By Greg Hexum
We are almost into August so this article is late coming, but there are, no doubt, more 80 and 90 degree days ahead with typical Midwest humidity awaiting you as you head for the trails each day. With this in mind, here are a few tips, or maybe reminders, for getting the most enjoyment and training effect out of your summer running. Those two things go together all the time, but maybe especially in the steamy summer months.
First, the rapid-fire-low-hanging fruit. Run during cooler times of the day, re-schedule your longer runs for cooler days or times of day, wear a hat, sunglasses and *sunscreen, find shady trails for a portion of your weekly runs and wear as little clothing as possible (or at least lightweight light-colored clothing). There’s nothing magical about this piece of advice or several pieces of advice as it may be. Most of this is research-based and experience tested. For example, several studies indicate lower energy output for runners who wear sunglasses while running in bright conditions. Watch the upcoming Olympic marathons and count the sunglasses wearing runners. It isn’t just psychological, and even if it is, that’s science too!
I put an asterisk next to sunscreen to remind myself to address something that floats around the running community. Some runners refuse to wear it based on the premise that it reduces sweating by blocking pores and thereby causes them to overheat. I even heard a U.S. Olympic Trials television commentator mention this on a hot, sunny day in Eugene, Oregon last month. Here’s my take—I’m not even going to dive into the research—wear sunscreen and peer pressure your running friends to do so as well. Runners expose themselves to lots of sun, both chronically and in acute, intense bouts. This is, of course, healthy in moderation, but most runners aren’t moderates. If I don’t remind myself, I’ll run for an hour in the sun, then go right to the lawnmower for an hour or two (since I’m already sweaty) and then go to a local swimming hole for a dip. Without sunscreen, that four hours, multiplied by many days over my 50 years of outdoorsy life dramatically increases my risk for skin cancer. Your’s too. If wearing sunscreen makes us feel a little hotter and thus slows us down a fraction of a second per mile, so be it. This is better than the any number of skin cancers caused by cumulative sun damage to our largest organ. If you’re an Olympian, competing for fame and glory, do what you gotta do on race day. Everybody else would be wise to slather on 30-50 SPF. And, use plenty. Think a full tablespoon for your face and neck alone.
This will actually be just one tip. Second, double down on hydration in the hot and humid months. This means that you should a) increase your global hydration by drinking more water (note: water) each day and week, and b) increase your during and post-run hydration. Unless you’re running beyond an hour, it’s rarely necessary to carry water in a bottle, belt, or vest, but I say rarely. If you’ve ever run next to an Iowa cornfield at 2 p.m. on an early August afternoon, you know that you can cook yourself from the inside out in an hour. If you’re doing a run that’s long (for you) in the heat and humidity, you should have access to water.
Sometimes it is so hot that you feel the need for constant hydration. I once did a 24 mile run around a park in Montreal when it was 100 degrees Fahrenheit (or whatever that translates to in the fringe, socialist, nonsense metric system used by the rest of the civilized world). I drank every mile on the mile. By the end I could barely make it to the next water fountain stop even though I could hear and feel the sloshing Camelback that my stomach had become. Although I finished this run, it ruined my build up for a fall marathon. More on that shortly.
There’s lots to know about electrolyte and carbohydrate intake, sweat rate, salt loss, fluid loading and hyponatremia. Those five topics are the subjects of innumerable dissertations and sports beverage marketing strategies. I’m not exceptionally qualified to discuss hydration science, but I can tell you that if you don’t increase your water intake to match an increase in heat and humidity, your running will suffer. If you’re interested in maximizing your performance through hydration, I recommend the linked Science of Ultra Podcast in which Dr. Shawn Bearden interviews Dr.’s Sam Cheuvront and Robert Kenefick.
You don’t need to carry around a gallon jug of water like the dude at the fitness center, but you probably need more water than you’d normally drink. You’ll hear in the linked podcast that from a research standpoint, drinking to thirst is inadequate! My layperson test is that if you’re waking up twice every night (without a medical condition) with an urgent need to pee, you’re drinking too much. If you aren’t waking up in the morning with an urgent need to pee, you’re not drinking enough.
