Running in Geologic Time

Nobody reading this blog, whether on purpose, after losing a bet, or through the black-box algorithms of a misguided Google search, will be surprised to learn that running in the early morning or late at night during the summer is the way to go. Baltimore and Washington in the summer tend to become roiling concrete kilns with oppressive humidity mixed in for good measure. Of course, folks living in Florida or Arizona or elsewhere in the Deep South or Southwest will say, "You think you're hot? Just try living in Orlando/New Orleans/Jackson/Flagstaff in July!" To which I say, you're probably right that it's worse there than here on any given day from June through mid-September. But that's the point, right? Many of us have to deal with the heat and running in some fashion. Really, when the temperature goes above 85 (arbitrary number), you're dying on your run whether it's in Boston or Birmingham.

To that end, I present this screenshot of the Weather Channel's forecast for Baltimore for the next five days:

For Baltimore, that's absurd. The 108 high on Saturday is particularly crazy, because the tropical humidity has arrived, which could make the heat index go somewhere around 115. 

All this is by way of saying that running early in the morning is a must for me these days. There was a time, a brief time, an Age of Lunch Running (in the geological meaning...as in shorter than an epoch, period, era or eon), when I thought running during my lunch hour would work great for my schedule. Wrong! Turns out it takes more than an hour to change into running clothes, get outside of a skyscraper, run, cool down, come back to the gym in the office, change, shower, put work clothes back on and get back to my desk. Which didn't work.

Moreover, while lunch running is fine for winter months, once you hit May, it's terrible until late September around here. Much of Baltimore, you'll be shocked to learn, lacks decent tree cover, especially downtown. So you're in the direct sun at the hottest part of the day. At first, it was a bit of a badge of honor to run in such hot conditions. Nobody else was out running and it felt like the summer corrollary to running in a snow storm in January or a downpour in April: you're a hard ass! Right?!

Wrong. Stupid. And wrong.

The hottest day I ever ran in reached 97 degrees (gross of the heat index); it took me a day to rehydrate and my body was sluggish for two days. Terrible idea and it was the beginning of the end of the Age of Lunch Running.

Now, I prefer to run before work for both climatological and scheduling reasons. I prefer to be done with my exercise early so I don't have to motivate myself at 5:30 PM after working all day to do it. The Age of Evening Running was even shorter than the Age of Lunch Running and never really got off the ground. I much prefer the quiet, largely car- and pedestrian-free streets of Baltimore at 6AM, in addition to the cooler temperatures.

Currently, I am in the early years of the Second Age of Morning Running. If I can maintain consistent running, I think I have a real chance to get it to an epoch eventually. 108 degree days will certainly help me keep motivated to wake up at 6AM when it's a cool 80 degrees, as it was this morning.