Brace yourself to be feeling like garbage on many of your training runs.
This is a good time to issue the annual hot weather warnings. Brace yourselves to be feeling like garbage on many of your training runs until we get back to some cooler and less humid conditions in the fall.
There are several things you should be doing to minimize your suffering in summer training conditions:
Ramp up your fluid and electrolyte intake to account for all of the additional sweating you’ll be doing
Failure to do so can result in muscle cramping, headaches, sudden onset of fatigue during your workouts and that feeling of just wanting to lay down and take a nap rather than go out for a run. Many of you have already been reporting classic dehydration symptoms and several of you have looked like death at the end of your long runs. Hydrate!
Slow down!
Your body is going to be expending a lot more energy than usual on temperature regulation which results in your heart rate being unusually elevated at any given pace that you are running. Depending on just how hot/humid it gets, you may need to pull back as much as 15-30 seconds per mile to be in an effort range that is comparable to what you would be running in cooler weather conditions. A lot of runners freak out about having to slow down and think that they’ll be losing fitness if they can’t maintain their “typical” paces in their workouts. Not true! When the weather cools off, you’ll find that your fitness is just fine. What can get you into trouble is trying to force yourself to run paces in 80-90 degree weather that you’d be running in 60 degree weather and then you run yourself into a huge amount of fatigue, or worse, run yourself into an injury.
Avoid running during the hottest times of the day
Make it easy on yourself and run very early or very late in the day when conditions aren’t quite so extreme. Going out and running in the middle of the day during the worst of the conditions doesn’t make you any tougher, it just beats you up more. I’m not a fan of treadmills, but on days when temps are approaching triple digits, it’s not a bad idea to retreat to the gym and do your run indoors in some air conditioning. Even better, go to a pool and substitute some pool running for your land running.
George Buckheit is the leader and coach of Capital Area Runners. CAR is a DC metropolitan area club that was founded to provide group training opportunities for highly motivated and competitive minded runners of all ability levels.
