Sunday, September 27, 2009

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!

10 comments:

  1. You know how hot it is on this side of the planet. Best of luck during Firetrails. Go get them!

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  2. First, of COURSE you need to be getting over to the East Bay more! We have some fantastic trails over here-- not just the Firetrails course!!

    Having said that, Saturday's run was way hot. I had a moment of electrolyte imbalance and thought that a) there was no joy in the world and b) I really wasn't a runner, and I should just give up. Suz told me to take another salt stick at Pantoll and in a few miles, I was feeling good again, but yeah-- the heat was a little out of control on Saturday.

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  3. It was kind of a trip to be so close to Diablo and seeing Tam in the distance. Usually that's a view I only get to see at races and these days that's once a year - Mt. Diablo 50-miler. Not only do I not train in the East Bay, seems like I hardly race there too.

    I enjoyed it. Mostly I loved not knowing where I was. The world becomes such a big place when you don't know where you are, when you can't connect the dots to where you are to the rest of the places that you do know. I could have taken a wrong turn yesterday and still be out there today:)

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  4. Jon: Aye, next time I visit the Philippines I will treat it like a race and heat train. Sorry to hear about the flooding and storms though. Been following through CNN.

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  5. We'd love to see more of you on our side of the Bay, Rick!

    To be honest, we got pretty lucky in how we routed our run, so we only had about 5 (?) miles (downhill) from Pantoll to Muir in the really hot stuff. But considering I love that stretch of trail, I was ridiculously miserable. After that we had that Pacific air conditioning to cool us off. So...I held it together, but would have been a mess if I'd had to climb anywhere but Coastal in the afternoon. Oh, and then I wanted to cry on the last slog along the pavement to TV, but that's normal ;-)

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  6. Suz I could see myself BARTing over there and running with you guys. I'll just have to pack some dry clothes for the ride home and some wipes so I stink less!

    Nice, you guys spent more time on the coast for the cool air. After we got to Pantoll we took Alpine to Bootjack and that was really nice. It was cool amongst the trees and Jochen even immersed his shirt in the creek but after we excited Muir Woods it was hot all the way back to SF. Miwok fire road heading back to Tennessee Valley from Highway one was miserable. I looked to see if you guys were back yet when we hit TV but we missed you, you guys were still out. The long stretch of road at TV to Coastal ranks right down there on my list with an uphill on Marincello.

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  7. Rick, we had a high of 56 degrees today! I think our summer heat is gone! :) I hope you get some cooler fall days for your races!

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  8. Ode to the HEAT!....got down to 95 on Sunday and I was happy with that since there was no humidity. Trying to get back in the blog groove and catching up.

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  9. I do not do well in the heat. I would have died out there. ha!

    Good luck at your 50 next week. Cant wait to read about it.

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  10. That pace sounds like a southern Cali one, the heat sure does take it out of you!

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