Boston Marathon 2012 Heat Test

I realize the rest of the country has been suffering from a heat wave for weeks now, but this weekend was truly the first time this year that Corvallis has had hot weather.

Unfortunately, I needed to do a long run today. After last week's Corvallis Half Marathon, I had taken five days off to rest my legs and my ouchy oblique muscle. But I couldn't stall any longer, so I did a short six-miler in the heat yesterday and had a 20-miler scheduled for today.

As soon as I woke up this morning, I knew I had to get cracking - at 7:00am, the sun was already blazing into our bedroom window. I jumped into my shoes, had a quick Clif Bar and got going just after 8:00 to try to beat the heat, but...

As an aside, while understanding that the Boston Marathon folks had it tough last week in the heat, I must admit I sort of felt, "just suck it up and run already." This is called "foreshadowing."

So I took off and felt pretty good for the first seven or eight miles. It was still fairly cool and the sun wasn't high enough in the sky to worry about - still lots of shade. Still, I had gone through my water bottle and had to fill it up again at Dixon on the OSU Campus during mile eleven.

Then, the second half of the run...

As you can see by my pace times, it got hot. There was no shade anywhere. All the uphill sections were in the second half. And I ran out of water completely around mile 17. I was starting to feel a little queasy right around then - probably not a surprise since I was out of water. I was close to home though, so I figured I'd just keep struggling toward home. Stopped at a stop light during mile 18, I was feeling really light-headed. Oh boy...

As you can see by my pace, I had started walking, a lot, by then, but I was still feeling terrible. I limped home, grabbed three glasses of ice water and sat on the floor of the living room for about 20 minutes. I felt awful. Then I went to take a shower and had to sit on the side of the tub for a minute to clear my head. It was almost an hour later before I started to feel almost back to normal. Oof.

Which is all a long way to say, "Yeah, it's hard to run in the heat, and I have a lot of respect for all those people that made it through the heat in Boston last week. Congratulations on a great run."