Weekly Recap: Hot August Running

Can you believe we are already in the middle of August? My goodness, summer flies by, especially when the days are filled with miles and miles of training for the Richmond Marathon! Here’s how this past week worked out for training:

Monday: We were still up at the cabin on our long weekend with Dustin’s family. My workout was 1 mile warm-up, then 2 sets of 3 miles at tempo pace (5 minute break in between) and 1 mile cool-down. My tempo pace was 7:40, but it was quite hard for me to keep that up for 2 sets of 3 miles on the hilly country roads.

Tuesday: Back in Minneapolis for a double run! Early morning run with my friend Monica: 6.5 miles, then 5 easy miles after work with Matilda the vizsla. 11.5 miles on the day.

Wednesday: 6.5 miles with my friend Lindsey. She recently bought a condo in my neighborhood, which means I have a very convenient running buddy! We used to run together before she moved, but now its even easier to coordinate.

That evening Dustin and I went to the Internet Cat Film Festival at CHS Field (where the St. Paul Saints play). It was a really fun date night! They had food carts, beverages, music, vendors and of course, a one-hour compilation of all the best internet cat videos. Purr-fect little event!

Thursday: Another double run day: 5 miles in the morning with 15x200m pickups (200m is pretty short) with 45 seconds in between each set. I love my Garmin 220 for setting up workouts like this, as otherwise I would be looking at my watch constantly. Instead, I can rely on the Garmin to beep when each set is done and when the break is over.  I ran another 3 miles after work for 8 miles on the day.

After the evening run, we had dinner with Dustin’s brother and family at Tilia, one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants.

Tilia doesn’t take reservations, but it’s right by Wild Rumpus, which is the cutest children’s bookstore. They have chickens, tail-less cats, and other animals wandering around the store. Everyone loves this place!

Can you believe the below picture is a chicken?

We were able to keep Dustin’s nephew entertained at Wild Rumpus until our table was ready at Tilia. I was pleasantly surprised that Tilia also offered a little box full of cards, toys and more to keep the young ones happy as well during our meal! Who knew?

Friday: I had hoped to get up early to get my run done, but instead I slept in and had to do it after work. And it was HOT. We had a heat advisory with temperatures in the mid-90’s with high humidity, so I took it nice and slow with lots of water breaks for 8 miles after work. After the run, Dustin’s family came over again for some Hello Pizza and wine. I couldn’t drink any wine though as I was so dehydrated from the run. Instead, I stuck to water and NUUN to try to get back to normal.

Saturday: Due to the MDRA 15k that I was registered for on Sunday, I only had 4 miles to do on Saturday rather than my usual long run. Matilda and I were up early for an easy 4 miles, before I met a friend for a few hours of stand-up paddle boarding on the lakes. It was another HOT day, but being on the water was a wonderful way to enjoy the weather. There were so many people out in kayaks and paddle boards; it reminded me why I love our city! Everyone was out and about enjoying a hot and sunny August day. The rest of the day was spent relaxing with family and rehydrating for Sunday’s race.

Sunday: The MDRA 15k (9.33 miles)! I’ll have a race recap up later this week.

The heat was supposed to break overnight, but it didn’t. We woke up to temperatures already in the upper 70’s at 5:30 am and 80% humidity. Not exactly perfect race conditions, but if we only raced on perfect days, we’d never race, right?

I knew my pace would suffer, and it did, but it was still a solid effort on a tough day. I had 2 miles to warmup and slogged through 3.7 to cool-down for 15 miles on the day.

When it comes to hot weather running, this graph is a helpful reminder of the significant effects the temperature can have on your performance:
Temperature can slow you down, but humidity also negatively affects your performance. This article from Runner’s World and this one from Active.com are both great sources of information on how humidity can affect your performance.

Total: 61 miles on the week.  There isn’t much time to squeeze in a ton of cross training with so much running. My coach said to use any free time I have to focus on stretching and the targeted strength training that he gave me based on a gait analysis that he did awhile back. He advised me to stretch every time I am watching TV or relaxing- as much as possible! I still hope to fit in some yoga or solidcore if I can, but will definitely listen to him and use my free time for stretching too.

There’s my recap of marathon training for the Anthem Richmond Marathon on November 14th. I hope you had a strong week in fitness and survived the August heat!