Heat is the ultimate test for the distance runner. The Marathon du Sable events, Morocco and Peru, come to mind. I will never be up to such feats, but, coming from Florida, I know well the feeling of that merciless burning hammer in the sky pounding me relentlessly like a hammer until I'm a sweaty, greasy, salty, incoherent mess barely staggering forward on a run.
In the animal kingdom, for Homo sapiens, heat is the great equalizer. Many species can run faster than us. A few can trot farther. But no species can run as far or as fast in the heat. This became obvious to me in my vertebrate zoology class decades ago: humans have sparse and sweat glands covering the body. We share with horses, another great endurance species, the ability to dissipate large amounts of heat through perspiration. Nomadic desert humans have been known to hunt antelopes and gazelles by running them into heat exhaustion. Research in the subsequent decades went on to confirm my hunch, documenting a dozen or so adaptations that make us great distance animals. If the distance is great enough, we can even beat horses. Running, particularly in the heat, was our killer advantage.
This year, I want to re-embrace that human trait. Rather than racing the sun as it rises on hot summer mornings to finish early, I will celebrate its rise and accept the heat. I will look up at the sun and realize that it is my creator. Running in the heat is its own form of mental and physical purification. It is a statement of being human and acknowledging what forged us in prehistoric times.
Change your paradigm: Badwater 135.
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