Summer Training in the South

Actually, here's another point worth making: instead of running long runs very early on hot days, run them starting in the early evening. The advantage of this is obvious: even though temperatures will be much higher at, say, 6 PM than at 6 AM, the humidity will be significantly lower. Most importantly, when you reach the final half hour of your run, the weather will be working with you--sun going down, or down, temperature falling. When you run in the early (summer) morning--a two-hour run, say--you're in a witching-hour situation. If you've started too late, you're going to be dealing with heat, humidity, AND sun when you're most vulnerable: tired and dehydrated. An early-evening-into-night long run reverses this. I've had some great long runs like that. The evening cool comes on.....suddenly you're cruising, even though you're beat.

Finally, somebody mentioned the point about how you can accrue dehydration over several days, leading to diminished performances. Yes! You've really got to watch out for this. Drink extra water during the day, after your workouts. Weigh yourself every morning. If you've got fans blowing on you all night, you'll lose a pound or two just that way. You really have to make a special point of keeping the reserves topped off. Unaddressed dehydration will make you eat too much, BTW. Your body is trying to replenish the lost fluids, but you sometimes interpret it as, "I'm hungry." You're not. You're thirsty. Get it by drinking water, not by eating moist food.

The school I choose is in the southeast so i am living here for the summer and just trying to make it through. The winters are awesome, highs in the 50's it's just that im experiencing 3 months of the year here that I normally am not accustomed too.

louisianian23 wrote:

I've lived in louisiana all my life, go to college here now and doing 50-80 mpw throughout the summer. All the advice that has been given is pretty accurate.

If you wanna get any kinda of decent miles in tho you HAVE TO DOUBLE. I'm not a morning person but you need to get up by 7:30 at the latest and i wouldnt suggest doing over 7 miles in the morning and saving the longer runs for the evening 7:30 at the earliest.

At LSU I maintained 50-60 mpw year round. Took me a couple of months to realize double runs are required in the summer. I started on singles and never made it, stayed sick and racing suffered. Fluid loss is so high and the 8 and 12 milers take so much energy out of you with the day-after-day high heat index, it's just not something you can do. I'd do 3 to 5 every morning, then 4 to 7 miles or speedwork in the evening. Learn to love running in the dark. Try to go after 9:30pm if possible when heat index finally drops below 95; It's not the high daytime temps that get you, it's the lack of any cooling after the sun goes down(kinda like running in an "oven"). You can do it, adjust.

Loop your runs so you can hit the ice-chest every two/three miles(another trick that works well for Sunday long runs).

I'm on the Florida Suncoast.

A lot of good advice here.

It's the day to day cumulative stress that gets to you in the heat. You can acclimate but there are always going to be days when, inexplicably, you just can't handle the heat. Tread lightly at this point. Usually there is a period in which I'm simply physically tired from running in the day to day heat. Since it's so hot right now, that's come on within the last week. You just have to get through it without fighting too much.

You can run in this heat. It is difficult to train tho'.

I post this every summer.

The humidity is not lower in the morning. The RELATIVE humidity is, but the dewpoint is pretty insensitive to the time of day and dewpoint is the best absolute measure of moisture in the air. Relative humidity isn't a great measure of absolute humidity because it only tells you how much moisture is in the air relative to the temperature, and warmer air can hold more water before it condenses.

For example, if the dewpoint is 60 and the temp is 60, the relative humidity is 100% But that isn't nearly as humid as a dewpoint of 70 and a temp of 85, which would produce a lower RELATIVE humitity but is a higher ABSOLUTE humidity.

The reason why it seems so humid in the morning is that the temperature is lower, thus moisture doesn't evaporate as readily so you get a bit wetter.

I just treated the summer in teh same way I would treat a stint at altitude - it is a stimulus that makes your runs objectively harder at a given pace.

Right now in TN it's 90 degrees with 57% humidity. It makes for some misreable running. I usually run in the hottest part of the day due to my work schedual. I just try to slow down and take fluids all day long.

There is no way around it unless you cave in and hit the treadmill.

I hear what you're saying, and it makes sense, sort of. I just took a look at today's readings for Oxford, MS and it's clear that the dewpoint has spent most of the daylight hours, from 7:15 AM to noon, in the vicinity of the 73.4 degrees max. That specific figure shows up repeatedly. It shows up early, when the temp was 73.4 degrees and the humidity was 100%. It shows up at noon when the temp was in the high 80s but the relative humidity was much lower.

Here's the link:

But here's my question: assuming NO sun (and of course there's sun today), isn't it LESS stressful at a given dewpoint to run at the higher rather than the lower temperature? Because at the lower temperature, with 100% humidity, you get zero evaporative cooling. At the higher temperature and lower humidity, you get quite a bit of evaporative cooling.

But of course you also get dehydration at that higher temperature, which you don't get (for obvious reasons) to nearly the same extent at the lower temperature.

And in the middle of the day you get direct sunlight, which places a heat-burden on the body that superadds to the temperature/humidity stress.

My subjective impression, from 6 years' experience in this climate using a HR monitor and paying close attention, post-run, to the temp, humidity, radiant sun, and dewpoint, is that there's a witching hour between 9 and 10 AM where running is toughest. The temps have risen, the relative humidity is noticeably higher than it will be at 2 PM, and the sun is coming on strong. If I'm trying to complete a 2-hour run in that window, I'm potentially in big trouble, no matter how well I hydrate during the run.

By the same token, I've started 2-hour runs at 5:30 when it was 95 degrees and moderately low humidity, with temps falling and the sun slowly angling in the sky. Not fun, but easier than the morning.

Just out of curiosity, I put Doha, Qatar, into Weather underground.

At 6 AM it's 93 degrees, with a dewpoint of 80 degrees.

At 3 PM it's 108, but the dewpoint is only 54 degrees because the humidity has dropped to 10%. Gotta love that dry desert heat!

Unfortunately, the sun at 3 PM fries your brains.

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/OTBD/2009/6/18/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

How the hell did Frank Shorter and the rest of the crew train 140 MPW in Florida during the summers?