A/C

I'll leave it up to the experts to decide whether this is a good idea or not. When I was training for Badwater last year, someone (I can't remember who) told me that the only way to truly get used to the heat is to simply be hot all the time. It made sense - I mean if you think about other things we do to train - you have a hilly race, you train on hills - you have a marathon to do, you run 18-20 milers - you're a boxer, you practice getting punched in the face...

The day I found out I got in to Badwater, I let out an audible scream - broke the news to my wife - and then got up and walked over to the thermostat in my office. On our floor every other office has a thermostat that controls the temperature in that office and the one next to it. Luckily, there are an odd number of offices on each side of the building, so my thermostat affects only my little world. Not being sure how to work it as I've always used the door to regulate temperature (too hot, open the door; too cold, shut the door), I hit the "up" button until numbers stopped changing.. It made it up to 90.. I then found a way to disable the auto shut-off, so hot air would continue to blow regardless of the actual temperature. Long story short, I spent my 8+ hour days shut up in a 90 degree room with a 180 degree view of the San Francisco Bay. For the four months leading up to Badwater, I sweated away day after day (adding a V-neck sweater from time to time to amplify the "effort"). By the time the race rolled around, I felt a chill every time it dropped below 80.

What heat is to a "hot race", cold must be to a "cold race", so after finding out that I'd be spending my Easter weekend freezing at the top of the world, I let out the same audible scream and walked over to the thermostat to see how low I could get it.

As you can see in the picture, unfortunately it won't let me go lower than 45 degrees; and with a southeast facing office, the morning/early afternoon sun and the A/C have spent the past two days dueling with each other over who's mightier.. The result is a nice constant 59 degrees. It may not be -30, but it's amazing how much you learn about yourself sitting in nothing but a dress shirt and pants in a 59 degree environment. Not that I was much of a coffee drinker before, but you honestly don't need it to stay awake and work just gets done at a faster pace.. (typing fast actually does warm up the hands).

Anyway, until I secure my deep freeze (which I'm working on as an equivalent extreme to the dry sauna I used for Badwater), the next 46 training days will be spent shivering quietly to myself as I talk to clients to keep myself warm. As word has spread that my office is now a Winter wonderland, I have noticed fewer visitors/interruptions and those that do come, don't stay very long..

That's all for now - I took the day off from running today after my double effort yesterday and am flying down to L.A. tonight for a meeting tomorrow morning.

Cheerio!
Bobby