The marathon that nearly didn't happen: The story from Ron Smiley
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - The first Pittsburgh Marathon in its normal state in three years drew more than 17,000 participants for the full and half marathons.
Although, rocky weather threatened to shut the whole thing down.
KDKA's First Alert Meteorologist Ron Smiley, also the official meteorologist of the Pittsburgh Marathon said all the race directors were huddled around him as the mainline of storms moved in around 9 a.m.
Their chief concern was the safety of the runners.
"The number one thing that they're concerned with is the safety that you know, they don't care about the records or anything else, I mean they care about it, but it's all secondary to the safety of the runners," Ron explained.
Ron said that when it comes to lightning, there's an eight-mile perimeter radius and if there's any lightning in that radius, especially within three miles, they'll quickly make the call to shut down the race.
"As crazy as it might seem, we only had three strikes around the radius, each one of those was right at around eight miles," he said. "Thankfully, we didn't have anything that was really right on top of us as the race was going on. But yeah, you're still having to make that choice you want to make sure that everyone is safe."
All in all the race was able to go on and the 17,000+ were able to get on their marks, get set, and go.