Runner Had Played on Office Teams

Michael Banner, a 25-year-old Fairfax resident who died Sunday after collapsing near the finish line of the Army Ten-Miler, played on several company sports teams and was known to colleagues as a dedicated and amiable worker who liked to joke around in the office, a company executive said.

"It's difficult," said Scott Mingonet, vice president of Kimley-Horn and Associates in Herndon, who confirmed Banner's death. Banner, originally from Upstate New York, started working for the engineering firm in July 2005. "He was excellent -- I mean a real go-getter, a real sense of purpose about what he wanted to do. . . . We want to truly express our sympathy to his family. . . . His impact was tremendous on all of our hearts, too."

Banner collapsed about 10:40 a.m. Sunday as he approached the race's finish line. He was treated on-site and taken to George Washington University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, said Col. Jim Yonts, an Army spokesman.

The cause of Banner's death remained unclear yesterday, pending results of an autopsy, said Yonts, who noted that temperatures of 70 degrees and humidity of 94 percent made for unseasonably hot conditions compared with past races, in which competitors have had to fend off cold weather.

"He was very close to finishing the race, a little bit over 200 yards from the finish line," Yonts said. "What I've been told is . . . he went to a knee and he passed out."

Yonts said that although race organizers anticipated a huge water demand for the record 26,000 runners registered for the annual event, water and Gatorade ran out at the six-mile mark water station, and demand at the eight-mile mark station at one point outpaced race workers' ability to refill cups.

Also on Sunday, a Michigan man died and 250 people were taken to hospitals for heat-related illness while running the Chicago Marathon, a 26.2-mile race. Organizers there shut down the course during the race because of stifling heat and humidity.

Banner, a 2005 graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., averaged 16 minutes a mile in the 10-mile race, which begins and ends at the Pentagon and traverses the streets of Washington.

Angela Seggio, a former classmate of Banner's at RPI, said the engineering student was involved in intramural sports and student government and was part of a tightknit group of classmates.

"He was the one to keep in touch with everybody," said Seggio, who also said Banner was survived by a brother and a sister. "He had tabs on who was doing what and really [helped keep] everyone together. . . . We're all still in shock. You would never expect something like this to happen."

Mingonet said Banner, who worked on traffic impact studies and transportation planning, was a Yankees fan -- a common focus of good-natured teasing from friends at the office -- and played on company teams. Mingonet said he was unsure whether Banner was a regular runner or had participated in other races.

Calls to Banner's family were not immediately returned.

Banner is the second person to die in the 23-year history of the event; a runner died in 1990.

Todd Morrell, an emergency physician at Georgetown University Hospital, said heat-related fatalities usually occur in the summer among the elderly, but a combination of unfavorable weather and extreme exertion can affect athletes later in the year as well.

"The initial symptoms are fatigue, weakness, nausea, headaches, muscle cramps, dizziness," he said, adding that athletes focused on their activity might not recognize such signs as being severe. "They can be a little insidious in their onset," he said.

Robert Platt, Virginia state representative for the Road Runners Club of America, said heat-related deaths this late in the year are not unheard of but usually occur during longer events.

"It's less common for it to happen at a 10-mile race than a full-blown marathon," he said.