Ok, I admit it. I hate running in hot weather. I'd rather run in snow, rain, sleet, ice pellets, hail, tornados, hurricanes, bone chilling cold, you name it I would prefer it to heat. And that was exactly why I decided to run my long run during the hottest part of the day yesterday. Guess what? I still hate it.
As I sat at home yesterday morning, watching the thermometer keep creeping up...up...up. I began to wonder why I didn't start earlier so I could finish before it got too hot. I didn't. Stacey suggested the same thing to me several times and I basically shrugged the suggestion off. If I have an idea in my head that I'm going to do something, you may as well let me do it because there's no amount of persuasion or even logic thats going to make me change my mind. I can be stupid that way sometimes. Looking back, yesterday was one of those days.
The plan was to do my long run, a 23k run at a pretty slow pace. I felt like I had properly prepared for this run, i put two half filled bottles of gatorade in the freezer overnight and topped them up with the remainder of the gatorade before I left the house. I planned to just do short loops around the neighbourhood so I was never too far from home. Also in the plans was a short stop around the halfway point to grab the second bottle of frozen/liquid gatorade combo bottle. And most importantly, I had no pace expectations at all. All I wanted to do was just finish the run upright.
I left the house at around 11:45am. I had my gatorade mix in my lap belt and I also carried a bottle of water as well. The plain water was for wetting my head. The temp was 30C with a "feel like" temperature of 35C. Not a friggin cloud in the sky and very little wind. Wonderful.
It took me about 18 minutes to realize this may have been a bad idea. My sunglasses wouldn't stay on my face because of the sweat on my ears. So I had to keep pushing them on my face every few steps. Eventually, I got pissed off and took them off. At some places there would be the faintest of breezes which would feel sooooo nice but mostly it felt like running in an oven. I could feel the heat of the pavement through the soles of my sneakers. Despite the heat I was keeping a respectable pace. I would have liked to be slightly faster but that wasn't going to happen today. After an hour and twenty minutes of this self induced torture, I arrived back at the house for a pit stop. This stop included getting more water, more gatorade, scarfing down an orange and strawberries and running cold water over my head to get my temp back down. It worked and I headed back out for the last 11k.
Again, I felt good for maybe another 10 or 15 minutes before the heat would knock the stuffing back out of me. I would run from shady spot to shady spot, resting for a few seconds and drinking gatorade as well as pouring some water in my hat to cool the old noggin off. The last 3 k were kind of fuzzy, I do remember walking up the hills, I was out of gas and I could feel my heartbeat in my head. My face felt like I was sitting with it too close to the woodstove, it was just searing. In the distance you could see some thunderclouds trying to form and I'm thinking "oh please, oh please give me a thundershower" but they never provide any relief. I'm pretty sure I saw vultures circling above me at some point but maybe I was just hallucinating. lol There's nothing quite as welcoming as seeing your house after you have just beat yourself to a mental and physical pulp for two and a half hours.
As soon as I got in the house, I made a beeline to the shower where I used the hand-held sprayer and gave my melting head a 10 minute cold shower. Bliss!!! That brought my temp down so I could go to the kitchen to eat, I was starving! I finished the orange and scarfed down a handful of strawberries before heading for a cold shower. The rest of my day was spent flaked out in front of the tv, mostly asleep.
I'm still feeling a little tired as I type this the following day but I don't have any muscle soreness. That is the only benefit to running in the heat, it seems easier on the joints than running in cold weather.
My neighbour said to me "wow, that must be some kind of runners high for you to be out chasing it in weather like this". I replied "nope, on a day like this, the runners high comes when you hit the cold shower after the run". lol This run was exactly what I expected...torture. self induced torture. will I do it again??
probably. Will I do it again soon? Hopefully not, but next week is another week. Looking back on it now, I should have started earlier in the morning but still finished when the temp was in the 30's. In other words, I should have listened to Stacey.
Onward and upward
PS
Training distances this week:
Running - 55k
Cycling 98k
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