Hot doubles run

Hot = temperature (30ºC)
Doubles = two baseball games in progress
Run = what I tried to do today!

It seems the weather decided to skip the usual intro to summer with seasonal temperatures and jumped straight into the heat wave part. With the thermometer reporting 30ºC I headed down to China Creek Park at 7 p.m., hoping the sun would be low enough to take the edge off the heat. For the first km I was okay but after that I got really hot and not in the sexy way, more in the ‘sweating like crazy and feeling like you’re going to melt’ way. The trail was only about one-quarter in the shade at this point and I had to make a couple of stops at the water fountain by the 3K mark. The second time I did a dog stood patiently beside me, waiting his turn.

The problem with stopping for a drink is while the water refreshes, resuming your pace takes a little more effort than maintaining it. You also heat up a lot while you are stopped at the fountain, which exacerbates the whole resumption part.

There were two baseball games underway and at one point someone in the southeast diamond hit a ball down the third base line which sent it flying over the trail about 15 feet ahead of me. The girl who ran across and threw it back either did not see me or did not care. All that existed to her was The Ball. If I hadn’t momentarily paused I would have caught it in the side of my head. That was the only near-hit, though.

By the time I got to 4K I knew I would not make it to 10. I had simply started too early and I am not yet back in good enough condition to battle through this kind of heat. I decided I would go to 5K and see how I felt. As I hit 5K I also exited a patch of shade and moved back into the blazing sun. I called it good and stopped there.

My pace was actually 1 second slower than my 10K run three days ago. Ouch. On the plus side, I officially passed the 500 km mark, according to my Nike+ sensor.

Here’s a comparison of how the two runs stack up to the 5K mark. You can see how I pooped out after 1 km.