How can it be that time of year already?!? - Annual Summer, Heat, and Humidity Megathread
As the seasonal change really heats up, it's time to have our megathread on summer running. Follow this link to the weather section of the wiki to view past Summer posts.
[NOTE: If you happen to be in the Southern Hemisphere and entering the season of the cold, snow, and/or ice, the Weather section of the wiki also has links to past Winter posts.
It's a good time to get reacquainted with heat training, tips, tricks and adjustments you use to get through next couple months of misery, whether it's just for the next 2 months or 5 months. However, the most important think is to recognize the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke and not to try to be tough. If you're running alone and you push into heat exhaustion, you have to stop immediately before you hit heat stroke.
Signs of heat exhaustion:
- Confusion
- Dizziness (good indictor no matter what, but more so when it's summer)
- Fatigue (more so than usual)
- Headache
- Muscle/abdominal cramps
- Nausea/vomiting
- Pale skin
- Profuse sweating
- Rapid heartbeat
Heat stroke is what heat exhaustion will turn into if you don't recognize it and stop immediately. Signs of heat stroke are fairly similar but one notable difference is that you have stopped sweating. Heat stroke is a serious medical condition and requires emergency treatment. Call 911!
Symptoms of heat stroke include:
- Confusion, altered mental status, slurred speech
- Loss of consciousness (coma)
- Hot, dry skin or profuse sweating
- Seizures
- Very high body temperature
- Fatal if treatment delayed
Remember that SLOW DOWN is never the wrong answer in the heat. You're going to go slower - it's just a fact. Embrace it and the fitness will still be there when the weather cools off.
Some quick high level tips:
- Run slower (duh)
- Don't run during the heat of the day
- Run in shaded areas. Running in direct sunlight in the summer can add 20+ degrees to your skin temp, and that's what counts, not the air temp.
- Avoid highly urbanized areas if at all possible during hot days. The concrete jungle retains and radiates heat back at you, it is almost essentially an oven effect.
- Focus on humidity as much as the temperature. Understand how the mechanism of sweat works. If the humidity is extremely high, sweat will just drip off you and not evaporate. Evaporation of sweat is the mechanism of how the body cools itself - the phase change from liquid to vapor extracts heat from your skin.
Another good tip from a helpful Runnitor:
>Dew point is actually a better measure of humidity than humidity percentage points are. That's because air at 100% humidity and 50F holds less water than air at 50% humidity and 90F.
> You can use a dew point calculator to figure out the dew point. Over 65F dew point is sticky, but over 70F is very humid. Make sure to hydrate often and to pay attention to your body to see if it's overheating.
> Here's a good dew point calculator:
Finally, one good table for pace adjustment is here
As a way to keep things a bit more organized and easier to find info later, I'm going to make several top level comments. Please respond to those instead of the main post. I'll include a stickied comment with direct links to each of the topic headings.