Friday, July 16, 2010

What a week

Oh there was certainly something I wanted to write about. But I totally forgot!

This week has been absolutely insane. Our local music festival, Bluesfest, is on. I volunteer there for 6 shifts of 4 hours each. Then hubby meets me and we watch a few shows. We've seen some great ones so far, especially Basia Bulat and Arcade Fire. Passion Pit was awesome, too.

On top of that, work has been nuts, too. I've been working lots of overtime. Thankfully I'm on vacation next week... but the first four days involve a trip to the Baltimore area to visit friends. I need to pack! But I'm definitely looking forward to a change of scenery and a change in running routes.

Tomorrow I plan to get up early to run my hill training. Last week's hilly run didn't go so well, as it was way too hot and I was tired and slightly hungover from the night before. Not a good recipe for a good training run! I missed my Thursday run this week thanks to the craziness at work. I can definitely say I'm looking forward to getting back to a normal schedule again.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

The Heat Beat Me

I couldn't do it this morning. Nope, no early morning run.

I spent 4 hours outside, on my feet, in the 40C+ weather as a volunteer at Bluesfest (our local monster music festival) last night. I was just exhausted last night and probably sweated off my body weight in those four hours. I just couldn't bring myself to get up at 6 to run this morning. The thought of running in the soupy air made me want to hermit myself in the air conditioned goodness of our apartment.

I checked the forecast last night before making my decision. The weatherman promised "cooler" weather on Friday: 28C and showers. Postponing my run to Friday morning was a no-brainer. It's hard to believe that's "cooler" than what we're going through now!

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Beating the heat

It's so hot.

There I said it.

Most of you probably already know that we're in the middle of a heat wave. Yesterday, the temperaturehit 34C (45C with the humidex) and it's supposed to be like this for the rest of the week! I'm glad summer's finally here after our rainy June, but it's almost like someone flipped a switch.

The biggest challenge for me now is how to run in this heat. We haven't had a summer with this kind of extreme heat in about 5 years, so this is very much uncharted territory for me. In the past, I just moved my run to the next day... but that's not an option when we're talking 4-5 days straight of this weather. Other times I've run in the late evening, like around 8-9 p.m. - but again, it's still hot then!

Today I thought I'd get up early and run before things really started to bake. I headed out the door shortly after 6:30 a.m. It was already 32C with the humidex! Crazy! Thankfully I'm still running 30-35 minutes, so it wasn't too unbearable. And there was a good breeze and the sun wasn't totally up yet. I think I may have to head out even earlier on Thursday morning!

How do you beat the heat? Short of cancelling my run altogether, I can't really think of any other ways to avoid running in the sauna.