High-Octane

This is the first thing I have ever won on this blog.

Congratulations Flat, I'll send you your sweat band!

Ahem...

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Tom K,

Please send $ 9.95 to me for your first month's subscription.

(LOL...I'm always thinking some of the elite runners are reading my blog and thinking, "wow, what at ^$#@* &^%%". Thanks for humoring me and actually reading my blog and being my friend!

Very interesting - thanks for posting this. I think temperature matters, too, when it gets hot enough. My lunchtime run in 90+ degrees and full sun was equally as bad as my morning run in the dark at 80 degrees and 90% humidity. At least my shorts were just as soaked. :-)

DH,

Ah yes...but if you look at the Dew Point it was still 70 at noon. I bet if it had been 50 you would have been much more comfortable as the sweat would have evaporated and the air would not have been so saturated. As the article says the humidity is not a tell-tell sign because it can be very high but not near holding all the water it can. Saturation is the key to the misery!

OK, OK, I've got nothin' to whine about now :)

RT,

Whine away...I do all the time! :-) Have a great weekend!

Your comment the other day about DP has had me thinking about this stuff. Thanks for sharing the article. I'm going to be paying attention to the dew point more now... See if there's a noticeable difference between high RH and the dew point.

I've been thinking about this way too much. I don't understand exactly why 100% RH at 65F should feel different than 100% RH at 75F -- in both cases, by definition, you are at the dew point, so in theory there is no evaporation off of your skin. But they definitely feel different, of course. I think it is possible that our bodies have at least one other cooling system other than skin evaporation, not sure what it is but it's why we can adapt to running in these conditions. Maybe not totally compensating for the stifling heat, but certainly doing a lot better than someone who comes in and tries to run in it unprepared. That might also be why it helps condtioning to run in the sunlight, when RH is lower but DP is the same -- there is a solar effect on the skin as well as absolute temperature that you are training against, and adapting to it as well with whatever that other cooling system is. Right now, for instance, temps have gone up 10 degrees and RH here in Cypress has dropped about 30% from this morning but DP is almost the same. But if I went back out, despite getting some evaporation off of my skin I would still be more uncomfortable than this morning because of the sunlight and because of the higher temperature; don't know exactly why but that has been my experience this summer. On the other hand, despite being uncomfortable, the times I have gone back out this summer in the mid-afternoon sun I have generally ran just as well in the morning, maybe even better, despite being fatigued -- I assumed it was because of body rhythms but maybe it's also attributable to having an evaporative effect going because of the gap between DP and absolute temperature?

I've been thinking about this too much, too... I raced this morning in 44 degree temp with dew point of 43. RH was ~96%? It felt absolutely amazing. Where i was worried this morning (and confused) was when i saw the gap between the temp and dew point. The few point feel quite nicely on the chart.

Flatlander - Your second sentence sums up my confusion.. The dew point theory does make more sense though.

Matt

Tthis seems to prove the point.

.

My 48 DP didn't even make the chart. I guess I'll have to run in the afternoon if I want to whine.

I just hope this doesn't turn into an excuse for me, as I live in the 75+ Dew Point world. The Utah folks don't complain about hills or snow often, I'll try not to complain about heat, humidity, or (now), dew point.