Running may have to be put on pause for a while (heat)

I was speaking to an old college friend the other day and we were discussing what we do for health. He told me that he rides a stationary bike similar to a Pelaton and does so in the confines of his house. Yuck! I had to say to that. I can't stand being in the same place looking at the same walls and never actually moving.

Is it safer? Of course but it is also extremely boring. I guess you could have the TV on or something but I have always lived my life as feeling as though exercise needs to be at least somewhat enjoyable and if it can't be that, it needs to at least be something you do not loathe.

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This is becoming increasingly difficult as the summer months get very hot and humid here in Chicago.

With temperatures in the mid 80's (high 20's in C) and near 100% humidity, this is just too damn hot and my body is experiencing a shutdown effect of sorts because I sweat so much and overheat so quickly.

I try to limit myself during runs to only put myself into zone 4 a tiny bit and remain in zone 3 as much as possible. Zone 2 is said by many to be idea but for me, this is simply walking and that gets very boring very fast to me.

All things considered, I'm pretty happy with this pace and duration especially when you consider that I had to stop frequently because I was simply overheating. I was trying to enjoy the exercise as much as possible but this is very difficult to accomplish when you are just dripping all over the place and your shoes start to fill up with the sweat that is dripping down your legs.

I wasn't terribly successful at keeping my heart rate just in zone 3 to low-4 either. If you look closely at the graph you can see that as time went by, my heart rate would increase to very high a lot faster than before even though my pace or attempt at it anyway, was likely getting much slower due to fatigue.

Towards the end I was walking more than running and honestly, I was spent. There is a very real connection between heat and ability to perform cardio even though there are some truly amazing people out there like David Goggins that insists it is all in your mind. That dude is such a machine though that I doubt whether or not he is human. Or if he is human he actually has a condition or disease that works in his benefit as far as exercise is concerned.

I don't want to give up on exercise and I refuse to. This next trip out, which I only have time to do during the day, is going to take place with a bottle of water that I have intentionally frozen solid before hand. Now, instead of drinking it I am going to hold it against my body when I slow down from the increased heart rate to see if it has some sort of calming effect on my overall heart rate.

There isn't a lot of research on how sweat affects performance but honestly, I don't need it. I know that it is a factor based on my own experience. I cannot continue after a certain amount of time and once my shoes get saturated, I am in danger of blisters. While that might be a very common and manageable thing for professional runners, for me it puts me out of commission for many days.

I'm hoping the frozen water bottle does the trick because if it has no effect, I'm kind of at a loss as to what I can do to help out with this overheating process from that point.