On June 26, I ran 6.12 miles at 11:30 AM, just about when the sun was at its peak. The temperature was about 81 degrees F and the sky was mostly clear with a light, breeze coming off the lake that teased my senses. I thought I should be able to knock out the 6 miles in no time. How wrong I was.
After the first couple of miles, my legs grew heavy and my pace started to slow. By mile 3, the sun had taken its toll. I needed to walk. I walked for a couple tenths of a mile, took a deep breath and started to run again. I'll be damned if I was going to walk the remaining 3 miles back home.
My paced was a bit slower and I had to walk again at the end of miles 4 and 5. When I arrived home, I was completely exhausted.
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| Pace of 6-26 run. |
The moral of the story: If it's going to be hot, run sooner.
If 6 miles was brutal in the heat, I could not have image what the next day's run of 11 miles would have done to me knowing that the afternoon temperature was supposed to be 84. So, I made a decision to beat the heat. I woke up at 4 AM (no alarm needed), put my contacts in, filled my CamelBak, and was out the door by 4:30. I needed to be back by 7 AM because Jody had to leave for work and I needed to watch the baby.
Typically, when I run a route longer than 10 miles, I usually eat a bagel with peanut butter about an hour before heading out the door. On this morning, I was not going to get up at 3 AM. Instead, I grabbed a few pretzels and drank a half of glass of water. That's it! During my run, I had one energy gel at about the 5-mile mark and a few pretzels that I had shoved into a plastic bag into my pocket.
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| 6-27 run. The pace is in blue and elevation is the grayed-out area on the bottom. |
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