Sports scientist warns 74,000 Hong Kong Marathon runners to ‘slow down’ as temperatures and fears of heatstroke rise
Humidity also a concern as participants told that increasing water consumption might not be enough to counter weather
A leading sports scientist gave a stern warning to the 74,000 participants in Sunday’s Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon with high temperatures and high humidity forecast for race day.
The Hong Kong Observatory expects a temperature between 17 to 21 degree Celsius with a relative humidity of 70 to 90 per cent when the annual event starts early in the morning.
The 42.195km marathon (18,500 entries) and 21.09km half marathon (20,500) start in Tsim Sha Tsui, while the 10k races (35,000) will be on Hong Kong Island.
Another 4,000 people will participate in a youth dash, family run and two wheelchair races (3km and 10km). All races finish in Victoria Park.
Raymond So Chi-hung, an exercise physiologist and director of elite training science and technology at the Hong Kong Sports Institute in Fo Tan, said running under such conditions would be “risky”, especially for many of the ordinary runners.
“Many of them have done training over the past few weeks but it was under cold conditions as Hong Kong has been quite cold recently,” said So.