This isn’t a direct sequel to my last post, it simply happens that I had additional new experiences since that time. On Sunday, I raced a 1600M at a new track meet that was announced recently by the Boulder Road Runners. Though I hadn’t planned on racing until early September, the meet occurred near my house and was inexpensive by race standards. My expectations were low since this event wasn’t on my radar, but I couldn’t reconcile turning down a meet with those two factors.
How was this new territory? The race was at 5:00 on a Sunday evening, which is unusual. I’m 99.9% sure I’d never raced on a Sunday evening. There are plenty of races on Sunday mornings where I’ve competed and I’ve done evening races, just not in combination. It wasn’t a radically new experience, but it was a “first” for my running portfolio.
The other new experience was the temperature at the start of the race and an effect from it. It was in the low 90s with the sun beating down. Readers of my blog are well-aware that I enjoy running in the heat and this temperature was still far-off of my personal record of running in 105.8 degrees. It was basically tied for the hottest race I’d competed in, which was 91 degrees during a nighttime 5K in Phoenix, AZ. The key word there is nighttime.
500 meters into this race, my throat went to parched dry and raspy. I was stunned. I’d experienced this in hot weather running before, but never until I was much further into the run. This didn’t happen at all in Phoenix. I came up some possibilities for why it occurred.
Most of us are well-aware of the difference between being in the sun versus shade on a hot day. There were patchy clouds around race time but for the duration of the 1600, it was all sun with nothing blocking it. The bigger factor, I think, was the intensity of the race. On a long run in hot weather, I may be going at a per-mile pace of anywhere from 8-minute-something to very high 6-minute-something. On Sunday, my final time was 5:52. I was pushing my body at a higher level, trying to suck in more oxygen than I normally would, and that likely caused some of the drying out. It’s true that I wasn’t going much slower in Phoenix (roughly 6:10 mile pace) but it is slower and I go back to the sun intensity. Also, on a long run in hot weather I’ll carry fluids, which obviously staves off the dry throat factor.
The photo at the top of the blog is post-race from Sunday and I’m holding up my third-place prize: a microwavable “Beast Mode Breakfast” meal. It ranks among the more unusual prizes I’ve taken home. It was much easier to prepare than the frozen turkey I won from one race, and just slightly more time-consuming to prepare than the bundt cake I won at a different one.