Dumber Than a Sheep

Picture a pasture full of grass with dozens of sheep. A set of power lines marches across the field, with tall poles throwing shadows onto the dry brown grass. It's so hot that the sheep are standing nose to tail in the thin shadow of the power line poles. Across the pasture, there are lines of sheep standing, head down, not moving in the heat, just keeping their bodies as still as possible in the only bit of shade in their entire field. That's what I saw as I was biking by in the heat. So I guess that makes me dumber than a sheep!

What I would love to see would be a time lapse video of the sheep in that field as the power pole shadows move with the sun. I wonder if the sheep just keep shuffling to stay in the shadows? It would be an amazing image.

What Doesn't Kill You.... Makes You Cry??

It didn't seem like it was going to be that hard of a bike ride today: 42 miles, a lot of hills (but what bike ride around here doesn't have hills??) not a ton of wind (the usual 12 mph afternoon perpetual headwind, no matter which direction you're biking it's there). I knew it was going to be warm, temps have been in the low 90s all week. Who knew it would be almost 100 today? I guess that serves me right for not looking at the weather forecast.

We set out at 12:30, and hit the first hill at 12:35, the second at 1:15, and by 1:45 we were on the biggest ascent: a 700 foot climb of exposed piece of blacktop that was baking under our wheels. This is the point where I should point out that I don't sweat. Also that hubby in his kindness got both of our bikes ready this morning while I was coaching, and he happened to fill both of my bottles with Gatorade. I usually keep one with water to douse myself with since.... I don't sweat. Somewhere along the switchbacking broiler rack of a road, I went from just plain hot to truly hot, then ridiculously hot then dangerously hot. By the time hubby looked back and noticed me struggling and pulled into some shade, I was close to dropping over. Once in the shade, I proceeded to break out in big sobbing ridiculous tears, and then hyperventilate. Good thing hubby keeps a cool head on his shoulders and got me breathing right and poured some water on me.

A long shade break later and I was ready to keep rolling. A stop at a little store later and I had a stock of water to dump on myself. The rest of the climbs (all 1700 feet of them) seemed easy by comparison. It's funny, but I remembered that the only time I've ever cried in a triathlon was (no, not getting my toe dislocated at Ironman Florida) when I did this race in a hellishly hot and windy location in the Columbia River gorge. It was 104 degrees with winds up to 30 mph. The 38 mile bike course took me three hours instead of my planned two, and when I hit the run in that blowdrier I just started crying uncontrollably. Then some lady rescued me with a lawn sprinkler and I managed to finish. I have never DNF'd a race, but that was the closest I've ever come. And I've never not finished a bike ride but I came damn close today. I wonder why I cry when I'm overcome with heat? Panic maybe? I'm not usually a crybaby, but that sure got to me!

Reminder to self: you don't sweat. Take water (plain water) and dump on self repeatedly until normal temperatures have been achieved. Also, don't go out on a hilly ride on the hottest day of the summer in the middle of the afternoon! As I write this at 11:30 at night, it's still 78 degrees outside according to weather.com. I think tomorrow's long run better be at 6:00 am, so I should be going to bed now...

No Sweat!

It's happened three times in the last couple of weeks: someone has directly correlated amount of effort in a workout with amount of sweat. As non-sweater I might just start taking offense one of these days. The latest was tonight when our karate sensei had us watch a movie of a karate dojo in Okinawa where a guy wrings his shirt out with sweat. He then asked us all if we would be able to do that, implying that if we worked out hard enough we should all be wringing out our gi's. I answered honestly that there's no way I could. I might be able to work out that hard, but I will never ever fill a t-shirt with sweat. Afterwards, I hoped that he didn't think I was being flip, because I wasn't. I just don't sweat.

Believe me, this isn't necessarily a good thing. I have to pick my triathlons carefully for instance, because above a certain temperature my body just can't cool itself down. While other athletes begin to glow, then positively shimmer with sweat, all of my capillaries are dilating and turning me a brilliant lobstery red in an effort to shed heat while my skin stays dry as toast. I have been out running in the summer and had people shout at me that I was getting sunburnt. "No", I thank them "I just turn this color when I run." It also affects how many calories I can take in via sports drinks. Because I don't sweat much, I can't drink much unless I want to stop at every porta-potty on the course. That leaves me with a nutritional planning challenge that better sweaters don't face.

Interestingly, research has shown that sweat rates vary with ethnicity and gender (as a Nordic-ish blonde woman I must be doubly-cursed since distance from equator in your ancestry as well as the female gender are correlated with reduced sweat rates). Sweat rates are highly variable, ranging from .4 liters per hour to the highest recorded sweat rate for an athlete in an exercise situation: 3.7 liters (125 oz.) per hour, recorded by Alberto Salazar while preparing for the 1984 Summer Olympics. No wonder he stayed cool under pressure.

As for me, I've exercised until I puked. I've pushed myself 'til I passed out. I spent all night once in a Lakotah sweat lodge. All without breaking a sweat. I've never even owned a stick of anti-perspirant. So for all you coaches out there, don't sweat it if your athletes aren't sweating. They might be working just as hard.

Into the Dark

It's been unusually hot here this week. I know many people live where it is really hot in the summer, but around here it's usually 83 with a breeze, so almost-100 is pretty shocking. So I went for a run at about 8:30 in the relatively cool darkness (though it was still 80 Degrees at 9:15). The local running trail was packed! Some of it is lighted and some is not, so all of us refugees from the heat were stumbling along trying not to run into each other in the dark.

I guess my workouts this week are turning to the dark side, because the pool where I swim has a "moonlight swim" at 8:00 Monday night with just the pool lights underwater still on and all the pool room lights turned off. Except that this time the underwater lights weren't on, so everyone swimming was suddenly plunged into darkness. It reminded me a bit of when I used to SCUBA dive at night. There's something about the darkness in water that is very peaceful, once you can get used to the feeling that things might be sneaking up on you (fortunately not likely in a swimming pool). In Seattle, some of the best stuff comes out at night underwater: octopus, squid, shrimp. Sometimes you can see bioluminescence in the water, which is like tiny underwater fireworks going off all around you. But here in the lap pool, there's not much to see in the dark so I called the night manager to come get some lights on and got back in. Once my eyes adjusted, I was hoping they'd take awhile to show up because I could manage to swim laps and even turn without knocking myself out, and it was almost like sensory-deprivation swimming. I think I could do that for awhile and really enjoy myself (freed from the slavery of the interval clock at least!)

It's all a big metaphor anyways for this last week of Half-Ironman training. Up until now, I was regretting not doing an Ironman this year, reading all the cool race reports from bloggers and the folks at Trifuel and remembering last year's fun. But then I finally got a really good week of hard training in for the Half-Iron (and yes, I know that one good week of training isn't really enough to tide me over, but it will have to do!) and I remembered how hard it is, how tiring, how you can never eat enough to not feel hungry, never sleep enough to not feel tired, never have enough time with kids and family and the housework goes to hell and.... well let's just say I think I'll be happy with my Half-Iron this year (especially if I manage to wobble across that finish line after my meager training schedule) and wait a few more years before Iron Fever strikes again.