I ran the Lawyers Have Heart 10K yesterday. It was much more miserably hot and humid than the weather forecast had suggested. But my time was 56:04, only a minute slower than my previous 10K, which I ran in much cooler weather.
This race was much more crowded than my other one. The first mile was tough – not only were we baking in the sun, but it was like driving in rush hour traffic. There was always a slower person in your way, or a faster person cutting you off. But it cleared up later on.
I wore my flag football jersey in honor of our end-of-the-season cookout later that day. You probably can’t read the back of the jersey, but the name is FISTROCK, which is a reference to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode that lampooned the movie Space Mutiny. The jersey was cooler before BLASTBODY moved to San Fransisco. But it’s still cool. To me, at least.
Anyway, I had one moment during the race when I wasn’t sure I was going to finish. Have you ever had one of those where it’s quite clear that your internal temperature gauge is just about into the red? When your body sends a little message to your brain saying, “Hey, stupid, if you don’t cool us off pretty soon, we’re going to shut down.” I had less than a mile left, and I was again baking in the sun. But the feeling passed, and I finished the race. It helped that the last quarter mile was in the shade, downhill, with a breeze.