still hot and humid

From Mara Yamauchi's blog (overall very boring... not worthy to read), a good sentence about the toughness of the Asian summer

.....
Autumn in Tokyo
....
The summer here is so hot and sticky, that the Japanese have a whole set of special words, food, clothes etc for it.
“Natsu-bate” means endless fatigue brought on by hot, humid days, poor sleep, dehydration and other heat-induced menaces
....

Autumn is here too on the calendar, but is still so hot and humid...

Yesterday, 12 hours meeting at work, followed by a business dinner... a poor sleep because the air was so sticky and heavy in the bedroom (even with air-con...).
As soon as I hit the road this morning, I felt that it was not the best day ... much more humid than the past days and the air was so hazy that looked liked British fog (but 30C warmer).

I really struggled to make a decent 17km at easy pace, the last 20 minutes were endless...

Breakthrough (?)

This morning I guess that I reached a "breakthrough" in my training progression.
For the first time since I got back to training, I felt like I would have been able to run indefinitely.

In my very modest opinion, the best "fitness test" is neither a race or a tempo run or whatever. I rather got my best indications of fitness from the value of HR and overall feeling in an easy run.
So this morning it was really a good signal that my HR stayed easily below 150bpm and even after 45min I was still very fresh, ready to run for other 20km...
So hitting 17km @4'20" pace with average HR only 147 is very promising sign.
NOTE: all this obviously must be inserted in a context where this morning at 6am the temperature was already 29C. At the time of writing the "accuweather real feel" marks a 39C/110F.
More about current temperature in Dongguan here:
In the next weeks, I will move to a more intense phase of training, mainly targeting to increase the Lactate Thresold and Aerobic Power + strenght.
Less long runs, but many harder workouts

Wk26 Summary

Undefeated by the rain, the week had good running achievements:
- 7 runs
- 96 Km
- 2 quality runs: a long run of 27k and a very good "Marathon Effort" run on Sunday. I was planning to run around 3'50"/k, but I felt very easy at such pace and soon we stabilized around 3'45". Very good to see that the HR was much lower than 2 weeks before, even at a slightly higher pace. Closed in 37'50" with HR lower than 170bpm until K6 (weather was 26C/95% Rh)

this training period is very mentally tough ... running in the heat, no races in sight for the next 2 months. I feel so tiring to go out and be covered in sweat only after few minutes...
I need to find a good balance between making a solid base and do not getting stale for lack of stimuli. So in the next weeks I will introduce some relatively "harder effort" to give some new stimulus to the body and get progressively reacquainted with fatigue.
The weather forecast is now for nice, hot, humid weather for the next days. The Accuweather widget on the left side shows a current "real feel temperature" of 39C/110F ...

Pleasant and Incredible discovery

Yesterday I tried a new route and did an incredible discovery ...
here, in Dongguan, the most industrial city in the world, where the common phrase is "Dongguan is the factory of China and China is the factory of the world", well, I found a forest ... with a network of forest trails ..

Just 3km from my new home, I left some industrial area at my back and found a small artificial lake with a small road around it. To my extreme surprise, the road soon departed from the lake and become unpaved, and got deeper into a "forest" of tropical trees.
I was amazed, the road went on and on for some km until I had to turn back. It was all shadowed by line of trees and seems very very promising ...
maybe after 9 years I found the "Running Heaven" ...
more exploration on the next long run... (sooner or later I will bring the camera because it is really nice place)

on a separate note, the weather is really crap:
- 20 days of torrential rain
- 5 days of extreme heat
- today is the first typhoon of the season and the wind is blowing ruthlessly. Last night we sealed all the windows, but still all the house was trembling ... hope to make a treadmill this evening

More Heat is coming

as usual, yesterday evening I go my daily sms from China Mobile with the weather forecast for today ... I sounded like (my translation from chinese...) : "Summer has arrived; the temperature will be very high, with clear skies. Temperature from 26 to 34C, Humidity from 70% to 90% ....."

I gasped ... the minimum temperature is usually around 4am and as soon as sunrise (5am), it rises very fast over 28/29C

So this morning I hit the road at 6am, but it was already a 26C, with 95%Rh ... I slogged an easy 10k.

Weekly balance: 84k (not bad and ahead of target), Unfortunately I sucked at the long run, otherwise 2 decent quality workout (quick farltek 10x1' + 10x30" and a MP run of 8k).
For sure I need more rest (usually I do not sleep more than 6 hours).

I like also to read how others cope with heat in another part of the world ..( I guess anyway that the desert of Arizona is a bit drier than here)

Heavy Rain + long run

The rain is falling for days and days. There are periods of clear skies, but sooner or later black clouds bring torrential downpours that last for hours.

