Running in the heat can suck. But according to a recent Running Times article, getting acclimated to the heat can improve your performance by an average of 7%. Sorry I don't have a link to the article, but it's so recent that it's not online yet. If you want to look for it in print, or just make a note to check for it online later, it's called Hot Myths and it's in the July/August 2011 issue.
Anyhow, I really hope that's true, because it's beastly hot here. Not Las Vegas hot, which is a dry blast furnace, but Florida hot, which is more like a jacuzzi without the bubbles.
Now a jacuzzi, even sans bubbles, is a pleasant thing. In January. But not in June.
I've been trying to combat the heat by getting out early to work out. Before the sun comes up, it's only 80 degrees F, and not too awful bad yet. Plus there's no sun beating down yet.
But I've been thwarted by true love. Let me explain...
My husband has decided he wants to run a marathon with me this fall.
Awww! How sweet!
Since we're going to run together, it makes sense to train together. After all, neither one of us is going to sprint off and leave the other in the dust. This is a joint venture, we'll run the entire 26.2 miles together, and cross the finish line hand in hand.
Couldn't you just die of the cute?
Now, please let me be perfectly clear about something here: I love running with my husband. Not only is he the love of my life, but he's also my best friend, and someone I want to spend as much time with as possible. So I look forward to our runs together, and cherish every moment of them.
So what's the issue? Well, my hubby is not, shall we say, a morning person. Neither am I really, but he really fights having to do anything before a decent hour of, oh, say, ten o'clock in the morning. So he's not crazy about running in the morning. Period. He'd rather run in the afternoon.
But as I mentioned previously, it's bloody hot here right now.
So we worked out a truce where we run together in the morning. However, during the week, we get out of the house as late as possible, in order to get a run in before he has to be at work. Which is about 7:15am. And that means the sun has been up for almost an hour, and has had a chance to start toasting things. I haven't pushed too hard to get out earlier, because I realize I'm lucky that we're going when it's only 82 degrees and not 94 degrees or higher.
The weekends are different. For our longer runs (which, since they are longer distances, also keep us out in the sun for a longer amount of time), he would prefer to start running around, oh, 8:30 or 9:00am. Or later.
Holy $%^&!
I've reasoned, and explained, and cajoled, and just about begged, but I haven't been able to convince him that running from 6:30 to 8:30am will be much more comfortable than running from 9:00 to 11:00am. It just hasn't worked.
The only hope I have is that he is starting to lose his heat tolerance while running, just like I did last summer. Long sweaty runs will do that to you. Last weekend, we had a 90 minute run, and got out of the house around 7:30. Which was better than usual, but I suspected it was going to be brutal. And it was. And for the first time ever, my hubby said maybe we should head out earlier for our long Saturday runs.
Hallelujah...
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