to ECMO than older ones, he said. So far ECMO has not been used in the field in the United States — only in hospitals, he said — but a cardiothoracic team from Maimonides will be in the medical tent on Saturday, just in case.
He said that hot weather stresses the heart, bringing on electrolyte shifts in the blood. Heat stroke is a concern, and is especially troublesome “because the symptoms of heat stroke mirror the symptoms of running a half marathon — they’re headache and nausea and dizziness,” he said. “It’s tough to differentiate: ‘Hey, am I just running a half marathon and that’s why I have some nausea, or am I suffering heat stroke?’”
That can be especially true in springtime. Like Friedman, Metellus said that early spring weather doesn’t give race participants “an opportunity to acclimate to training in warmer temperatures.”
His message was one part weather awareness, one part common sense: “What you might have been doing days before, even a day like today where I’m wearing a sweatshirt when it’s 67 degrees,” he said on Wednesday, “is not going to be something that you’ll want to do when the temperature gets warmer.”
Why not change the race to another weekend when the weather is less fickle?
“That is a tough one,” Metellus said, noting that the Brooklyn Half has been run on its present course since 2009. There are “conversations we’ve had, things that we’ve explored, but no action as of this moment,” he said. “But it’s definitely something we look at,” he added, even though “there are a lot of moving parts when you’re talking about moving the date of a major event.”
Since last year, the Road Runners have offered training in CPR for runners. And the plans for the race include 10 medical stations along the course, along with medical personnel on patrol on bicycles. Misting stations will be set up to give runners a cooling spritz — 14 stations in all, including one every half-mile for much of the stretch along Ocean Parkway — as well as “fluid stations” for water and Gatorade.
And, Metellus said, “there’s a lovely ocean that runners can take a dip in to cool down” after finishing the race. “But there are no lifeguards. Just dip your toes in. Don’t go crazy.”
Weather
Expect a cloudy day with the possibility of showers and thunderstorms. Temperatures will near 65 before dropping to 52 tonight, as rainy conditions continue.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended (Solemnity of the Ascension).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It kind of knocks the wind out of you.” — Danielle Bensky, after seeing an exhibition of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein at a TriBeCa gallery.
The latest Metro news
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Rail strike looms: The Long Island Rail Road will shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday if transit officials and unions representing railroad workers cannot agree on a new contract. Here’s what to know.
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A shorter wait for affordable housing: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration announced a host of changes to reduce the amount of time that affordable apartments remain empty.
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Former judge faces charges: Edward Harold King of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn and a real estate investor were arrested and accused of defrauding investors of millions of dollars in a deal in New Jersey.
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A Bronx neighborhood in mourning: A man was charged with arson and three counts of homicide in a bodega fire that spread upstairs and killed a beloved neighbor.
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Reimagining a city through photographs: More than 40 years after Manuel Acevedo started photographing life in Newark, those photos are being displayed in outdoor spots throughout the city, highly visible to the residents who inspired them.
Mamdani’s opponents raise more than $1 million to challenge his agenda
Some big-money donors and power brokers troubled by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s ascent have joined forces to fight his agenda through a nonprofit called NYC Common Sense. It has already raised more than $1 million, according to Phil Singer, a political consultant who is a founding member.
It is being led by Jim Walden, a lawyer who ran a long-shot campaign for mayor as an independent last year. On Tuesday, Walden suggested on X that Mamdani would be “rooting for the terrorists” in an attack on the city, comments the mayor described as “despicable.”
“To besmirch me as the first Muslim mayor of this city, that I would ever be doing anything other than looking to support our city, to defend our city, I really don’t have anything else to add to that,” the mayor said. “And I think it’s a reflection of exactly what motivates that kind of opposition.”
Walden had been responding to a post from Mamdani’s spokeswoman, Dora Pekec, that criticized an article that quoted a professor as saying that a potential terror attack would pose a “huge liability” for the mayor, given his Muslim faith.
Several moderate Democrats who do not support Mamdani expressed frustration with Walden’s post, arguing that it served as a distraction from a government-focused critique and risked diminishing the group’s reputation. The post appeared to have been removed by Wednesday afternoon.
Walden and Singer listed a number of concerns about Mamdani’s job performance, and Walden said he expected to file suit against the administration in the next few weeks. He would not say what the case would be about. But he said that Mamdani’s support for Palestinians and his criticism of Israel would not be central to the efforts of NYC Common Sense.
Joe Calvello, a Mamdani spokesman, said in response to the formation of NYC Common Sense that Mamdani had made significant accomplishments since taking office at the beginning of the year. Calvello also took a swipe at Walden: “We do however welcome those who received less than 1 percent of the vote for mayor to continue to share their unique perspective on New York City.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Moon over Manhattan
Dear Diary:
I was walking out of Central Park on a cold February evening when a woman who couldn’t have been five feet tall approached me.
“Have you seen the moon?” she asked.
I tried to brush her off, but she repeated herself.
I turned to see the most brilliant full moon shining above the park. It stopped me in my tracks on a day when I had been in constant motion.
I turned to thank the woman, but she was gone. It was as if the moon herself had come down to demand attention and had left as soon as attention was paid.
— Rebecca Falcon
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post Brooklyn Prepares for an Uncomfortably Warm Half Marathon appeared first on New York Times.
