Thursday, July 15, 2010

I want to run Boston

I've been fairly quiet recently. The early heatwave over Ontario and the now regular hot temperatures are putting a break on the amount of training I would like to do. Last week I ran to work in what has been the most difficult long run for me in quite a while. The temperature at 6am was already around 25 degrees celsius (feels like 30 with humidex). By the time I could see my work building in the distance, my pace had crawled to 7minutes per km. I even ran out of sportsdrink from my 2L camelpack and had to stop at a convenience store to get some more. Once I got in the AC, I didn't want to step out in the oven-like weather again!

This week I have been on vacation and trying to keep my running schedule has been tough. We have AC at the house so often a usually dreaded weights session in the home gym will look better than stepping out for a few kms. I was still able to get in some mileage but not quite as many as I would have liked. An interval session on Monday saw me break the 4 minute mark for the first interval km, I think it might be a first for me, yay!
The remainder of the workout suffered a bit for this extravagance but the confidence boost it gave me is priceless. Here are the numbers:
  • Slow: 4:49, 5:23, 5:05, 5:12, 4:59 and 5:29
  • Fast: 3:55, 4:37, 4:35, 4:29 and 4:21

I think I can get my fast intervals down to 4:20-4:15 if I am having a good day and keep at it. I'd like to hover more around the 5:00 mark for the slower intervals but I'll take what I can get ;)

This morning, as I woke up early to try and beat the heat for my tempo run, I kept asking myself what kind of person would wake up at 6am on their vacation to go and inflict their body physical pain?
I had a pretty good run even if the heat did slow me down a bit towards the middle portion. I'd like to see a lot more green on this chart. The plus side is that while I was running, I came up with an answer for my question. What kind of person wakes up at 6am on a vacation? The kind of person who wants to run Boston that is. And I DO want to run Boston so I'll have to keep to find ways to beat the heat and get my workouts in to shave those 17 minutes I need.

What about you, how do you beat the heat and stay on course?

2 comments:

  1. The heat has been awful and is certainly making it difficult to get those quality workouts in. I have become all too familiar with 4-5am lately. Good for you getting up so early on vacation!

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  2. Beat the heat? Why would I want to do that. I ensure to pre-hydrate and then I totally embrace the heat. I am training from 4pm to 9pm and loving every soaked spandex minute of it. I think if you just let it all in, you enjoy your workout better. Sunscreen helps. ;)

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