Humid Hot HR

Rainy, warm and very humid to Very Very hot and the humidity just makes things worse.

I mention the weather because since I’ve been wearing my HR monitor/ GPS I got a very good look at just how crazy my HR gets when it’s hot and/or humid. Tuesday I decide I’m going to run 4 miles and push the pace. I feel like I’ve been running slow forever and that isn’t ever going to make me faster. So I went out with quick in mind.  Which went fairly well until about mile 3. At that point I decided I’d better slow it down and not do too much too fast. Looking at my HR it was hanging out in the 170s even as I dropped the pace to the 8:30s. When I got back to the house, it looked like it was going to rain big. So I took out the ladder real quick to clear out the gutters on the house. 10 minutes later, my HR is still over 100. Alright, I get it. I need to get into the air conditioning and get some cold water in me. Once I was inside, my HR dropped fairly quickly.

We biked on the 4^th for about 27 miles or so. Fun ride. Nice to get out in the morning and have it done and over so we could spend the rest of the day visiting friends.

Saturday early wake up call to try and beat the heat. Didn’t really work. It was hot but it got much hotter so I suppose it worked but it still wasn’t pleasant. Ran 12.5 miles with Todd from his house. Again towards the end, the HR was up in the 170s and wasn’t going to go down easily if I was “running” at all. Fortunately, at the end of the run there was a nice cold swimming pool. It still took several minutes to get below 100. Crazy.

I suppose this could be hydration as well as cooling. I’ve got a lot of running planned this summer. So I’ll have time to work on this. My first attempt is buying a Camelbak Marathoner vest. Todd has been using a pack and one key thing is that even 90 minutes in his water is still cold. That is not the case with my palm bottle or belt. Not to mention it carries a lot more water. I figure it’s worth a shot.

Sunday: up early again to try to knock out a 50 mile bike with just over 4000ft of climbing. I was going to take my road bike out but it was so hot yesterday, I never got around to moving the power cranks to my road bike. I’m interested to see the numbers from this, so I took the tri bike instead. (I was also concerned about not having aero position to “rest” on, I know, weak).

Well for whatever reason, on one of our stops. I stopped the timer… and then didn’t turn it back on for awhile. So that kind of defeated the purpose of riding the tri bike with power today. Ah well. The good news is that even on a really hot day. (where we stopped and asked a woman watering her flowers if she would fill our bike bottles from the hose). We got nearly 50 miles in. Hopefully we can continue to find time to ride long and keep challenging ourselves. Hopefully results will follow!

Still haven’t been to the pool. Genine went and did a mile Ocean Swim with Ed on Saturday morning. And while waiting to start turned around to find that Bob was there as well! (of course). Genine found it challenging to deal with the waves at first but got it figured out and got it done. I should have gone as well but decided that having someone to run with for 12+ miles was the better plan for me.

Now to register for the Tango before the prices go up!