A Gross PR: Highest Dew Point While Running

My last long run was HORRIBLE.

I came down stairs just before sunrise, and there was condensation on our front porch windows. I'd NEVER seen that before in the nearly 20 years we've lived in this house:

The dining room windows were COVERED too.

I knew it would be a thick run. And slow.

I opened the door and was SLAPPED with the humidity. I'd never felt that before. It was 6 a.m. and 80 degrees, with a "feel like" temp of 90 already THAT early in the morning:

I felt OK on my warm-up. Actually quite good. But I followed a set of foot prints for a MILE that were wet. If you walk through damp grass, you might leave a few foot prints. If you jumped in a pool fully clothed, you would leave a few more foot prints. But to leave a track for a mile means you are producing a lot of your own fluid! I hope this guy survived!

These 2 photos are about a half-mile apart!

I cut my run a little short (10 miles instead of 11.5, and only 4 harder miles instead of shooting for 5 [and normally doing 6]), and made a point to test myself mentally every now and then to make sure my brain was still functioning and it wasn’t crossing into a dangerous zone. (If my brain started to act up, would I still have enough brain power to recognize that my brain was acting up? That was my concern!) At mile 9 (which was 1 mile from home), I first started to get a little confused, and was glad I was nearly done. (I expected a major landmark on my normal long run route to be 0.05 miles BEFORE mile 9, but it was 0.05 miles AFTER, and I couldn’t figure it out until I was done running. ALL of my landmarks were after each mile after my turnaround on this run, but at mile 9, I got that mixed up and didn’t know what was happening.) Lost a few good brain cells that morning, but I survived.

I got home and saw the weather on the morning news: we nearly broke a dew point record that morning, with our dew point being 81° before sunrise. The all-time recorded high in Minnesota is a dew point of 82°.

For reference.


From the National Weather Service. WILD.

Here's where I took off my shorts:

I don't wish to do another run like that in a while...

p.s. Here's a post from 2 years ago talking about dew point vs humidity.

p.p.s. I've loosely started (specific) TC 10 Mile training, and this run was the first official run. Not a good start...