Third, adjust your training volume and intensity. This tip is the reason you’ve read this far into the article , even if you didn’t know it yet. Start with my simplistic definitions. Volume = how much distance or time you’re running. Intensity = how hard you’re exerting yourself. In general, the hotter and/or more humid it is, the less volume one is going to be comfortable doing. And for any given amount of time or distance run, one is going to feel like the usual paces or efforts are more intense. This is common sense, but we runners like to ignore the fact that when it gets hotter and/or more humid we need to shorten our runs and/or slow down to reduce our effort.
When it is uncomfortably hot and/or humid you must cut down the amount of hard running you have planned for a given work out. Let’s say Coach Kyle Schmidt scheduled you to do A fifteen minute warm up, followed by 30 minutes at a 7/10 effort, followed by a 15 minute cool-down jog with 4 x 15 seconds fast sprinkled in. If the dew point is high, he may adjust your workout to be 10 minute warm up followed by 2 x 10 minutes at at 7/10 effort with two minutes of walking between, followed by a 5 minute slow jog. What Kyle is doing in this example is recognizing the fact that hot and humid equals harder and/or slower. He’d adjust this already taxing workout to keep the overall output closer to what he intended on the day. Ignoring the weather and inflexibly gutting through the workout like I did in Montreal in August of 2001 will mean you’ve worked harder than you should have on the day, and contrary to your hardworking runner instincts, that’s not a good thing. Do that too often or for too long and you’ll fail to reach your goals due to overtraining or inappropriate training for your fitness level.
While there’s an infinite combination of the ways that volume and intensity work together in running, I’ll give two more examples of where runners go wrong when it’s hot or humid. First, in summer months (as in all months), we must listen to our bodies to make sure our easy running days are authentically easy. It is incredibly common to go a little too hard on every easy run when it’s hot and/or humid. With the sun shining it can be easy to feel good enough to complete your usual loop at the same pace or in the same time despite hot/humid conditions. On an easier day, the volume and intensity are bound to still be doable for you, but the run may have been, unintentionally, 10% harder than it should have been. Doing this occasionally is no biggie, but doing this multiple times per week all summer (or in long, single bouts) will sabotage your training. The number one training stimulus that will determine your long-term performance, consistency, health, and well-being as a runner is your low intensity running.
This kind of running makes up the 80 plus percent base of your training. It’s unsexy because it is the accumulation of easy running over months and years that matters. That’s also why it is so important to do it right. Heat/humidity makes it harder to execute easy running. Our egos tell us we are moving too slowly, that our fitness has eroded, or that we are being “soft.” Don’t fall into this heat and humidity trap. Easy is easy. Kyle and I prescribe most running in a training program to be 5/10 effort or what we call “all day pace.” Runners don’t need a heart rate monitor or a GPS watch to run easy (although there’s nothing wrong with fitness technology used properly). To run easy enough on hot and humid days, start slower than normal and gradually ease your way to an effort that feels as though you could sustain it “all day” without overheating. Only run as long as you can without exceeding this effort, even if that means cutting your run back substantially that day. Find the effort level that feels stress free. As a last resort, hit the treadmill in an air conditioned building. Runners in Houston use treadmills in the summer for the same reason Minnesotans do in the winter—cuz sometimes it’s just too miserable outside to enjoy or benefit from your run.
A last note on heat and humidity is that you can and will adapt to these conditions, at least to some extent. I’m linking a dew point chart for your reference. It demonstrates just how potent the impact of hot and humid conditions will be on your running.
Notably, and just like everything else involving the human body, there’s a range of response to these conditions. While some adapt relatively well and can perform closer to their best when dew points rise, others are a total train wreck regardless of how much time they have to adapt. After a couple of summers of endurance training, you’ll probably know where you are on the spectrum. Know that nobody totally escapes the deleterious effects of heat and humidity.
Contact duluthrunnerblog@gmail.com about this article or other training questions.