I think for most of the country we are in the HEAT of the summer. Most days I get in my vehicle to leave work and my dash says 101-105 degrees! It's that muggy, sticky, can't breath type of heat. The heat that just rises off the pavement and seems to form around your body making you feel as if you are in a sauna. The dew point is 70+ every day. That's the real number you need to watch when running other than the humidity. My phone often says no good running condition on the weather app. 😩
So what are you doing to handle this heat??? I'm writing this so I can look back and remember what I was doing in the summer of 2022. I'm training for back to back marathons come this fall. Which means of course... piling on the run miles. I had to make a decision several weeks ago as to whether I was going to continue training like an ironman or marathoner. It was a HARD decision. I've pushed myself to training in all 3 sports... running, biking and swimming the last few years. I'm not one who can run 30-50 miles a week and also get in long bikes and swim miles. So I had to ask myself what is important right now. Well, that didn't take me long to say... RUNNING. I mean .... I've got 2 marathons just 6 days apart.... it was a no brainer.... but still it caused me a couple of sleepless nights and days worrying I would lose all I've gained... especially on the bike. I can still swim 1-2 easy days a week while running, but if I'm going to increase my run miles weekly, there is no way I can do long bikes of 30+ miles. My body just won't take that stress.
So here I am 9 weeks from Berlin Marathon and I'm slowing increasing those run miles. Last week I had 38 total run miles. I haven't had that many run miles in a LONG time. My plan builds to 45-50 miles depending on my body... we'll see if that max will be 45 or 50. I'm taking it slowly and doing a lot of EASY miles. And I'm doing a midweek long run with Penny. I was glad she decided to join me. We are only doing 8-10 miles midweek, but that's longer than either of us normally do during the week. We are meeting after work around 5:45pm. It's HOT and we are hoping that by the fall this training in the heat will pay off! It doesn't work for us to meet before work due to where we each live and her being a teacher. So one of my runs has to be at night. All the others are EARLY morning before daylight. Which BTW I'm still drenched. Our AC runs all the time in my house. We are in the dog days of summer! I'm starting to feel strong again in my running. They do say if you want to improve, you've got to run more. It's all about building that endurance and time on feet so come September my body won't shout back at me and say.. what the heck are you doing. 😀
Beating the heat..... not sure you really can... But here's what I've started doing. A couple weeks ago at the end of my long run my legs felt like any minute they were going to cramp. And then when I got home they did cramp! I would go to get out of the chair and it would hit me... and while sitting watching TV that afternoon my toes kept cramping. It was terrible. So I decided that my nutrition was not enough for all the sweating I am doing. I am literally drenched after my runs. Even my shoes are soaking wet! I've never done a test to see how much water I'm losing or what my electrolytes are... but I knew I needed something better than what I'm doing. So I've started drinking LMNT and taking magnesium at night when I got to bed. I think it's helping. I had 18 miles this past weekend and no cramps and I didn't feel totally like crap towards the end of my run. I even had energy when I got home. 💛 I will continue and see how I feel. Praying it continues to help. We have 20 on tap this weekend.
So how's your training going?? Are you beating the heat???
No comments:
Post a Comment