It's Gettin's Hot In Herrrre

The famous poet and scholar Nelly once said, “It’s gettin’ hot in herrre.”

Man, was he right.

This weekend, I went for a run around 3:50pm. True, this is one of the hottest parts of the day, but I run on a trail that is pretty shaded (or so I thought), and there was a nice breeze out. Besides, it’s just Florida. In April. How hot can it be, right?

Eighty-six degrees, that’s how hot.

That doesn’t sound that bad. It’s not even 90! But let me tell you, friends, 86 degrees is really freakin’ hot.

To make matters worse, about half way through the run, my iPod froze. Again. (Forget all the nice things I said about it before; I am soooo ready for a hardware update.)

So instead of focusing on the musical stylings of Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies, all I could think about was the sweltering heat. The sweat pouring down my face. The ever-approaching feeling that I was going to pass out and die from heat exhaustion, which wasn’t at all helped by the fact that I had just read an article on RunnersWorld.com about that very thing happening to someone who was in much better shape than I am.

But somehow I powered through and made it home, plopped on the floor, and begged Jae for a cold glass of water and an ice pack for the back of my neck. I cooled off quickly and felt really good; I had actually gone pretty far. Still, lesson learned: DON’T RUN WHEN IT’S HOTTER THAN 80 DEGREES.

Unfortunately, I live in the Sunshine State. It was 78 degrees on Christmas. So my window of opportunity for running in cool weather is very, very limited.

The way I see it, I have two options: early morning or late evening. The problem with early morning is…how can I put this without sounding totally lazy…OK, there’s no way, I guess I’m just lazy…on Sunday, I woke up to the sound of the ice cream truck driving through my neighborhood. Think about that. The ice cream truck doesn’t exactly make a breakfast run (although that would be glorious). As it is, I have to be at work at 8am. I love that I live 10 minutes from my job, so I can leave at 7:50am, meaning that I can get out of bed as late as 7:40 if I really want to. Usually I get up around 7:30. And even that’s a struggle. You’re telling me that you want me to try and get up at 6:15 just so I have time to eat, run, and shower? And what about later, when I’m up to 15 miles? My wake-up calls are going to be at 5am!! No way.

So last night I gave the late evening run a try. I headed out around 8pm. All was well. The air was cool and crisp, the sun was low in the sky, and I was feeling great.

Until the sun went below the horizon and the hobos started emerging from their respective hiding places all around Kapok Park. Yikes. Maybe I waited a little too long. The good news is I had to pick up the pace because the path along the rail road track isn’t lit, so I got some nice sprints in at the end of my last interval.

Perhaps 7:45pm is the ideal time, for now at least. Once my distances improve, I’ll have to move to 7pm, but that might be too early still. Especially because by then it will be July or August and that is way hotter than April.

Who knew you had to have a meteorology degree just to be a runner?