The weather in North Carolina during the summer can be brutal. Triple digit temperatures and high humidity combine in ways that makes even the short trip from the car to my office building miserable. Running in such conditions is almost as much fun as punching yourself repeatedly in the coinpurse. But, you deal with the hand your dealt. I took to getting up before dawn in the height of summer to hit the trail for my long runs. Otherwise it’s just punishing.

During the week for my shorter runs I wasn’t so fortunate. I run at lunch. It’s what I do. And I paid for it. But in many ways I think that some training in those conditions can have a positive effect. That way if you’re racing in anything more comfortable it feels like cake. Compared with 100 degrees and 90% humidity, anything else is a nice springtime outting.

So with the summer of speed in effect I had a couple of faster runs this past week in prep for my first 5k of the season this coming Saturday. And North Carolina being what it is, summer came for an early visit. On Monday I had a 5x800m interval workout at a 6:50 pace. That day wasn’t too bad, with a temperature around 85 degrees and humidity near 40%. Still, that’s the workout that let me discover my maximum heartrate: 189 or so. I’d always thought my max heart rate was somewhere around 180 given the classic “220 – age” formula and the fact that I’d never measured above about 178. Well, this day did it. I finished my last interval and could cheerfully have never run another.

Wednesday was a tempo day, 3 miles at 7:40. I’ve done 3.1 at 7:32 so I figured I could do this. It was pretty hot again, almost identical to Monday. After my warmup I was already pinging 162 on the heart rate monitor. This doesn’t bode well. After ramping up to pace I’m already bumping 170 in less than a fifth of a mile. A little under 1.5 miles in an I’m constantly at 177 and I finally take a break, breathing like a bellows. Gawd almighty. I end up taking two more walking breaks on a scheduled measly 3 mile tempo run, hitting 185 on the heart rate monitor on the back stretch up the only hill on the course.

Let’s see what effect the weather had. Pulling up Wolfram Alpha for some historical data on my unofficial 5k PR in June for crying out loud: about 75 degrees and 45% humidity. For that one I hit a maximum of 174 on the heart rate monitor. I didn’t even hit 170 until 2 miles in.

Perhaps “summer of speed” is a misnomer. Might be “summer of horror”.

21 days until the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach. I have my final 20 mile long run this weekend in preparation and then it’s taper time and maintenance mode. So far this training period has gone pretty well. I haven’t had illnesses (he says, knocking on wood) and my injuries have been manageable. I have good hope that Shamrock will be a new PR.

I’ve run into two distinct injuries that are fairly common among runners. The first is knee pain in my right knee that ended up being an IT band issue. With some new daily stretches and strengthening exercises it’s manageable. I can’t say the knee is 100% as there are certain angles that I’ll hit during stretches, exercising or just daily activities that gives me a horrendous twinge. However, my running is no longer really impacted. It’ll nag a bit at me off and on during long runs but it never reaches the level that I can’t run.

More recently my left calf started seizing up on me at about the 10 mile mark on long runs. That one I’ve been battling with some increased soleus stretches which I had been neglecting. It’s easy to forget that little muscle but you’ll know about it sooner or later. I’ve now gone two weeks of long runs — a 20 miler and a 15 miler — without issue so the stretches appear to be keeping it at bay.

I figure these are typical running maladies that merely point out the areas that I’ve been neglecting. I needed strengthening and flexibility improvements in my knee and hips and more stretching in my soleus and now I’m back to maintaining. That’s a Good Thing overall.

Future goals

After Shamrock I’m at a bit of a loss as to where to go from there. I have my own goals again for Shamrock. I think if my training continues the way it has those goals should be attainable. The FIRST training plan I used feels like it left me in a better place to reach my time goals over the plan I used for the Marine Corps Marathon.

My short-term summer goals are focusing on shorter distances and getting faster at those. I’d like to eventually reach a sub 21-minute 5k. Ideally I’d like to get it under 20. After that I’ll ramp up endurance again for a fall marathon to be decided later.

As much as I’d like I can’t run the Marine Corps Marathon this year. I was really hoping to do it as it’s the 35th anniversary of the event, but given their choice of Halloween day for it I can’t do that to Julia. She loves her Halloween activities in the neighborhood so much and there’s only so many years she’s going to want to participate. So the MCM is out this year. Here’s my short list for replacements:

• The City of Oaks Marathon here in Raleigh. It’s local. But it’s quite challenging and hilly. There’s not a flat to be found.
• The Chicago Marathon. Even bigger than the Marine Corps and flat as a pancake. But, it’s far away.
• The Niagara Marathon. Scenic and quaint compared to Chicago but just as far away.
• The Pensacola Marathon. My hometown, so I could take Julia to see where daddy grew up and eat some McGuire’s. But it’s far away and a double-loop course which is the mind killer.
• The Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, AL. Used to live there and Cat and I both have friends there. Hillier than Chicago and moderately far away.

I don’t know which I’ll choose yet.

But after that? I’m unsure. I have two goals competing in my head, both of which are substantial and separate.

• Work toward a Boston qualification. This would require a lot of work and a lot of pain. And I might not make it. Given a single marathon under my belt with a 4:30 time it seems improbable in the highest degree. But with enough work and smart training it might be possible. If I reach my relatively moderate time goals at Shamrock I’ll have a better idea of the feasibility of this.
• Shift to triathlons. Obviously the ultimate goal would be a full ironman someday but it might have to wait several years simply due to the training amount. I’d be happy starting with Olympic distances and working towards a half ironman for a more short-term long-term goal. Swimming will be the biggest hurdle though I’m not much of a cyclist either.

Regardless, it’s nice to have goals. I find that unless I have clearly defined goals it’s way too easy to just scrap it and eat pad thai. And I miss me some pad thai.

I haven’t done a real post about the whole asthma thing, but I read something this morning that got me wondering. On the night of March 3rd I played a typical hockey league game at the local ice rink. I remember actually feeling pretty good that night as I played wing instead of my usual center and wingers are lazy. I got home, went to bed and woke up at about 4 in the morning coughing and struggling to breathe. I wandered the house checking carbon monoxide detectors and generally being miserable. The next day the feeling never left so I went to the doctor. After a chest X-ray and CT scan they didn’t find anything and sent me home.

I was still laboring to breathe that night and the following morning so at my follow-up the doctor said I had adult-onset asthma — which is fairly typically for ice hockey players, he informed me — and sent me home with an inhaler. After 2 days with the inhaler I felt pretty normal. I didn’t think much of it aside from being a bit bummed given my desire to run a marathon this year and wondering what sorts of complications this was going to bring up.

As a bit of background, as of right now my weekly running distance is around 25 miles with an average run length of between 5 and 6 miles. I haven’t needed to use my inhaler since that incident though I have used it as a precautionary measure as recommended by my doctor before my hockey games and before my runs for the first week following that incident.

So then I read this article that popped up this morning on ESPN’s site. Here’s a few snippets.

In the past six months, nearly 200 people have been sickened by carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide or ultrafine particles emitted from poorly maintained ice resurfacers at indoor ice arenas.

One of those rinks was in Tampa, Fla., where the East Lake High School hockey team took the ice in January for a practice at the Tampa Bay Skating Academy. Players struggled to breathe during practice and as the night wore on, their symptoms worsened.

“I was playing normal, and then halfway through practice, my chest started feeling weird,” said East Lake player Alex Miller. “I had trouble breathing.”

Given my lack of symptoms even while exercising more than I ever have before it’s starting to seem more and more likely to me that, instead of asthma, I’m experiencing what this article is referring to. I’m curious how prevalent this really is.