Toe-Shoes Tina: Ice, Ice, Baby (No, Really, Somebody Please Get Me Some Ice – It’s Hot!)‎

Distance:  2.86 miles
Pace:  Uh . . .
Heart Rate:  Average 137, Max 184

Wine Consumption:  2 cups of herbal tea (sad face)

Honestly, at some point, I really need to pick up the running.  My 16 week training program does not start until October, so in my head I’m like “I’ve got plenty of time.”  Except that it starts with a 10 mile run.  10 miles is a lot.  I could do it now, but I would probably hurt afterward.  I’d like to get to a point where my first “long” run doesn’t injure me.  That means I need to start running regularly.  Here’s what’s stopping me – it is September 5 and the high is 109.  I loathe the heat.  Extraordinarily so, which makes Phoenix a terrible place for me to live and run.  Heat is my Achilles heel.  So this summer, I decided to work on my mental toughness by forcing myself to run in the heat.  I ran a 2 mile loop near my house at 95 degrees, then again at 104 degrees.  I tried it at 111 degrees, but burned my feet after a mile and had to quit early.  These are obviously extreme temperatures, but even running in the morning here is brutal.  It is at least 80 degrees and the humidity has been pretty bad for a desert.  Truth be told, my pride holds me back because my pace is demoralizing.  I should be able to run 10K at an 8:30 pace, but have been struggling to keep shorter runs at or below 9 minutes.  It is bad for the ego.

Slo Jo and I have a friend who ran Badwater this year.  For those of you unacquainted with lunatic runners, Badwater is 135 miles through Death Valley at the end of July.  Oh, and it finishes at the top of a very steep climb up Mount Whitney.  The pavement temperature on the first day of the race was 170 degrees.  No, that is not a typo.  1-7-0 degrees.  Our friend did amazing and you should read his blog because you’ll probably never experience this run for yourself. 

(Not a race for Vibrams.  That is our friend in the background.)

So what about the rest of us?  Why can’t I run in the heat?  Is it just my bad attitude or is there a physiological reason for my slowed pace.  It’s the latter, thank goodness!  There are, of course, Runners World articles addressing the subject, but I’m branching out in to new sources.  I looked at a number of online articles and, to summarize, heat and humidity ruin your pace.  The articles disagreed about the temperature at which your running was affected, giving a range of 50 to 65 degrees.  Yeah, the low today is 87, so no matter whose scale I use, my running is affected.  One article explained:

“As you run your body generates heat. The ability of heat to escape from your body is reduced in higher temperatures and severely curtailed in humid conditions  . . . your brain will make changes to your running as a defense mechanism long before you actually reach a point of dangerous fatigue or succumb to heat exhaustion.  . . .  Your muscles are actually nowhere near their true point of fatigue, but you are given the sensation as if they are to slow your pace.”

(This table made me giggle because it says to “use extreme caution” in Phoenix winter conditions)

Sweet!  I have a good excuse not to run well.  Rather than attempt a miserable training run, I wore my iPhone at the gym and used MapMy Run to log my boxing workout.   We ran a few laps around the building (.11 miles each), but mostly boxed and did burpees, lunges, pushups, squat jumps, v-ups, and short sprints.  It counted every step, which added up to 2.86 miles.  My workout route, however, looks like this:

(that giant red squiggle is my route)

Also, because it took an hour, MapMyRun thinks my pace is 21:03/mile.  This might be my pace in Death Valley, right up until I burned my toes off.