Sunday, July 31, 2011

Awful

Today was the return of the hottest day in recorded history.

I got home from North Carolina at 2 p.m., and I still had my 15-mile run to complete. Unfortunately, it was about 100 degrees outside. I didn't want to wait till later to run because it might make me not be able to fall asleep at night. You know, all the adrenaline and whatever.

Anyway, the fact of the matter is that I was running outside at 3 p.m., ready to take on 15 miles. The first few miles were great (I ran in the shadows down Wisconsin Ave), but once I got to the lake things got bad. There were a few times when I felt nauseous, and then my head got tingly a few other times (though not in the same way that it did on my last long run... which was a good kind of tingly). I was pretty sure that I would die if I didn't take a break, so I started walking more.

Eventually it became really tough to run. I didn't have enough water, it was ridiculously hot, and my legs were stiffening up much earlier than they should have. And then there was the part of my mind that was convinced that if I started running I'd keel over...

Almost halfway through the run, I came up with the great plan to run in the shadows and walk in the sunshine. That worked out really well, until I got to a point in my route where there weren't really any shadows at all. So I ended up walking a lot.

And then, to make everything so much worse, I started getting a rash under my arms, from them rubbing against the seam of my shirt. Arg. So that made it terribly painful to run at all (unless I kept my arms out at my sides, but that was just too much to ask of myself at that point in my run).

By the end of the "run," my body was completely dry (inside and out), and I was covered in salt crystals. And somehow it took 3:05. The heat is really killer... there's no reason adding a single mile should have also added an extra hour. Blah.

Pace: 12:20

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