This morning I woke up sweating for the first time since, well...October. Here, that's a significant stretch. Tel Aviv experienced a heat wave that happened to fall on the same day as the annual marathon which attracts tens of thousands of runners every year.
In anticipation of the heat, the municipality postponed the full marathon, and scheduled the 10K and 22K routes to begin before dawn. Despite that effort, one person died and over ten were hospitalized with heat related health problems. Oops.
The municipality was reportedly warned about the risks and critics are now saying that appropriate measures were not taken to protect public health.
I live in Yafo, which is South Tel Aviv, and the start/finish lines have been set up for two weeks on the main road that I travel to get from Yafo to downtown TA. This afternoon when I left my apartment it was 92°F so I decided to use public transit. Point being, I snapped the photo below from the air conditioned comfort of the number 18 bus. In case you were thinking I ran.
