Boom, roasted. Literally.

So on Tuesday morning I was driving out with my friend Gina for my tempo at Forbidden Drive, and since she was nice enough to pick me up I had some time to look at the paper. The first thing that my eyes fixed on was the weather for the day. 94, hot and humid, and for air quality: Unhealthy. Definitely what you like to see before a hard tempo run. Even at 7 am it was already in the 80's with the humidity making it feel like downtown Saigon. When we got to Valley Green Inn around 7:30 the copious amounts of trees which usual cool the 5.5 mile trail down quite a bit only acted as a lid to keep the cauldron of nastiness close to the surface. So definitely a great day to run!

As I finished up my three mile easy warmup and stopped to stretch and do some strides, I was already sweating like a streetwalker in church. My tempo run pace was supposed to be in the 5:36-5:50 range per mile according to the McMillan Running Calculator(which is a great resource at www.mcmillanrunning.com that tells you where your training paces should be based on current fitness). Coming into the workout I thought that I could start in the mid 5:30's and work down from there since the 5k time I was using to figure out my ideal training pace was run 3 weeks prior in my training. But with the conditions being better suited for having my face in the air conditioner all day I decided that starting in the middle of the range would be a better idea. So that's what I did, with my first mile being a 5:43. My next mile came down a bit to 5:40, and that included a quick duck under a fallen tree on the path(Forbidden Drive, even being within Philly city limits often presents a runner with obstacles like huge trees down on the trail, horses and their occasionally obnoxious riders telling us not to spook the horse even after one has stepped in the horses crap a couple strides prior, and the occasional dudes that are training to be ninjas- that's a whole post in itself).

As I came past the Inn again halfway into the tempo I had several thoughts- first was "that water fountain looks so damn good right now, I just want to hit that"...and then soon after that delusional thought my focus came back to the hardest mile to come, with a gradual incline for about a half mile coming past the Inn. I managed to keep the momentum going and clicked off a 5:49, and now had a fairly tame last mile to get the pace back down. I finished up at 5:40, for a 22:52 overall. After checking my heartrate right after the workout(somewhere north of 175) I checked again at 1 min. after the tempo and it was down to a respectable 138. So I ended up averaging 5:43 a mile for 4 miles, right in the middle of the range suggested by the McMillan Calculator, and just as important I managed not to succumb to my desire to make the water fountain my new friend halfway in.

It doesn't appear that the weather is going to get any better in the near future here in the Mid-Atlantic region so early morning running and drinking water and Gatorade like it is my job will be the plan. I hope everyone else is finding ways to stay cool, both figuratively and literally. I have yet to accomplish the former, so if anyone has any suggestions let me know.