“What is it exactly that I find so totally unbearable? Something which I cannot deal with on my own, which makes me choke and feel faint? Bad air! Bad air!”
unpleasantly warm
It was hot. It was not a good idea to run this morning. Only 7:30, but it was hot. Already, the day shot. No more running, biking, gardening, just hiding inside. We should have left earlier. Maybe 6? Before it was hot. I forgot how miserable 77 can be when there’s humidity and a high dew point. And the wind, it was hot too. We only ran a few miles before we stopped. It’s too hot, I said to Scott. And he agreed.
damp
The dew point is the temperature at which water condenses. The closer the dew point is to the temp in the air, the longer the sweat will stay in your hair, or any other part of your body, because the air is too saturated and your sweat can’t evaporate, which is how your body cools you down.
muggy
Oh you! You muggy, buggy thing. So thick it makes me sick! Why can’t the water you contain be refreshing like the rain? Why must you make me feel so moist, a word I detest hearing almost as much as I despise feeling its effects: sweat that drips and sticks, heavy air that presses down on my body, sinking me deeper into the ground and making it almost impossible to fly or even to lift my legs up off the damp earth.
moist
How many cups of sweat can fit
Under the brim of my baseball cap?
More than 2?
It’s hard to
Determine but
I keep
Trying to figure it out while I run through the thick air. I think my cap has
Yielded at least 3 ounces of water per mile.
thick
When you mix up the words in dew point you get: not wiped. Not wiped? I guess if the dew point is low. Anything under 50 would work. Otherwise, it should be totally wiped, but those aren’t the letters in dew point. You also get: wit open’d. Really? Could more miserable conditions = more wit? I suppose for some comedians, this is true. And you get: owed pint. Owed pint of what? A pint of blood that traveled to the surface of your skin to help cool you down instead of flowing to your heart? Or the pint of beer that you owe your body for putting it through the misery of running in the heat and humidity?
oppressive
The Index of Human Misery, the Dew Point Version:
<50: very comfortable
50-60: manageable
65: uncomfortable
70: so thick and hard to breathe.
75: ugh!
80+: stay home, it’s not worth it.
wet (blanket)
Have you ever said,
Under your breath, in the
Middle of your run,
I really don’t like humidity & humidity heard you & replied: Well, I
Don’t like you either!
I am going to make you even more miserable because of your
Thoughtless comment!
Yesterday I think that happened to me.
stifling
The effects of heat and humidity on your body as you run:
increased sweat,
depletion of electrolytes,
flagging energy,
dehydration,
the pumping of more blood to the skin and less to your heart or your muscles,
sweat that can’t evaporate to cool your body,
elevated heart rate.
sticky
It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. It’s not the humidity, it’s the heat. It’s not the heat, it’s the atmospheric moisture. It’s not the warm temperatures, it’s the moisture in the air and in your hair, on your skin, in-between your toes, on the back of your neck. And it’s the stickiness between your fingers as you rub them together, trying to keep your hands relaxed. And it’s the fibers from the cottonwood seeds, the catkins, that fly into your eye or your mouth or get stuck in the sweat on your face.
relief
86 degrees. Hot! Difficult! Some success, some failure. A hot wind, blowing in my face, which is already bright red. The sun beating down. My pulse heating up. No running playlist to distract me. And no memory of the running chants that I created to keep me going. What am I thinking about, other than: when am I done? why am I running in this heat? will I make it to Lake Nokomis for open swim? I stop and walk several times. But then I’m at the lake and it’s cooler, with a breeze coming off of the water, and I’m almost done and I’m trying to get past two other runners that are running just a little bit slower than me so I speed up for the last half mile. It feels good.