Conditioning: Runing in hot sun

In preparation for my marathon, I am looking to start conditioning myself to run longer (more than 30km) as well as run under hot weather. The second part is important, since I will be expected to come in at least 4.5-5hrs if I do complete a local marathon. That means coming back at least from 11pm onwards, if it starts at 6am. That will be when the midday sun will be at its hottest.

Today I had a chance to run part of my 10km under hot sun, I started off at the MacRitchie zig-zag bridge (the start point of the Swift Northern Route) and planned to run at a slow pace. I set my HRM to a 10k set, and reached the 3.5km exercise area marker 12:27. This is reasonable, since I normally reach here at anout 11min in my 5km time trials. The grounds were a little wet and soggy, and that might have been due to the earlier rain. I was being extra careful, since I was not wearing my trail shoe, by my normal road-runner (ASICS GT2090). I came out from the tree-trunk-root-undulating area in 15:40min, not too slow.

This is where I hit the golf course, and there was no cover from the 3pm sun. I could feel the heat belting down on me, and immediately my pace was a lot slower. I carried on slowly, and noticed there were fresh signs along the road to warn runners/walkers of golfers stray balls. There must have been some incidents already of passerby being hot by golf balls. I always thought it was dangerous to be running so near an 'active' golf course.

I ran along, and got some reprieve from the sun after the wooden bridge area (6km marker). I continued at a cautious pace along Sime Track today, since I wanted to conserve energy. I reached 5km in about 26min. The rest of the way was relatively incident free, and as I hit the SICC road, the sun was gone, and the skies were threatening to rain heavy. I hurried along back into the trail, and finished off the last 3,5km of very hilly terrain at relatively stronger pace. I finished the whole 10km run in 56min, the slowest on record for this route. Considering that I was running in hot weather, and I was deliberately slowing my pace, this was acceptable. Looking at the average HR of 160bpm, it seems that my HR was high becaise of the warmer weather in the first 5km. I am looking forward to my early morning Sunday run tomorrow, at this location again...only it will be much longer.

Distance Ran:10km XC___Time:56min____Pace:5:37min/km
Average HR:160bpm___Max HR:171bpm___KCal:770KCal