I jogged about three miles this morning and when I looked at my watch after 8 minutes, I thought to myself, “Why am I doing this?”

My least favorite time to run outside is late July, August, December and January. I run on the treadmill during the winter, but I am an outside type of runner. Maybe it was my start many years ago in track running the streets to train that made me into a person who wants to run outside and breathe the fresh air.

In my competitive distance days, I was a terrible runner during July and August. I remember running a Firecracker 500 run in Southern Illinois when I was in my 20s and how my performance was awful. Then a few months later in September, I was back finishing near the top of the pack in my races.

I finished the run on Thursday and even swam inside in normal fashion, but the run wasn’t easy. I encourage people to drink plenty of fluids when they finish their runs and try to run during the times where the temperatures are the lowest during the day.

It is predicted to be in the upper 90s this weekend, so if you are exercising, I encourage you to run early and immediately drink water after finishing the task.

My question to fellow runners is how do you beat the heat? Do you run early? What do you do about hydrating yourself?

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