OhioHealth Continues To Work Alongside M3S Sports To Prepare for the OhioHealth Capital City Half and Quarter Marathon
Q. What is the OhioHealth Capital City Half and Quarter Marathon? (Starts at 0:19)
A. David Babner, M3S Sports founder and race director says, “Cap City is the ultimate celebration of the active healthy lifestyle. We are all about participation and celebration, competition takes care of itself. We want to give people permission to come participate in an event like Cap City. They’re training all winter long, and this is the celebration of that training that they put in. It’s accessible to all, we have a half marathon 13.1 miles, a quarter marathon 6.55 miles, and a 5K as well 3.1 miles, so it’s accessible to all participants to come out. Whether they walk or run, our course is open for 20 minutes a mile, so you can come out and walk it, enjoy it, just be part of the experience. And it’s our job as the race management company to produce the remarkable experience for all of those participants.”
Q. What is the partnership between OhioHealth and M3S Sports, and why is the OhioHealth Capital City Half and Quarter Marathon so significant? (Starts at 1:03)
A. David Babner, M3S Sports founder and race director says, “The OhioHealth Capital City Half and Quarter Marathon has been around 21 years, the partnership has been almost 15 of those. To be able to build a world class marathon, you need a world class medical partner and a world class title partner, OhioHealth provides both of those. Not only that but a lot of the OhioHealth associates come out and participate, they either run in the event or walk in the event or volunteer for the event. In addition to that, we’ve got the best medical director on the planet, Dr. Ben Bring, so having him and all the medical volunteers and staff that he brings with him on race day makes sure we have a safe course and an awesome environment to provide a remarkable experience for all of our 12,000 participants.”
A. Ben Bring, DO, OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital family medicine and Cap City medical director says, “It’s been great, this is the premiere health and wellness event of Columbus so what better way to partner with OhioHealth than to partner with that premiere event, the Cap City Half Marathon. It’s been great over the years, this is my sixth year as the medical director it’s been one of the best jobs I’ve ever had and we always try to say it’s the world’s biggest race party, at least in the Midwest we’ll say. But, it’s been a great partnership to really celebrate the healthy and active lifestyle as M3S Sports founder, David Babner calls it.”
“I think what’s really cool about this race is it was recently featured as one of the best half marathons in America and I think the reason for that is because it really celebrates the runners. It celebrates the healthy active lifestyle, and it celebrates the city of Columbus, which is a really cool thing. The course every year gets better and better, you get a full tour.”
Q. Is there anything different about the event this year compared to previous years? (Starts at 2:33)
A. David Babner, M3S Sports founder and race director says, “This year, it’s all about the celebration and we just keep building on that. We have a safe course, the best medical team on the planet, we have 35 different bands and DJs on the course, we have eight aid stations with water and Gatorade for everybody on the course, plus when you finish, North to Nashville will kick off, the concert will kick off at 9 o’clock. We have champaign for all the finishers, we have White Claw, Corona, we have Jets Pizza. Jets Pizza has been a remarkable partner of ours for the last two years, and a big partner with the OhioHealth Foundation now, so that’s important to us as well so we’ll have Roosters wings there, and it’s just a huge party right there in the John F. Wolfe Columbus Commons.”
Q. Within your six years as the Medical Director for the marathon, how has preparation and safety protocols progressed over the years? (Starts at 3:15)
A. Ben Bring, DO, OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital family medicine and Cap City medical director says, “Honestly, the biggest thing that we do is to build volunteers and to find great people on your team and that’s starts with our athletic training staff. Every year, you know first year we had a cardiac arrest, and our athletic trainers were right there on sight and we’re able to save that young man, so over the years we’ve kind of worked through how do we get better every year. We always say iron sharpens iron and so we always try to work together to build a great team and to work together and to always be ready for just about anything that can be thrown our way on race day. We’ve also increased the number of AEDs over the years, I think this year with Columbus Fire, Columbus police and our team along with Red Cross, we’ll have an AED about every half mile which is pretty incredible. We’re always looking for those most UpToDate race protocols to make sure we’re delivering the highest quality of care to all the runners.”
