Long hot runs - the joys of summer training

Last weekend I was all tee'd up to fire off about my early Saturday morning 15 miler.  For starters, I actually woke up early to beat the heat - like on purpose and everything.  By 6:30 I was out the door and by 7:30 the 90% humidity had me looking like I had just crawled out of a swimming pool.  I was struggling to maintain a semi-respectable pace, I had very little sustance in me and no fuel or fluid with me.  I had already been chased by a cat, left my wet shirt behind a bush never to be seen again, broken my third iPod shuffle of the year, and was batting about .300 on the morning run crowd acknowledging me.

Long story short...15 miles and 2 hours of running later, which doesn't include a brief walk at mile 12 to have a word with Jesus and plot the absolute shortest route home, it was over.  Then like any quality runner would do, I went to Bojangles and ate like it was my job.

After a cold shower I thought better of complaining because I was actually pretty happy about it.  It was hot, humid, and I slogged through 15 on a 4th of a bagel and spoon of peanut butter without water.  That's actually pretty stupid to begin with and nothing to be proud of but I'm learning.

This morning was sure to be my redemption long run.  It was scheduled to be 14 with a progressively faster finish and I was going to own it and blog all about it.  Then I overslept.

Nonetheless, after church I was going to get after it.  Ok so it was getting closer to 90 degrees but the humidity wasn't 90%...silver linings right?  I ate a very light lunch and decided to take 20 oz. of tailwind with me.  Great idea, very poor execution.  I mixed it in a Powerade bottle which has a wider opening; great for casual drinking, not so much for drinking on the run.  I'd say I wore about 5 oz. of it and I don't believe a sports drink on the skin counts for much.

The first 6 miles I was locked in and my splits were within a few seconds.  Mile 7 was up 6th street so I slowed a bit but I wasn't feeling too bad. My tailwind was running low and getting hot but so was my back - sticky wet shirt and all.  Putting the lid back on that stupid bottle became increasingly difficult to the point that I was ready to throw it in the next dumpster I saw.  I was just trying to get to mile 11 then finish strong.  Another thing that became very difficult was math.

I pieced together a few of my regular routes and for some reason every few minutes I was calculating different numbers for where I might hit mile 11. Then I started hypothesizing about what it would take in those last 3 miles to get my average pace down.  That was an absolute disaster.  Throw in me trying to gauge the impact on pace from the heat / humidity and I felt like a third grader all over again.

Soon enough I took the last sip of tailwind which was just a hot gulp of nasty but at least it was wet.  My average pace was about 15 seconds faster than last week and the heat hadn't completely brought me to my knees.  At least not yet.  I knew this wasn't going to be the redemption blog I hoped for but whatever.  I was blogging for better or worse.  I mean who wants to read about fast times and solid workouts anyway - where's the fun in that?

Finally it was time to pick up the pace for the final 3 miles.  I wasn't quite in the attack mode I envisioned from my bed the night before but I my legs were still turning over.  I brought the pace down 24 seconds in mile 12....and my heart was none too happy about it either.  I brought it down another 19 seconds for mile 13 and then my brain weighed in on the situation.  I was hot, thirsty, and my heart rate was at about 600.  Actually I have no idea what it was but 13.1 seemed like a nice round number so I shut it down.

My next stop was a cold shower, fully clothed, and it was awesome :)  One more month of this and hopefully it will all be worth it!  All kidding aside, if you're logging a lot of miles in this weather make sure you never leave home without your common sense...