Saturday Long Run: Return to Humiditytown

It was really, really humid this morning. The kind of humid that makes me think it's time to find another hobby. The kind of humid that makes me question the existence of good in this world. The kind of humid that makes me right write posts complaining about humid it is. The kind of humid that makes me screw up homophones.

Hal Higdon called for 9 this week. Since I've done such a great job of listening to him so far, even this week, my first full week "on program", I just ran my usual 10-mile route through Manchester and Mt. Wolf. I had a slow pace again today, but unlike Monday's unexplainable bonk, I'm just going to attribute this one to slogging through 100% humidity.

(Yours truly at my finishing point, Humiditytown Middle School)

Did I mention that it was really, really humid? It was 73 degrees at the start of my run, which is quite warmer than it's been for my morning runs the past two weeks but nothing special overall for the summer, but the humidity must have been AT LEAST 1000% if not infinitely more. It was very overcast, which allows me to forgo the visor, but I was still disgusting and sweaty within half a mile.

Since words are powerless to convey exactly how much I was sweating, let's again use the power of MS Paint to try to capture the level of disgustingness (That's not a word, spell check? Screw you!) we're talking about here (click to enlarge):


Good luck on your runs, everyone. I'll be inside playing video games. (And best wishes to anyone in Irene's path.)

HumidityFest 2011 -- In Pictures

At mile 1 one of today's run:



At mile 10 of today's run:

Sluggish

You may have noticed that I dislike running in hot weather. Therefore, over the last few days when I saw 58 degrees as today's low, I made it my plan to get out for a run this morning. I got ready to go, and checked weather one last time only to find that it already was supposedly 68 degrees. Oops, the low is supposedly tonight.

But, I was up and ready to get out there, so out there I went. I arrived at my starting point at Northeastern High School and found a cloud cover that would not be out of place on Venus, humidity that I suspect was well above 90%, and according to the digital sign at the school, a temperature of 66 degrees. With the sun a distant memory, the heat alone wouldn't have been as bad, but the Amazon-jungle strength humidity made the run unpleasant by about the time I hit mile 2. I pressed on, though, since I had eaten quite heartily the day before and had a big diner breakfast in the near future.

The roads and sidewalks of Manchester were deserted, as other humans had wisely elected to stay in their beds. But I was not alone.

I see slugs on almost all my summer morning runs. I try not to step on them, but they seem pretty innocuous most of the time. But I've NEVER seen a slug like this:

(10oz. hydration bottle for scale)

Anyone who has seen the 1988 horror classic "Slugs" knows that slugs are terrifying predators who can decimate a whole town. So, a few of my high school friends and I are probably safe at least. Since I have seen the film, I took off running. I mean, I was already running, but I started running faster and went farther just to get away my pursuer. In hindsight, I probably needn't have worried. My route crossed the path of Giant Mutant Slug twice, and in the time it took me to run two miles, my slimy nemesis had moved about six inches.

In my escape, I went 10 miles in 1:36:35, bringing me to 38 miles this week, my second highest mileage week ever. I got three 30-milers in in pretty warm, humid conditions, so I think I can work my way up to some 15-16 mile long runs by the end of August, especially if I can find somewhere flatter and shadier than my usual courses.