The Charleston Distance Run is tomorrow morning.  It's a 15 mile course.  The first 3 miles are flat and the next 5 miles are hills with over 1,000 feet of elevation change.  Then, you come off the hills and you have 7 miles of dead flat ground staring you in the face.  The problem is that tomorrow it will be about 70 degrees with 100% humidity at the gun.  It gets worse because when you come out of the hills onto flat ground, there is zero shade from there to the end of the race and it's all on pavement.

Because of the conditions, I'm even debating not doing a warm up.  One of the key factors in this race is going to be your ability to remain cool.  I don't know that I want to skip the warm up entirely but I may do an abbreviated version and let myself ease into race pace rather than trying to hit it from the start.  As for the race itself, I am sorely tempted to run the first half fairly easy, pick it up a bit after I come out of the hills, and then see what I have left in the last 5K.  The problem with that approach is that I could leave a lot of time on the course.  The other option is to try to go at a modified race pace from the start.  The problem with that approach is that if I guess wrong about how much to adjust, I could easily overheat and end up walking.

I'm up for suggestions - especially if you've run a longer race in these kinds of conditions.

Use the first three as a warmup, run the five in the hills at easy to marathon pace, then the next seven at half marathon pace.

Of course you could do more, but anything less would be uncivilized.

After a couple bad experiences, I've given up on long-distance races during the summer and don't register for anything longer than 10K from about Memorial Day to Labor Day... So I've got no personal advice.  But you may get something out of a recent podcast episode of "Marathon Talk".  The hosts interview Susan Partridge, the British woman who was 10th place finisher at the recent women's world championship marathon in Moscow, which had very warm conditions.  She was something like 40th at the 10K mark, and worked her way up to 10th the rest of the race.  IIRC she mentions not doing much of a warmup, if one at all, and her main strategy was patience.  As she says (and as you no doubt know) once your core temperature gets elevated it's very difficult to get it back down.

Here is the archived podcast, her interview is around the 40-minute mark if you want to fast-forward tot it.

I think Miami quit any races until September.  After July 4th (and that is pushing it), we have no races (or barely any races).  That's triathlon season.

 

Anyway, I wish you good luck!  Those temps sound awesome to me but only because I live in hell.  I agree with the dumping water over your head advice.  I do that a lot down here.  At least it makes you feel better (and wet) even if it's really useless.

Though, the race I did that, I ended up with some bra chafing for the first and only time.  Thinking back to your post on the recent chafing thread, I wonder if that was because I was washing away my lubricating sweat?  

I can't remember but a female runner/racer in the RW rag recently said that she will do three things before a race especially if the wait at the start getting long.  Now, I know track racers are often running for what seems like HOURS before the race starts in the wings so I'm certainly not assuming it's exclusive but in this case, those 3 things were.....

Walking toe touches

Lunges

Leg swings

I didn't give it much thought, but shortly after things got REALLY hot this summer, I started doing that myself.  I found that it isn't quite as good as a full warmup, but significantly better than just kicking the legs out and slapping thighs and crap like that.  More like anaerobic vs aerobic with some dynamic stretching.  (shrug)

Last year, conditions were like this as well.  I just went back to look at my log from that race and I remembered that I faded in the last 3 miles but I never realized how much I faded.  It was a bunch.  Despite that, I was actually passing people because they were fading worse.  I think I'm going to take George's advice and force myself to start more conservatively this year and see if I have better results.  It's sure as hell not PR weather so I might as well experiment a bit.

Last year, conditions were like this as well.  I just went back to look at my log from that race and I remembered that I faded in the last 3 miles but I never realized how much I faded.  It was a bunch.  Despite that, I was actually passing people because they were fading worse.  I think I'm going to take George's advice and force myself to start more conservatively this year and see if I have better results.  It's sure as hell not PR weather so I might as well experiment a bit.

I was going to say - check what you did last year and adjust from there!   Sounds like you have a plan.

I'm not sure I've ever seen such a parade of suck at the finish line for all those poor souls who went out too fast.

So? How did it go?

Short version.  I tossed my race plan in the trash within the first mile because I felt so good.  I took 1st place in my age group, 1st place military, and 28th overall out of 555 who finished.  I'll write it all up at some point but I had a very good day.  Mind you, it was fucking miserable and I was begging for someone to chop off my legs sans anesthesia but the results were good.