Rob's Running Blog

5 miles in killer heat – 56 minutes

Woke up in the middle of the night feeling a little sick, maybe something to do with the hot weather, or some deyhdration after a long walk in Southport the day before. Decided I wanted to do a 5 miler and set off in the middle of the afternoon. It had looked quite overcast early on, so I dabbed only a little suncream on, and took half a liter of water.

First problem was the Garmin, which cut out at around 1k, wasn’t quite sure when. Got it going, started running, then realised it was still stopped. All in all I was glad of the stops to sort it, as was already sweating a lot by this point and used the stops to take on water.

By 3k my water was gone and I was stopping at regular intervals, feeling very hot and puffy. I had planned a long loping route but my lower legs were complaining so decided to stay close to civilisation in case I had to stop. Considered cutting it down to 6k, and just got hotter and hotter, and kept stopping to catch my breath. In the end crawled and staggered over the 5 mile mark (7.83k on Garmin but made allowance for the amount I ran while it wasn’t counting), and was really glad to get some water.

So in some ways a really bad run, but good for mental toughness and just the fact I kept going will pay dividends, as I know I can, even if I do need to take a tiny walk break (though hopefully by the Great Manchester Run I will be fine and it will be a little cooler earlier in the morning!) 😀