Jimmy Golen

BOSTON -- With temperatures expected to rise into the high 80s during Monday's Boston Marathon, race organizers are advising inexperienced runners and those with medical conditions to sit this one out and warning those who do run to be extra careful with the heat.

"This is not a day for personal bests," said Pierre d'Hemecourt, one of the race's medical directors. "This is a time to slow down and not take any risks."

In a news conference to address concerns over forecasts calling for temperatures expected to rise to 88 degrees at the Back Bay finish line by afternoon, officials from the Boston Athletic Association offered a deferment for runners that would allow runners who registered this year to run next year instead.

BOSTON — Kevin Garnett found Keyon Dooling for a 3-pointer. Then the Boston big man hit a fallaway jumper of his own. Back at the other end, Garnett grabbed a rebound to start a fast break that ended with Avery Bradley at the free throw line.

Just like that, the Celtics broke open a tie game and took a seven-point lead they never relinquished.

Garnett had 23 points and 10 rebounds on Wednesday night to lead Boston to a 94-82 victory over the Utah Jazz and move the Celtics back into a tie for first place in the Atlantic Division. Garnett had 10 points and three assists in the fourth quarter, when Boston recovered after blowing an 18-point lead.

BOSTON -- When Colorado Avalanche defenseman Erik Johnson was playing youth hockey in Minnesota, the kids wore "STOP" signs on the back of their jerseys to discourage dangerous hits.

The NHL has opted for something more like "Proceed with Caution."

To get onto the sand in Athens and Beijing, where they won two Olympic beach volleyball gold medals without ever losing a set, Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor played in tournaments from Thailand to Switzerland, from Berlin to Brazil.

Their path to the 2012 Games in London is turning out to be even more circuitous.

BOSTON -- Geoffrey Mutai's time of 2 hours, 3 minutes, 2 seconds in last week's Boston Marathon does not qualify for the world record, race officials conceded on Wednesday even as they sought to develop new rules that would better account for the difficulty of the hilly course.

"We understand and appreciate the role of the IAAF in maintaining standards that were established to protect the integrity of the sport," Boston Athletic Association executive director Tom Grilk said. "We all know that we witnessed one of the great days in running history at the 2011 Boston Marathon. ... We will celebrate all of that for a long time to come."

Mutai won the 115th edition of the Boston race on April 18 with a substantial tailwind, and Moses Mosop was four seconds behind as both shattered Haile Gebrselassie's world record of 2:03:59. Ryan Hall's time of 2:04:58 was the fastest ever for an American.

BOSTON -- For more than a century, runners at the start of the Boston Marathon have faced a breeze blowing in from the Atlantic and a dread that Heartbreak Hill will sap their strength.

Long regarded as one of the world's toughest courses, Boston has spurned professional pacesetters while encouraging tactics that favor strategy over speed. But Kenyan Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot upended that mindset last year, dashing from Hopkinton to Copley Square in 2 hours, 5 minutes, 52 seconds to shatter the course record by 1:22.

"I always knew it was possible to run fast times here. He showed us that it is," said Ryan Hall, who finished third in 2009 and last year ran the fastest ever time for an American in Boston. "You've got to be ready to run fast. You can't think, 'I'm going to run 2:09, 2:10 in Boston and blow everyone's socks off.' The game has definitely changed."

BOSTON -- The Boston Bruins couldn't trade Tim Thomas over the summer.

Now they can't afford to let him go.