Posted By: mellers on
Thursday, June 26th, 2008, 10:22 am
This was scheduled for Sunday 22nd June – our first day in Provence and 2 days since my previous run. I had mapped a handy route covering the last 3 miles of our 900-mile road journey from the outskirts of Carpentras to the campsite itself: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1970679 , thinking I would be itching to get some exercise after 2 days of driving and sitting.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t bargained for the hills and the HEAT!
We arrived at my starting point at approximately 4 p.m. French time and partner dropped me off and drove on to the campsite. The temp was pushing 40°C but I spotted a sprinkler watering a horticultural roundabout display & stopped and soaked myself to cool down! If there had been a bit of shade – and a flat road I might have made it, but unfortunately, while g-mpas is a fantastic tool to plan routes in flat terrain, unless you know the areas really well, hills don’t show up from an aerial photo!
I had driven down this road a few times before but of course you don’t really notice gradients when you are driving. You DO however feel them when you are running in blistering heat and sunshine!
The first 1k was pretty much all uphill with a fairly steep gradient (I’m guessing 5%-8%) and after 10 mins of running I was getting pretty hot. After 15 mins of it, I was thinking I’m not going to make 30 mins and after 16 mins I had almost lost the will to live!
I stopped running then and returned to a brisk walk – still in blazing sun (I couldn’t cross to the shady side of the road as there were no pavements and needed to make sure I could see the oncoming traffic in front of me. Walking on the right with traffic approaching from behind would have been far too dangerous – French drivers take no prisoners!
I hoped 4 mins walk would give me back the muscle power I needed to carry on, but sadly I could only manage a further 2 mins running before thinking I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion. At that point my brain went to a VERY black place indeed and I got really quite scared. I felt like I wasn’t even going to be able to walk the rest of the way (only about 1.5k) let alone run it. I had visions of myself passing out in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country with no way of contacting partner to tell him what had happened! The heat was so intense that I couldn’t even think straight and had already cancelled my planned cycle ride up Mont Ventoux on the Tuesday and any thoughts of any more running while on holiday.
I managed 4 more minutes of running over the next 1.5k to the campsite and the site of my lovely camper van nestling next to the beautiful vineyard next door and the swimming pool behind it was never so welcome. I was shaken, scared and my self-belief in my own fitness had taken a severe psychological battering. The pool and cooling down was all I could think of.
A couple of days later I was thinking more rationally and restored some of my own self-belief by cycling up Mt Ventoux – a notoriously difficult pro-cycling climb, which even killed poor Tom Simpson in the 60’s.
Resolving only ever to do ANY running or cycling in the cool of the morning, I set my alarm for 6:30 this morning (26th June), chose a different and slightly flatter route and even though I was still a bit achy from having climbed the mountain 2 days ago, completed the 30 mins running without the horror story of 4 days ago! No sweat! Well, LOTS of sweat actually - but my faith in myself is slightly restored and now I face the next challenge of 40-45 mins in 2 days time. I’m not particularly looking forward to it though, as I still feel a bit stiff!
Tags:
running, heat, 10k, training
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