This morning I set the alarm clock at 5.00am and planned a long run. Actually I did sleep too little and very poorly, so I was really not motivated by the ring of the alarm clock.
Dragging out of bed, I eventually set out from home at 5.30am and decided to hit the streets of the town centre rather than always looping around the same industrial estate.
Well, very pleasant surprise: at that time, the roads were completely quiet and actually this town were I live now is quite pleasant for running. There are large boulevards lined with factories inside the town center itself and there are no sign of heavy traffic, trucks like it was in my previous place.
That town (the old one) was at a cross-road of important national roads and the local administration did not care about building some outer ring or drive through road. So all the traffic (trucks 24/7...) was obliged to pass in the town center and it has alwasy been a nightmare for me to find some quiet route. So for 3 years I had to stick to the same loop.

Overall I did 22km, without "looping" ... not bad. I even found a nice country road heading to a dam that deserves further exploration.

What did I forget ? it was raining, heavy rain (orange alert was issued). Road were flooded and it was like running under a shower of warm water. In some point I had to run with the water up to the ankles...
At least the rain was a good coolant...
total 22km in 1h37' (not bad being my first long run in 3 months).

week 23/2008

weekly recap: only 60km because in the week-end we went with the family to a sea resort in USA (!!!)
Trivia for the American readers: guess which is the beach in USA closest to Hong Kong

All workout at steady pace (or better ... for the heat, the pace progressively fading, while the effort progressively rising...).
In the next post, for sure I will write more about my new secret weapon

fluid loss

in South China is raining continuously for the past 15 days. It seems that it will never stop ...
at least, it is good for running because the rain really chills down the body.

But yesterday early morning, there was a rare sunny clear sky and it was plainly hot. Maybe 28C with 85% RH. So it was ideal setting for a fluid loss experiment:
- weight before run: 69,7Kg
- weight after run: 68,3Kg (run 1hr steady pace, HR around 75%max)
- drunk a cup of water b4 the run: 0,2kg
==> total fluid loss: 1,6kg/3,5 pounds (in 1 hour!!!) : 2,1% of body weight ..
Unbelievable ... it is no surprise that after 40 minutes I started to crawl rather than run ...
for a long run I would need to carry not a bottle but a tank of water.

humid ... (too much)

In my first "come-back" week, I managed to run 70k, not too bad.

So this morning I get-up very early targeting a long run before work, to see if at least I can hold the distance of a marathon (regardless the pace).

BUT....

at 5.00am: Temperature 24C (around 80F), Humidity 95% ...

I was well prepared: took 2 bottles of water to hide in the bush for the out-and-back loop, wear NewBalance "Lightening Dry" socks, etc ... but at no avail :

after 1 hour, I was already struggling ... the shoes were full of sweat and at every step I could hear the "swoosh, swoosh" sound of overflown shoes...
The singlet was indeed simply beyond the capacity of saturation and also start to leak water along the legs...
I made it home in 2h15' of struggle @4'20" pace (7'00"/Mile), but the last miles were more a kind of crawl, spotting my high-rise building from afar like a oasis in the desert
(NOTE: living in a hi-rise can be sometimes psychologically very demanding for a runner. My home is in a building about 150m tall; even from distance, it looks very close, but maybe it is still 5/6km away !!).

resolution taken: during summer, I will avoid any run more than 1hr. If needed and if I would have the chance, I will double morning + evening to make 1h30' long run. Running longs in such heat does not make any sense (in a single run, I lost at least 2Kg of sweat, it is impossible to keep up rehydratation of such entity running on a daily basis..)

Running with 30C and 90% humidity and pollution

I guess that no one in Europe or USA can even imagine what is running in Summer here.
Those making paragons with Florida or South Europe do not even get close... because also pollution and the total lack of breeze adds up to the count.

Normally I go running at 6am (at the latest) but the sun rises fast (very fast). The night temperature never drops under 28/29C so there is no much benefit in going night time, apart avoiding the heat from radiating sun.
Generally I "last" 20 minutes: I can run around 4'30" (7'12"/mile) for 20 minutes but slowly my speed decline dramatically .... to 4'40" and later is a struggle to keep 5'. I normally take also some break every 15 minutes. .. and perhaps stop a while to squeeze the water out of my socks

NOTE: does someone know a brand/type of sock that can withstand extreme heat and sweat ? (basically it is like running in a hot pool) ??

I was really low in morale when to complete a 20k run I had to stop 5/6 times with also a rest on a bench ...