Shrewsbury runner warns heat stroke can happen to anyone

SHREWSBURY, Mass. — Rich Dodakian has run the Falmouth Road Race more than a dozen times, but there’s one year in particular that sticks out in his memory.

In 2011, Dodakian crossed the finish line in Falmouth — and collapsed.

“My sister-in-law saw me running down the end of the road race,” he said. “There’s a hill at the end and I was limping. She thought I had sprained my ankle.”

In fact, Dodakian had blacked out.

“I saw my kids around the 5.5-mile mark on the side of the road,” he said. “Got to maybe six miles and I don’t remember anything after that. No exaggeration. No recollection of running the end of that race.

Fortunately, Dodakian collapsed into the care of medical tent personnel from the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute, which studies heat-related illness in athletes.

“They took my temperature and it was 107.7 degrees,” Dodakian said.

That’s almost four degrees higher than what is considered the baseline core temperature for heat stroke — 104 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point, neurological fogginess begins to occur. Left untreated, heat stroke can rapidly intensify into a life-or-death struggle.

Medical personnel placed Dodakian into an ice bath — and slowly his temperature began to descend. Consciousness returned about 15-20 minutes after the blackout began.

“I was really, really out of it,” he said. “Didn’t know where I was, didn’t remember my family history, I didn’t know my wife’s name. And there I was, these people were above me with ice and water and towels on my arm and my body. It was an experience that no one should have to go through.”

Coherence gradually returned — enough for Dodakian to ask one of his caregivers if he was going to die.

“He said, you’re getting the best care that you can and we’re doing everything we can to cool your body temperature down,” Dodakian said.

Looking back, Dodakian understands why he became a heat stroke victim.

“It’s seven miles, so it’s not short where it’s a 5K and you’re going to be okay,” he said. “And it’s not long, long where you pace yourself. You go hard.”

For Dodakian, that meant skipping past all the water stations on the course, in pursuit of a better finish time. He also said he hadn’t properly acclimated to hot weather running because he traditionally ran in the morning, when it’s cooler — and he was suffering from sleep deprivation.

In the end, Dodakian fully recovered. So much so that he returned to Falmouth the following year and ran the race — and has done so nearly a dozen times since.

“I missed one year during Covid, but that wasn’t heat-related,” he said.

He runs the race aware that proper hydration takes priority over finish times — and how lucky he was all those years ago.

“It could have been the end,” he said. “It could have been 15-20 minutes of unconsciousness and then an eternity. Seriously, I was out. Totally out cold.”

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