Hot in Herre - Nelly

Treadmill vs Outside on a Hilly Cardiff Run

'It's gettin' hot in here' - Brown, Haynes, Brown

Two days, two runs of 10 miles and just look at the difference in the 'Heart-Rate' and the 'Rate of Exertion'. The distance covered in both sessions was 10 miles in 90 minutes give or take a few seconds.

Run One (pictured top) - Treadmill set at 10.7kph in a very hot gym 0% incline and was unbearable towards the end of the run and I felt very dehydrated at the end even though I took on 500 ml of NUUN salt hydration tablets and 279kcals of a gel for morale boosting hit of simple carbo-hydrates...

Run Two (pictured bottom) - Out and back run on the pavements in Cardiff to Dinas Powys and back including 3 x hills one of which is 10% Gradient Leckwith Hill. No water, no gel.

The second run was by FAR easier and shows the effect that heat has on your performance and output as the inability to cool down is the biggest factor to how well I run at Marathon des Sables. My best recent performance in 2009, (143rd in the Wet Year) when it was above 30 degrees on one of the days only and I didn't struggle like I did last year (403rd) with the 54 degree heat and 28% humidity.

My learns? Well it's not to get too peeed off with only running 21.1 km in 2 hours in a very hot gym and to go and do many more hours of them as they can only help in the grand scheme of things.

I'm off for another 90 minutes now as it's as much as my brain can cope with today and it will mean that I've averaged 10+ miles a day this month and why I'm back under the 80kgs mark again...the 'Rory diet' of no-bread works for me too.

More later...