Those who detest doing very easy runs in extreme heat are at increased risk of needing an attitude adjustment
Neurotics must always consider the well-being of their imaginary out-of-shape companions
When it gets above 80 degrees American, I won’t take Rosie for any kind of daytime run unless there’s cloud cover, and even then I limit the session to around half an hour. All of our summertime runs include stops every ten or so minutes for creek-dunks, which is always convenient since most creeks have been constructed by God to conform with remarkable fidelity to the paths of extant greenways built by and for recreating humans and their four-legged accomplices.
When it’s 90 degrees and sunny, all Rosie gets is a walk, even with the creek-dunks. When an animal is panting from the exertion of walking slowly, that animal is in no condition to be exercising no matter how trained or eager it is. Fitness is no more a primary or even relevant limiting factor in such a scenario than it would be for Eliud Kipchoge if he decided to run a 5,000 meters at noon in Bangkok in a Gore-Tex suit. At a certain point that varies widely across homeothermic creatures, heat dissipation is the work—the only exertion the body is prepared to in fact undertake, even if it doesn’t count as “exercise.”
Such is one way to introduce the fact that I did a run yesterday by myself when it was around 90 degrees and sunny. I felt good, but I had no illusions of running “hard,” which for me these days is a concept diluted to the point of homeopathic five-second downhill surges when no one is looking. Feeling good despite objectively unwelcoming conditions and not worrying about it1 led me to think of why anyone planning an easy day would feel especially beset by nature when confronted with a hot, but not Indochina-level-hot, afternoon.
Disclaimers: I understand that no one would choose to run in such conditions given an alternative, and that dehydration and overexposure to ultraviolet sunlight ate valid concerns. What I’m getting at here is that people exist who tell themselves in advance of a scheduled or obviously needed recovery run that pace doesn’t matter, only to step outside and become testy when faced with a run that will demand—no negotiating—a far-slower-than-usual pace no matter a given runner’s intentions. This includes runs in snowstorms or on snow-packed paths, with or without extreme cold (see link below), or streets as well as sauna-like days.
I’ve known many competitive runners who claim to be okay with all but jogging their recovery days. They’ll say they’re fine with running as slowly as is needed to get in a session while still allowing unseen biochemical restorative processes to predominate over whatever inevitable muscular damage incurred from that session.
But this stated ethos reaches back to the days before GPS watches, which most runners now own and use to record every session—hard, easy or in between. Once these watches become ubiquitous and some fairly fast friends found out how slowly they were really running in order to recover, they took it as an insult. For many runners, it turns out that “I’ll run as slowly as it takes” translates to “I’ll even run 8:00 pace, but slower than that is fucking jogging” once objective data enters the picture.
Although I often stress the need to hold back when feeling good, or at least vaccine-uninjured, for this or that reason, there are comparatively few situations in which it’s a definitively bad idea to run a little faster than conversational pace even when an easy day is on the schedule and part of a sensible race-oriented plan. If you’ve just done a hard workout two days ago, have a long run on the aerobic docket tomorrow, and are feeling unusually good today, then stretching a planned 5-miler to 7 miles and running 7:15s instead of 7:30s is probably not a bonehead move.
The problem more often rears its head when a runner has a big effort coming up in less than a week and finds excuses to turn days that absolutely demand rest or a very easy effort into something else. An example is the runner who turns a goal marathon into a five-day trip and winds up doing one of those “spirit 5Ks” two days before a marathon that’s led by an elite or otherwise famous perambulator (often a Wokish crapcaster) and winds up tired from the effort because he or she practically races it. If this kind of whimsical shitcanning of a tapering plan sounds unlikely coming from anyone but a pure novice, bear in mind the considerable and seductive power of wanting to, say, thrive in a mountain town.
Although I have had no races planned for many years on end, I still have to be modestly cautious about overdoing things, because the real goal underlying every run—apart from getting Rosie her outdoor squirrel- and prairie-dog-coveting time—is to engage in just enough properly directed and rhythmic movement to not take a guaranteed bite out of the next day’s session, be the perpetually dodged culprit excessive fatigue or an outright injury. I average about an hour of running a day, but this is almost always split into two runs and I rarely run for 60 unbroken minutes. This means that if I were to run ten miles at less than a jog, it would constitute an unusual training load. So when I knew I would be out in the heat for an hour yesterday, I decided to stay true to my borderline jogging pace lest I find myself surprisingly tired 50 minutes in at any clip just from the duration combined with the warmth of the afternoon.
I’ve mentioned the utility of either running recovery efforts with someone who is assured of running no faster than your easy pace or, if running by yourself, pretending you have such a companion alongside. This “companion” is simply an extension of your “running conscience” and can take the form of anyone you want, other than people you’re currently involved with in extramarital affairs, defamation lawsuits, or extortion schemes (such “consciences” are always primed with dangerously catalytic ideas). You should not hold audible conversations with any imaginary companions whenever anyone is within about fifty feet of you, but you should “listen” to them when they give advice sich as, “Hey, instead of picking it up to play unannounced chicken with that approaching scooter-user, why not step onto the grass beside the path and put an end to that surge that was already building? You still have 55 minutes left.”
Finally, many runners now have their own treadmills (he wrote from a city where the average price for a home listing is $1.3 million), and many of them would rather do an easy day inside when it’s grinding-out outside. Or, if they don’t own a treadmill, they’ll use the heat as an excuse to climb aboard one at a gym, where they can then find someone to have an affair with, defame, or partner with in a broad criminal conspiracy.
This is all fine as long as the treadmill is set to a genuine recovery pace; in my experience, people who more quickly resort to treadmills also more quickly resort, on average, to being disgusted with paces they consider to be jogging paces. I admit, however, that since 2020 I have become extraordinarily leery of the idea of doing anything with a roof over my head that I can do in the far greater outdoors, even if it means sacrificing a degree of First World comfort for an hour or so. So I almost always tell people to get outside (and not being their phones with them).
In the case of yesterday, I decided I could just spend an hour guiltlessly pattering around and hunting for obvious ultrarunners, i.e., people running my pace or more slowly in the middle of a blazing-hot day but wearing fanny-packs or fluid vests.