Microclimate and Heat Stress of Runners in Mass Participation Events

Abstract
The largest mass participation fun run in the world took place in Auckland, New Zealand where an estimated 80000 participants ran 10.4 km “Round the Bays” in the early fall of 1982. Even in the relatively mild climate of Auckland, heat stroke and other types of heat illness occur during this annual event. Techniques for thermal assessment of human bioclimate have not been applied to an exercising crowd although it is widely accepted that crowding will reduce the heat loss of individuals. To quantify the possible heat load brought about by running in a large crowd, those components of the microenvironment that affect radiant, evaporative and convective heat exchange were measured, both within the mass of runners and separately from it. These data were used as input for two detailed body-environment heat exchange models which show the effect of the runners themselves on the thermal environment. Since it is assumed that changes longwave radiation exchange and convective losses from the body are like... Abstract The largest mass participation fun run in the world took place in Auckland, New Zealand where an estimated 80000 participants ran 10.4 km “Round the Bays” in the early fall of 1982. Even in the relatively mild climate of Auckland, heat stroke and other types of heat illness occur during this annual event. Techniques for thermal assessment of human bioclimate have not been applied to an exercising crowd although it is widely accepted that crowding will reduce the heat loss of individuals. To quantify the possible heat load brought about by running in a large crowd, those components of the microenvironment that affect radiant, evaporative and convective heat exchange were measured, both within the mass of runners and separately from it. These data were used as input for two detailed body-environment heat exchange models which show the effect of the runners themselves on the thermal environment. Since it is assumed that changes longwave radiation exchange and convective losses from the body are like...

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