The humidity continues! More crazy hot, sweaty runs this week – oof! The first one was a fun run date on Tuesday morning with my high school BFF Jenny. She’s in town visiting and Tuesday was her birthday – fun way to start the day. 🙂
I didn’t want to make her get up too early on her birthday so we started a little after 8 a.m. The extra sleep was awesome but the extra heat was not. It was blazing out there!
I read an interesting article in the New York Times the other day about changes in performance when running in heat and humidity – it made me feel better about my runs being much slower in the heat! I’ve heard people comparing heat training to altitude training – hoping all these hot runs pay off come October for the Marine Corps Marathon. 🙂
We kept it short and sweet and had fun chatting away. It was so hot we ended up walking the last half mile – fine with me!
Yesterday morning I fled to the air conditioning and met up with Chelsea and Kathleen for our weekly boot camp – this week we hit up Urban Athletic Club via ClassPass (<—only one more day to get $30 off your first month with this affiliate link).
As for today, it was back to the humidity! I met up with my track group bright and early. I was at happy hour last night so I wasn’t feeling amazingly energized when I got out there, but a couple laps in once I warmed up I actually ended up feeling relatively decent. It was a tough one, though – here’s what we did:
- Warm up
- 1 mile at threshold pace (10 miler or half marathon pace)
- rest 1 to 2 minutes
- 400m (one lap) at 5k pace
- rest 3 minutes
- 1 mile at threshold pace
- rest 1 to 2 minutes
- 400m at 5k pace
- rest 3 minutes
- Five 200m (half lap) sprints – all out effort with a short walking break in between each
- Cool down
That was a speedy one! As my coaches said, the goal of speedwork is to learn to run quickly in a controlled way – basically understanding how to go faster while still maintaining proper form, and not completely falling apart because you go out too fast/don’t pace yourself properly. Having track coaches has made such a difference for me in terms of all of this!
I have 14 miles on the docket this weekend as my long run, and lucky for me my track buddy Diane has a step down week (she’s training for the Chicago Marathon, which is a few weeks earlier than MCM so she’s already higher in mileage) so she’s also supposed to do 14 miles! Perfect. Yay for company!
When I got home this morning I refueled with my flour free breakfast pancake but in microwave form because I didn’t feel like dirtying a pan. Topped with plain Greek yogurt, berries, and a sprinkling of slivered almonds and walnuts. It was super filling and I didn’t need all of it so I saved some to enjoy as a mid morning snack. Thinking of breaking into it now!
Back to work! Enjoy your days, my friends!
Which do you think is worse: running in the heat (aka hot temperatures) or running in humidity? According to the NYTimes article, hot temperatures are harder – they said it’s better to do a run in the early morning when the temperature is lower but the humidity is higher, rather than the evening when the temperature is high but the humidity is a bit lower. Interesting! I find both hard, but I agree with their heat assessment – especially if the sun is blazing. Having the hot sun on me makes such a difference in my performance – I get so drained!
