My Love Letter to the High Desert

You will never hear me complain about running in Boise in the summer. This town is a runner's paradise made even more fantastic by my previous summers in the god-awful weather of Dallas. This is my third marathon and my third time to train in the heart of summer. The previous two training sessions did not go well. That's because I was training in the worst possible location in America. I'm convinced that no place has the combination of heat and humidity that Dallas has. Just looking out the window would make me start sweating. Even on early morning runs at 5am, the temperature would already be in the low 80s with zero wind and worst of all, high humidity. It felt like it was 95 degrees before the sun even came up! The human body is not designed to cool itself in these conditions, let alone run 16-20 miles. Some mornings I would be drenched in sweat with wobbly legs by mile 3. I would usually finish the run on sheer will, in legitimate fear of heat exhaustion or worse. This went on for 3 months without reprieve. Needless to say, I got very little out of this training, and my previous two marathon times reflect that.

I've paid my penance however and am now training in the perfect place. Boise mornings are fantastic. Even on hot days over 100 degrees, the mornings are cool and crisp. I've yet to have a bad run because of the heat, and training in high altitude should give me the lung capacity of a whale when I'm in NYC. Boise has also discovered that trails are a good thing. I can run on dirt trails in the hills and feel like I'm in the middle of nowhere, or I can run on flat, paved trails that go for miles and miles along the river. On weekends spent in the mountains, I get to run surrounded by spectacular scenery and fresh air. Best of all, the mornings in Boise are cool enough to bring my dog along. If I'd gone running with a thick-coated golden retriever in Dallas in August, he would either be dead or I would have been reported to the Humane Society. Now he's where he's supposed to be, running by my side. With all of this working in my favor and with the cause that I'm running for, I have no excuse if I don't run a really good race. So if you ever hear me complain about my training this summer, feel free to slap me.