Welcome to the Heat Dome

After a mild May and a cool and rainy start to June, the first heat wave of summer is here. Heaven help us all.

Right now, the forecast for my race this week is favorable, but it’s on the other side of several days of high-90s temperatures with feels-like-the-inside-of-a-dishwasher humidity and absolutely no wind. I spent a brief 45 minutes mowing the lawn around 7 this morning and came inside dripping. After sitting in the office parking lot all day, my car thought it was 109 degrees at quitting time. We’re in the shit.

My plan is to cut back even more than I had originally planned in the run-up to Sunset, and let the heat make up the difference in training stimulus. I will not be doing any more than a half-hour jog each day between now and Thursday, and even that looks like a lot of work from where I’m sitting. With any luck, the heat dome will lift and I will feel like the first day of fall on the sixth day of summer.

This weekend I met up with some friends for a workout, which is always better than going alone. These guys have made a summer tradition of weekend tempos that get one mile longer every week. This week was five miles. Joining them for the whole workout would have meant racing five miles five days before racing five miles at Sunset, so I rode the bus to halfway and called it a day.

In the future I hope I can join them for more. I have been quietly wanting to feel ready to race a half marathon by the fall, and that is exactly the kind of workout that can get me there. Right now I need to weather the heat dome, stay fresh, run Sunset like a fall breeze (briskly), and let the last few months of training soak in.

After that, bring on the summer miles. Just please spare me the heat.