As my good friend Charles Vassallo wrote yesterday, "Hydrate." Just can't say it enough folks. Drink lots of water. The nice thing about water weight is it comes right off by the end of your workout or race. Water burns easy. So drink up. Better to have a slight bulge around the midsection than passed out or cramped up.
My wife didn't want me to go out today. 93 degrees, humid, and smoggy best describe today. I wanted to do a playground run. We compromised. My playgrounds and cabanas are all located on lakes. Oh yeah. I live in Medford Lakes. We have twenty-two of them in our little two square mile boro. Three of them are conveniently on my training circuit. So I added them right in.
Lakes make great leg workouts. The resistance is phenomenal. You can adjust it by how deep you go. Run forwards, backwards, sideways, leg over leg. Then get down and do some flutter kicks. And then, while your hands are good and wet and slick, get up on the beams and do some hangtime for extra grip strength training.
While everybody else is out playing volleyball or tending their little tykes in the shallow end, I made grand use of my natural surroundings. At the same time, I stayed nice and cool in this otherwise too hot day.
The last two years I ran the PA Sprint at Blue Mountain in the late afternoon. Both times were really hot. If you've run a Spartan, you know water stations may be sparse on the course. And sometimes they yell at you for taking a second cup! But again, as my buddy Charles says, it's hardly worth it to carry a Camelback on a Sprint. Just hydrate properly before and after the race, take what they hand out if you need it, and then, as I figured out at Tuxedo two weeks ago, I slowly suck on a Sports Bean. That keeps the saliva flowing, my mouth moist, and my breathing passages open. I double bag them and keep them in a SpiBelt.
Oh, and Medford Lakes also has this really cool event every August called Canoe Carnival. Just another great use of the lake on a hot summer night.
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