Too hot and too high

I've decided, the the temperature at 98, the humidity at 91, the dewpoint at 78 and the heat index at 104, that I won't be attempting my workout while here in Nebraska. Just too darn hot. I'll take the next few days off and look forward to athletic life back at sea-level and at acceptable temperatures. At least I've learned that I'll have to include a lot of acclimatization time when preparing for Athens.

Swimming in a sauna

I found out that the outdoor pool in Syracuse, NE (about 10 miles to the north) had an open lap swim from 5-6pm every night...so I thought I would try it out since I didn't see running as a long term solution to keeping fit while on vacation. Got to to the pool, which did have lane markers painted on the cement on the floor of the pool (but no floating markers), jumped in and quickly discovered that the shallow end was only about 2'6"...not far above my knees. Hmm. They did have kickboards, but no kneeboard for working out my arms. Hmm. The feel didn't feel to hot or anything...until I finished my first lap and realized that the only reason it didn't feel hot was that it was 98 degrees outside the pool...the pool was around 75 degrees or so. Yuck and hmm. I also discovered that swimming mid-continent is different than swimming at sea-level, I could barely finish the first four laps of my warmup. Well, the rest of my workout had to be reduced as well, I just ran out of gas too quickly...high elevation, high temperatures - both in and out of the water - didn't make for the best workout conditions. But at least I did get about a half an hour of workout time. Better than nothing.

Rough run...literally

Well, I'm in Nebraska now for a week and a half visiting my grandparents and aunt and uncle. Its 95 degrees outside and the humidity is at 91%. Not the best running conditions, especially for a sea-level athlete like myself. I decided I would try it anyway and waited until evening, around 8:00pm, when it cooled down enough that I could actually leave the house. I was sweating before I even started the run...but that's OK. Unfortunately, the highway just down from my aunt's house doesn't have a shoulder so I had to run on the dirt road directly west. This would have been fine if it were actually dirt. The county had just recently put down fresh rock on the road which made for really poor running conditions. I did an interval set, 2 minutes off 1 minute on for 10 minutes out and 10 minutes back, about the same time frame I've been doing back in Seattle. This went well enough, I survived and all, but it took me almost an hour after stopping to stop sweating and my poor legs were all wacked out from the fresh rock. Next time, I'll take my chances on the highway.