The smog that will affect athletes

By Ann Green

The Greenville (S.C.) News

As they prepared for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, some runners wore warm-up suits while training to prepare themselves in the intense heat of the Georgia summer.

This summer in Greece, they'll again be prepping to run not only against each other but also against the heat, humidity and smog of Athens.

``Heat and pollutants are the enemy of the runner,'' said Dr. Bill Pierce, who has run in 31 marathons and is professor and chair of the health and exercise science department at Furman (S.C.) University.

``The competitors will want to train in the environmental conditions that they are likely to encounter in the race 10 days to two weeks prior to the competition,'' he said.

At the Nike sports research lab in Oregon, athletes use an environmental chamber to simulate conditions likely in Athens during the games.

Dr. Loren Myhre, a physiologist and researcher at the lab, said they don't pump actual pollutants into the chamber. But they do mimic conditions of a city where the average daytime temperatures can reach approximately 95 degrees with humidity between 40 and 60 percent.

The women's and men's marathons will be run at 6 p.m. Athens time to offer some relief. If the humidity is lower than 60 percent, that will mean that sweat will evaporate more easily and the athletes will cool down more quickly.

But sweat and the resulting dehydration makes it common for a marathoner to drop two to four pounds an hour during the 26.2 mile race, even if the runner drinks plenty of fluids, Pierce said.

Myhre said Nike has experimented with ways to help runners to start the race as cool as possible. Prior to the race, some marathoners will use a cooling vest, or ice vest, that covers the surface area of the upper body and lowers the body temperature before the race.

As for the smog, Pierce said carbon monoxide, coming primarily from automobile exhaust, is the pollutant that affects human performance most - degrading the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen to the muscles.

"So it's important that the roads near the marathon course be closed to cars for hours prior to the marathon," he said.

The 2004 Olympic marathons will begin in the city of Marathonas and end at the Panathinaiko Stadium, located in the heart of Athens. It was the site of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. Each fall, hundreds of marathoners journey back to the roots of their sport for the Athens Marathon.

Steve Woo, 33, who lives in San Francisco and works in the telecommunications industry, has run 22 marathons, including the Athens Marathon in 1999. He said he noticed the smog only as he approached Athens itself.

``I think they over-hype the smog issue. For most of the run, you won't be in the city at all,'' he said.

``The one thing that stands out in my mind was running into that stadium and being hit by a blinding sea of light because the stadium is made of marble," he said.

On the Web:

The Hellenic National Meteorological Service.