Speed kills but heat massacres!

We’ve all heard the adage “speed kills”. Now most people will have different interpretations but runners who have “been there” know exactly what this means.

As the title implies, heat may be a far worse enemy but let’s talk speed first from the runner’s perspective.

You will never run very much faster than you train to run. At least not for very long.

Many of us, myself included, have fallen victim to “runners high”, that euphoric feeling you get during a run where all kinds of wonderful chemicals are floating around your brain and making you feel fantastic.

Problem: it doesn’t last.

The temptation is to celebrate the feeling by running faster.

Nothing will shorten runners high faster than running too fast!

I have to go back a decade or so to one of my marathons to relay my personal experience.

I had trained to run 8 minute miles. At 215 pounds and doing a fair amount of heavy weight lifting I thought this was a reasonable goal.

That would have put me somewhere around a 3:30 marathon, something I would have been happy with.

One month earlier I had done a flat 18 miler at an average of 7:40 a mile so I thought this was all very reasonable.

Well somewhere in this marathon around mile 7 or so I picked up a 17 year old cross country runner who was “running his first marathon”.
And I believed him! We started talking and slowly but surely the pace crept up. I remember thinking “this is pretty cool - I am running with a fit 17 year old and I am feeling great!” Around mile 13 I glanced down at my watch and realized we were doing sub 7 minute miles and had been for some time.

No worries; I still felt great. I remember distinctly hearing the kid saying a few miles later, “We are flying!” Yep, we were at mile 17 and we are down to 6:30 a mile.

At that point a little teeny tiny alarm bell went off in my mind. I was feeling just a little less great than I thought I should. I realized that while I had actually done one 5:15 mile in my speed work,
6 minutes to 6:20 was my usual “speed work pace" for one mile intervals.

Thus not a good pace to be running well into a marathon!

Almost as soon as these thoughts entered my head my body started to tell me it was realizing the same thing and I needed to slow down. I told the kid good luck and backed off.

Too little too late!

I completed the first 20 miles of this marathon in 2:30 and then I hit the wall.

Only 10K to go and I realized I had completely let my ego destroy what might have been a really nice performance for me in this marathon, 3:30.

Had I played my cards right I might have been able to do it even a bit faster.

That is what I had trained for. All the charts pointed to that number but I had completely forgotten it and ran way out of my zone.

End result: a 4 hour plus marathon with the last 10K a mere shuffle.
It didn’t hurt, it was simply a feeling as if my body had sabotaged me!

No matter what I tried to do I could not go faster. Bonked and boinked all in the same moment!

If I ran any faster for 10 steps my body yanked me back to the slow shuffle and said, “oh no you don’t!"

That was one of the very few times I hit the wall, and it was totally avoidable.

Believe me, this experience is always in the back of my mind when I am training and running long distances now.

Speed kills!

But that is just one interpretation.

The next is that speed work in training, especially longer intervals run fast (whatever fast is for you!) and repeatedly, are a huge burden on the body. Most people do not allow adequate extra time for recovery after their speed sessions.

They simply try to insert them right into their training schedule in place of a longer slower training run. This does not work unless you are genetically gifted.

The end result is injury or overtraining or both.

I applaud speed work. I do speed work even when training for a 78 miles race like the Canadian Death Race! But I always allow full days
off from running in addition to the usual breaks.

So for instance, if I am running distance Monday, Thursday and Sunday and I do a serious speed session on Sunday, I will not run again until Thursday the next week, giving me a full 4 days of recovery (calculated from a Sunday 8am session to a Thursday 8am session) before I hit my next long run.

Ok now let’s look at heat.

In the past couple of weeks I have been in some very different climates (Pennsylvania and Texas) and experienced running in 40 to 93 degrees F with heat indexes as high as 100!). The hot runs happened in no particular order with the cold runs. They simply happened as a result of heat waves in the two different states followed by colder fronts.

There was no time to acclimate and I was stupidly poorly prepared from a hydration standpoint.

The first one happened a few weeks a go in PA. I had run 35 miles two weeks before and was going out for a 20 mile downward taper run. Easy compared to the much longer run, right?!

