Adapting to Extreme Heat by Turning to Running at Night

This morning I brought my Honda Civic over to the auto maintenance shop to get routine work on it, including an oil change...the "percentage" on my dashboard reading had gotten pretty low.  When I came around to pick it up this afternoon, I got two "100" readings on my dashboard: one, the oil was restored to "100%"...I guess that's good, right?  But the other was the outside temperature reading: 100 degrees...ugh!  And that's what it's been today, excruciatingly hot here in Gainesville. At 7 PM it had only gone down to 95, and for someone like me who likes to go out this time of day to run and walk in the neighborhood for a reasonably long distance, that's just not going to work.  So I considered my resources and how I could adapt myself to the situation at hand.  About fourteen years ago I read a book by ultra-marathon runner Dean Karnazes titled Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner.  In this sports autobiography, he described how he would regularly run the streets of his home California town and the outlying roads deep into the nighttime hours to train for his ultra-long races.  I thought that was pretty cool, but considering how crazy/wacko some people can be with their paranoia and suspicion, the idea of me doing something like that just didn't seem very wise.  Fortunately, a few years ago we got a nice privacy fence put around our back yard, and with some solar powered lights at strategic spots it can be adequately lit up into the night to provide a venue for back-and-forth running and speed-walking.  Then I bought a simple digital tally counter I could wear as a ring while working out and realized that I had everything in place to do my own all-night running if I so desired.  Since it was so hot today and I have somewhere I need to be tomorrow morning, I decided to wait until the sun sets this evening and the temperature has abated and go into my backyard and see how much back-and-forth ground I can cover...I already have it all measured out and with each successive lap I just hit my tally counter.  I still like going around my neighborhood, but this can be a good makeshift substitute if it works out with the bathroom always nearby while I can still listen to my Amazon Music while running and walking...

Training Strategies at Home

After suffering through much of the early part of February with rainy weather here in northern Florida, it looks like we've entered a stretch of pleasantly dry, cool conditions.  That's good for me and my back yard, one end of which tends to get a bit marshy when it has been raining for a few days.  I'd like to transform it into an outdoor exercise gym, and have the widest part between fences measured so that I can do walking and running laps.  With walking, my timed speeds on this linear there-and-back cyclic course line up well with what I've been able to accomplish on my gym's treadmill.  One reason for this is that when I reach a fence on my walk to turn back in the other direction, I have little need to decelerate, and thus tend to better maintain my pace.  But with running this is different: if I don't drastically slow myself down then I'm going to crash into the fence.  So I'm thus working on measuring out a more perimeter-based running course with smooth corners that will permit me maximum speed without having to slow down too much.  I like the grass surface over asphalt with running since it jars the body less...save the hard impacts for races! My main issue is that, with the limited space it's hard for me to hit a challenging short pace. Also, I'm thinking of getting one of those overhead exercise bars that I can do dead hangs and chin-ups on. As for my gym, I can still go there for speed workouts on the treadmill and, of course, swimming.  As well as possible resistance weight training...

Running and Yard Work

After about three or four days of pleasant autumn weather, the temperatures have once again, for the last three or so, crept back up into the eighties, making outdoor running more of a chore again.  So instead, I decided to actually DO a chore...which is cutting down the many overgrown bushes around my yard.  Accustomed to doing this with a manual saw, I finally joined with the "technology" group of yard maintenance workers and bought a chainsaw.  Because of its heaviness, using it was as strenuous of an upper-body workout as using the manual saw.  But wow, the quickness with which I went down the row of shrubbery was astounding.  I hope it keeps functioning well, for I have a lot more to do.  Speaking of running, I'm still doing it but indoors...