It Already Feels Like Summer...

I don’t say that like it’s a good thing.

It was already 22°C by the time I walked out the door at around ten this morning. People were outside, wandering around in shorts and T-shirts, basking in the sunlight and generally looking like they were having a grand old time.

You see this every year when the weather warms up around here. It’s a spring-time rite in Toronto: Torontonians emerging from hibernation; casting aside the sweaters, scarves and heavy coats; praising all the Gods for the sunshine and warmth, and just revelling in the knowledge that this is the furthest time of the year from that next, cold, dark winter.

I was probably the only one out there that would have given almost anything for it to have been at least ten degrees cooler, or cloudy, or both. Everyone else was so freaking… smiley. I hated them all.

(Okay. Everybody already knows I prefer the cold, but I feel the need to take an aside to point out that I’m not always such a kill-joy when it comes to warmth. There are those times when I appreciate it. Like right now. It’s up to 27°C, and any weather that gets women into tight tops and short skirts can’t be a totally bad thing. Sitting here at a street-side table on Queen Street West, nursing a cup of Colombian-Parisian blend, I have to say that the parade of women has been distracting enough that it’s taken me almost an hour to get the last two-hundred-and-fifty words down. But... um... yes. Back to it then.)

My issue this morning was that I had to get in my last long run before the Sporting Life 10K next Sunday. My schedule called for a 16K 3/1 run. (The ‘3/1’ denotes that I was to run the first three-quarters of the run at an easy pace, before speeding up to my race pace over the last four kilometres.)

The run was a spectacular failure.

Even running at my easy pace, I knew I might be in trouble when sweat started dripping off my face just a kilometre-and-a-half in. It didn't help that I didn't have any water with me. After trying to slow down my pace even more, I finally pulled up at the 7K mark, hot as hell, just soaked in sweat, with my heart-rate running a good fifteen beats-per-minute higher than it should have been given my pace, and with barely enough moisture left in my mouth to spit.

Fortunately, at that point in my route, I was only two kilometres away from home. Any thoughts that I was just being a wimp, and that I could have pushed on had I had more mental fortitude, were put aside when I noticed my heart-rate stayed way too elevated during my walk home. The fact that I’d sensibly cut the run short was further pounded home when I discovered, after getting back to my apartment, that I’d dropped two-and-a-half pounds of water weight after just an hour out there.

I was already severely dehydrated. It was probably best that I didn’t push things into full-blown heat stroke.

The really annoying thing – and the reason I left the water bottle at home – is that I was regularly running anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five kilometres last September in 20-25°C temperatures without water. But I suppose that was after I had fully adapted to warm weather by running through an entire Toronto summer.

I’m not particularly worried about heat dissipation next Sunday. The long-range forecasts have us with highs of 14°C that day, which means it likely will be below 10°C when the race starts at 8:00am. I’m just ticked that I didn’t complete the full workout – especially since I’ve only got four more days to get in any hard training sessions before I have to shut it down to rest up. I’ll go for an easy 20K cycle this evening (easier to carry water) and then swap my recovery run tomorrow for a tempo run.

At least it’s forecast to be 13°C with showers.

Anybody moaning about that weather tomorrow morning can kiss my ass.

(Okay, nix that evening bike ride. That summer-like evening thunderstorm snuck up on us pretty quickly.)