Wrong.

The long run happened at 40 degrees, the 20 miler at 83 degrees with significant humidity. I actually thought I had hydrated adequately until I realized I had not stopped to pass my water in a couple of hours and I was getting very lightheaded with a few miles to go. My running partner had already succumbed to the heat that day!



Now please understand that in August, 83 degrees would be fine and running in it would be no problem because I would have had several runs in that kind of heat and hotter, and my body would have been prepared for it.

As it was, I finished by paying strict attention to getting more water and slowing down a whole lot.


At the end of the run I had lost 6 pounds, obviously most of it water
weight!

A few weeks later at the end of my downward taper (the next series of
runs will escalate back up in mileage). I found myself in Austin Texas
running over hilly and difficult terrain in a heat wave. Again
stupidly I didn’t realize I had not packed my Camelback and had to
make due with water bottles. I carried and consumed about 72 ounces of
water during the half marathon distance. It was clearly far too little
and the end result was that I knew early this would be a slow run and
it was.

While I did not hit the “wall” my body let me know and this time I
Listened, “go slow or you will not survive this brutal heat!”

So I let this be an acclimatization run and accepted the 3 hour plus
time it took to negotiate the trail safely.

Lessons learned.

I want to finish be telling you what happens when you underestimate
your hydration needs and overestimate your speed in the heat.

A good friend of mine and a very very experienced trail runner entered
a 50 mile race that he had completed several times before in good time
with no problems. On this particular day the area was immersed in an
early spring heat wave with starting temps close to 80 and mid day
temps close to ninety. Again the average temp he had trained in for
this race was probably less than 50 degrees.

Out he went, keeping what he thought was a solid pace, one that he
“knew” he was capable of and had done before in this very race.

But all the other races were done in seasonal temps (much cooler). As a matter of fact, seasonal temps for this race were around 50 to 55
Degrees, which many runners consider a perfect temperature to run in.

Well somewhere around 25 miles he dropped out and was taken to the
hospital. Diagnoses: dehydration and heat exhaustion.

So as we are in changeable weather and may not be able to reschedule
our runs, please keep the following in mind:

1) Heat acclimatization is a real thing and it takes a few runs to let
your body get used to the heat. If you must train in hot weather and
are not used to it, cut down your mileage and reduce your speed by at
least 30 to 60 seconds a mile. Or, if possible, run very early or later
in the day when the heat is not likely to be a problem.

Don’t worry, after a few runs in the heat your body will be ready for
faster runs but…

2) You will never run as fast in the heat as you can in cooler weather.

Not ever. Your body will rein you in in one way, shape or form or
another at least if you are doing distance running.

3) Odds are you will always under hydrate. I have read some books and
articles that say people pay too much attention to hydration and you
over hydrate. Much has been made of a few cases of dilutional
hyponatremia (low blood salt) that have happened in some of the
marathons. If you look at this, these are people who were out so long
and running so slow that they really did over drink! Bottom line, if
you are that slow you should not be out running marathons or greater
distances; you are not ready for it!

Again, most runners don’t eat or drink enough under any circumstances.
Running long distances especially puts your brain in “ignorance” mode.
You have to ignore so many noxious stimuli like pain, fatigue, boredom,
Etc. just to finish that it is not uncommon for eating and drinking to
fall by the way side too since you are not hungry or thirsty until way
after it’s too late.

A simple rule of thumb for ultra long distances is: if you have not
passed your water in the past 4 hours, you are getting dehydrated.

I have not touched on electrolyte replacement yet since that is a more
complex topic but understand that that goes with the territory as well…
especially in the heat!

When I say heat massacres, I mean it. It will slow you down; accept it
and figure out how to make the run work for something. Even a short
run and then a longer run on a cooler day is a wise choice if you know
the weather is going to get cooler soon.

People have died from heat stroke but never from running too fast so,
while speed kills figuratively, the heat kills for real. If you are
out in the wilderness like I am for hours on end with no one in sight
and nowhere to get water or help, please do not let your ego get the
best o you!

- Doc