Weather or Not

Several months ago, while enveloped in 12 layers of clothing and barricaded in my house behind a mountain of snow, I decided that I would run the Steamtown Marathon. Steamtown, as a net downhill and very well organized marathon, is a seemingly good choice for my goal of trying to break four hours. That Steamtown, on October 10, is one of the earlier fall marathons did not faze me at a time when I was preoccupied trying to figure out who might have remaining supplies of ice melt. When crafting my training schedule, it did not occur to me to be concerned that my long training runs of 16-20 miles and greatest escalation of weekly running miles would occur in July and August instead September and October. Why? Because it’s easy to be in denial about the difficulty of training in the heat when you have to remove a pair of mittens to type your training plan.

Let me be plain. I despise running in the heat. I hate the heat with, well, a white hot intensity. It’s not just running. I’ve never liked hot weather at all. I consider Miami, for example, a fun place to visit in February, but it just sounds like pure misery from April through October.

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, my body type could not be more different from that of a good distance runner. The best marathoners are tiny little wispy people who do not consider pizza fries to be a good carb-loading option. Just last week there was an article in the New York Times about a male 10-k runner who, at 6’1” and 165 pounds, is considered freakishly huge in his circuit. Bigger runners have a tougher time with distance anyway, and studies consistently show that larger runners suffer exponentially more in hotter weather.

Anyone reading this from this region of the country can see where I’m going. Training for a marathon in this particular summer simply sucks. We’ve had such a prolonged period of intense heat that the TV weather guys are talking about a “cool down” to 97 degrees on Thursday without any irony. Last Tuesday night, the cumulative effect of all the heat and the lack of sleep due to it caught up with me, and I had my worst training run of the year. I was miserable, thirsty and cramping from too much water at the same time. I couldn’t breathe, and I had to walk to finish. This was completely and utterly discouraging for a relatively short run. Happily, I got a reprieve. This crash was followed by two days of perfect summer weather, high of only 80 degrees with low humidity, which restored my spirits.

I don’t know if I can count on such a break to come again. It certainly doesn’t look like I’ll get one this week. I have to find my inner optimist, the one who will remind me that if I can force myself to train (carefully!) in these conditions, I’ll be stronger for it, and better prepared in October. Maybe this is just what I need for my sub-four, which reinforces that this was an insane idea from the beginning.