Hills vs. Heat

Holy cow, there are a lot of updates to share regarding running.  Like:

1) I did the 12-mile run in northern Georgia.  At the time, it was, by a lot, the hardest run that I had ever attempted.  At one point, I didn't even want to do downhills any more.  It was that bad.  Also, the whole thing was at 2200 feet and over which (who knew) is really hard if you usually run in flat swamps.  I was third last; the two people behind me hiked the course.  But I finished it!  And believe me, that felt like an enormous achievement.  There were at least two points where I was tempted to go back to the start instead of continuing onward.

2) Then I did the Rattlesnake Run and the 10-mile race of Wildhorse.  Both of these were more challenging than I anticipated.  Rattlesnake was hard because it was a week after the Georgia run and my legs were completed dead.  It didn't help that there are (Florida) hills there, plus it got hot that day.  Wildhorse was hard because the last mile was really hard.  Ever had to climb a hill during a race that was so steep, you needed to use a rope (rope was provided)?  I have!

2.5) I sprained my ankle (not running.  Wearing heels during a night out in Pittsburgh).  Fortunately, it was just a mild sprain and I was back and running in a week.

3) Today, which was a mess.  The plan was to do the 30K that is part of the X-Country Marathon.  However, let me share with you the weather this morning.  As a reminder, it is mid-November:

No.

We started at 7:30am, which as you can see presented pretty challenging conditions (far too close to the Threshold of Ick).  By around 9:30am, I realized that I was done.  Just done.  This race will live in notoriety as my first DNF (did not finish).  It was too hot and there were lots of parts of the course that were not shady.  So you can add ten degrees to those temperatures near the end.  And you know what?  After the fun bouts with heat exhaustion that I have experienced in the past, I didn't want to risk it.  I'm pretty sure that I did have heat exhaustion, but it wasn't as bad as last summer.  Probably the fact that I gobbled down some salty foods right away helped.  Go pretzels.

And I was definitely not alone.  There were at least a dozen other people who dropped out of the 30K race.

If you're curious, all of this is training for my next major challenge: Croom Zoom.  I signed up for the 50K.  Yes I did.  My first ultramarathon.  With any luck, the weather will be more amenable (also we start earlier).

So yeah.  I have not had a great month of racing, that is for sure.  But I am reminding myself that the more you challenge yourself, the more likely it is that you will run into adversity--and the races that I have been doing are challenging ones.  But adversity is not the same as being defeated.  Today was a mess, but that was due to circumstances out of my control.

And we now have the definitive answer: hills > heat