A. David Babner, M3S Sports founder and race director says, “Our team starts planning for the next OhioHealth Capital City Half Marathon on the day after the current one. When people ask me that question, it’s taken us 21 years to get to where we are today to be able to create the kind of celebration that we do now. Our team meets twice a week on Cap City and then we meet with the OhioHealth team every other week just to talk about best practices and what we’re doing and planning to make sure we can provide the remarkable experience for all the participants that are there.”
Q. On race day, who are the volunteers, from OhioHealth, that will be there to help keep everyone safe? (Starts at 4:37)
A. Ben Bring, DO, OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital family medicine and Cap City medical director says, “We’ll have probably about 70 to 80 volunteers, mostly athletic trainers, physicians, resident physicians, hand full of medical students in there as well. Then I always like to bring a couple of critical care nurses in case we do need some help with getting some IVs or things like that. This team is very well prepared, especially our athletic trainers. I always joke that they’re kind of like the Swiss army knives of healthcare, you can literally put them anywhere and they’ll do great things to provide great care to our patients.”
Q. What can our volunteers help treat if needed? (Starts at 5:09)
A. Ben Bring, DO, OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital family medicine and Cap City medical director says, “Anything from heat exhaustion, or heatstroke to cardiac arrest or things like that, broken bones, sprains, strains, lacerations, just about anything our team can handle.”
Q. What recommendation do you have for participants as they prepare for race day? (Starts at 5:26)
A. Ben Bring, DO, OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital family medicine and Cap City medical director says, “My track coach used to say before our track meet, the hay is in the barn, right, so you’ve already done your long runs don’t do anything that’s out of the ordinary of your training, definitely don’t try a new pair of running shoes stick to the ones you’ve been training in and really stick to your pace on race day. I think that’s the biggest thing, is when the music plays it can become overwhelming, and I see a lot of runners go out a little bit too fast, so always try to stay even on your pacing. Make sure you get plenty of calories leading up to the race as well, lots of good carbohydrates like pastas, fruits and vegetables can be very important. Also make sure you get plenty of protein as well for your muscles.”
Q. On March 14th, OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital and M3S Sports held a CPR/ stop the bleed training day ahead of race day. Why? (Starts at 6:14)
A. Ben Bring, DO, OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital family medicine and Cap City medical director says, “Our medical team is already trained in stop the bleed and CPR training, but what we’ve done today is we’ve found that bystanders can be very important in saving lives, especially if someone has a dangerous bleed, training some other people on how to use tourniquets. That’s really what the meaning of today is, is to train more people to expand the knowledge across our team and also to teach our team how to do basic CPR as well, which again the best life-saving measure in a cardiac arrest or if your heart stops beating is to start chest compressions immediately and anybody can do this and that’s really what our goal is, is to try to train all members of our team to be able to provide that life-saving care.”
A. David Babner, M3S Sports founder and race director says, “The number one thing we have to do is keep our participants safe, so we’re all about keeping our participants safe and OhioHealth does it better than anyone else and it gives our team an opportunity to learn from the best to be able to provide those services in the event we have to do that.”
Q. What is your favorite part of the OhioHealth Capital City Half and Quarter Marathon? (Starts at 7:20)
A. Ben Bring, DO, OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital family medicine and Cap City medical director says, “I would say setting up the medical tent, usually we’ll get down there at three or four in the morning. The quiet before the storm as we always say, and then walking up the bridge at four in the morning we have this tradition where a few of us will go and walk up and look around and take it all in. When COVID-19 hit, we kind of learned to not take anything for granted, especially those couple of years where we had to do these races virtually and so being back in person for the first time in 22, that was something really special and being back in person this year I think every year we go back, we never take it for granted. Yeah, going up on the bridge first thing in the morning and obviously when Leo sings the national anthem, that’s pretty sweet as well.”
