Humidity

Ed -

How can a little moisture in the air make running so freaking hard?

I went out for a long, slow run on Saturday down in North Carolina and was sweating before I got done stretching on my front porch.  At 6:00 am.  And I don't mean perspiring.  I was standing there with my legs spread trying to get my elbows to touch the ground and sweat was dripping off of my noise.  Steadily.

drip drip drip

It was soggy outside but I was planning on going slow to build those capillaries in my legs and stuff, so I wasn't all that concerned with it.  Didn't bring a water belt or anything like I used to before my salivary glands started working again.  So I took off towards downtown Manteo to see if I could hook up with the Outer Banks Running Club folks who were doing several group runs.  I figured I'd catch the guys doing 16 miles at 9:30 pace at their half way point (since they were running at 5:00 am) and just go along with them for a visit.

I trotted around, up and down the streets and the waterfront but never saw them.  At 4 miles I went ahead and ran up towards the north end of the island along the trail.  I was breathing pretty hard and pressed a button on my Garmin so I could see my average pace as opposed to trying to do the math in my head.  I was a History major for a reason in college.  8:35 pace at 5 miles, and I was coming apart.

How pathetic.  I've run a Half at 7:30 pace and have run 7 much faster than this recently and quite comfortably.  Of course I did notice that I was a minute ahead of my target pace for the day and knew with the way I felt I wasn't going to make 10 miles.  So I slowed down some and waited to catch my breath.

But couldn't.  Apparently my breath was not going to slow down with me.

So I start to think about what I read last year regarding humidity and why it's so tough to run when the level is high.  Basically, you don't cool off and your brain melts like the last couple of bites in an ice cream cone.

Your body cools itself by sweating.  IF the sweat evaporates.  If you remember some basic science from elementary school, or your sophomore year in college if you're like me, you'll remember that when moisture evaporates it takes temperature with it.  I'm not sure where they go, but they go together because apparently they really dig each other.  You know how when you're hot and a breeze blows and you feel that lovely chill and say, "ahhhh."  That's your sweat evaporating and heading off for a make-out session with the proportional amount of your body's temperature.

Now on days when the humidity is really high, your sweat doesn't evaporate.  When the humidity is like it was on Saturday, somewhere around 127%, it doesn't evaporate at all.  And that means my body wasn't cooling at all.  Just getting hotter and hotter and doing everything it knows how to do to cool off.  Like dumping about 10 pounds of fluid out of a gazillion little pores, and shutting off the electrical circuits to my legs so I'd slow down more and more.  "Quit with the running all ready!" my body whined.

Luckily I came upon one of Manteo's nice water fountains along the bike path.  I'm not making fun, they're really nice water fountains.  I plodded up and started chugging.  But remembered I had at least three miles to cover before I got home so I did a lot of drinking, swishing and spitting because I didn't want to puke along the way.  I also remembered some of what I read to help cool off.

Poor water down the back of your head.  That works wonders.  I guess it works since your head catches a lot of the heat generated by the body and when the water hits my neck it's cooling the arteries and veins there which cools off my head and body pretty quickly.  I did that a couple of times and took off my shirt, tucked it into the back of my shorts and took off again.

Now I need to point out that while this technique works really well and almost immediately, it doesn't last long.  Because the cooling sensation is not from evaporation, it's from the water's temperature.  Once that stuff is on your body for a short length of time it gets hot like the rest of you.  So when you're doing a long, hot run or race, have something ready to drink and something ready to dump down  the back of your head.  I've never had to do it during a race, but it did work well for some of my long training runs last summer when I was doing more distance.

So I'll try and pay attention more to the weather and be better prepared the next time I go out in the heat.

Run on!