I know its an old cliche, but the title of this post says it all about this mornings run. I had 11 miles to do and I knew it was going to be warm, but I opened up my front door to head out at 5:15am, and got hit with this heavy, warm, tropical thickness called humidity. I knew I was in trouble when I was only in mile 1, and I lost the shirt and found myself sweating profusely .. usually that doesn’t happen until mile 4 or 5, but not today. I continued on as it got lighter out, hoping that the sun wouldn’t come out and it would stay cloudy and hazy to keep the temperature down, thankfully it never came out. I had checked the temperature before I left the house, and even though it was only at 70 degrees, there is not doubt the humidity killed me today.

It was about mile 9 that I really started the feel the dehydration set in, you know the normal signs i’ve written about before, the fatigue, the lack of sweat, increased heart rate, the dry mouth .. it was all there .. i knew I was in trouble. Thankfully I knew i didn’t have that far to go before I got home, then the next saga started..

I got back to the house around 6:50am, terribly dehydrated that I actually had to just sit as the sweat just poured from me .. it was awful. I skipped breakfast because i was already late to start getting ready for work, so I just grabbed something on the road and headed up to shower. I took a shower and not more than 5 minutes afterward, i was soaked with sweat again … so I decided to stand over the central air vent that I have in the bathroom, it helped cool me down until I got dressed. I felt terrible, totally sweated out and having to goto work. I ran right out the door then, jumped in the BMW, cranked up the air. I finally cooled down by the time I stopped to get a gatorade, however my shirt was still soaked, I looked terrible, thankfully I wore a dark color, you couldn’t quite tell it was wet.

So whats the moral of the story? I have to be more conscious of the humidity as a factor in my runs. If I took a water bottle with me, I would have been okay, but I chose not to thinking its ‘just 11 miles’ … duh, I have to be smarter… i’m glad this wasn’t my 20 miler that I blew!