Heat

So on my last post I said something about the weather being a bit schizophrenic and how it seemed like it was always cold when I was running, well not Saturday. I was up North again where I usually am on the weekend and yeow it got warm out there. I headed out with Jon and Jochen, Jon turned back early after two hours because he needed to attend to his own birthday lunch but Jochen and I kept going and we suffered on the run back to San Francisco. We both run at night and have been enjoying the foggy weekends at the Headlands so we were not sure if it was just us or the weather, maybe both. We ran into East Bay runners Victoria, Suzanne and Jasper and I'd like to get their take since they are used to the heat in the East Bay. We were a wreck before the run was over and was pretty destroyed by the time we were across the bridge, so much so that we ended our run at the end of the bridge and walked ourselves another 30 minutes to a bus stop for a ride home. It took us 8.5 hours to travel 32 miles. To put this in perspective, my best 50k (31-miles) in the Headlands area is 4:37, my time at Firetrails 50-mile last year - 7:56. Sure you go slower in training but not that slow.

The whole experience just pointed to the fact that Jochen and I were ill equipped to deal with the heat. I don't know Jon's take on the weather since he turned back early. All three of us are racing Firetrails in October and there is a very good chance it will be warm there too. At least two of us isn't ready for the heat! Well with two weeks left before the race it's a bit late to get some heat training in but I'll see about spending some time in the sauna this upcoming week. I'm not sure it will do much good this close to the race but a little heat tolerance is better than none I'm thinking. It's amazing to me how the body can be incredibly strong and incredibly weak and fragile at the same time. We can get used to certain conditions but only briefly if we don't maintain it.

Next up, a day at Tilden Park. Our triathlon club had a run and swim training day in the East Bay today followed by a bbq. This was my first time training in the East Bay ever. All this time and I've never trained there. Ran into a couple of ultra friends, Brian Wyatt and Jeff Lang. Jeff was wearing a beanie and track pants. I bet he thinks 90 degrees is comfortable. Forget tomorrow, I should hit the sauna now!