With NBL meaning “not bloody likely” and DNS defined as “did not start.”
Well, now I’m very glad that I didn’t spend the entire winter training to race the New Jersey Marathon. We’re due for a freak heatwave this weekend. Not only was I smart (or just doubtful) enough to defer my entry until 2011, but we also decided to do a race — a half — closer to home to avoid the expense of a hotel room. So instead we’re scheduled to run the Long Island Half, which is about 45 minutes from our house by car.
The worst of the heat is going to be tomorrow, with a predicted high of 84 and high dew points to go with it. But Sunday’s not much better, with predicted conditions at race start as 69F and a dew point of 64, with thunderstorms predicted at noon, along with a high of around 80. I race badly in heat/humidity even when I’ve had weeks to acclimate. While I’m resigned to the likelihood that I will be doing some of these shorter efforts (1500-5000m, possibly a 10K) in warmer conditions than I’d like, that’s not the same as trying to race a half marathon in the stuff.
No, I’ve had enough horrible hot weather races to have learned my lesson. While I don’t enjoy throwing away a race registration fee, I enjoy losing control of my bowels, running with a massive headache, and crawling in at 11 minutes off my half PR (only to then run like garbage for weeks afterwards) even less.
As FB runner friend Cristina pointed out — while posting about her own decision to scratch her half in DC this weekend — conditions like these aren’t that far off what felled runners in the 2007 Army 10 Miler and Chicago Marathon races, both of which should have been sponsored by E-Z Bake Ovens that year.
We’ve got until 6PM tomorrow to pick up our race packets. I figure by then it should be obvious if the weather muppets are on the money this time around or not. I’ll probably do a longer run on Sunday anyway. But not a fast one.
Sometimes I regret not having created a “weather complaints” category, as I’m sure it would have been the biggest keyword in my category tag cloud by now.
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Races Like a Girl 