Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Is it Hot Out Here, or Did My Sweat Glands All Just Explode?

Colorado and Texas have many differences.  Like their shape.  Texas has a peculiar easily-recognizable shape.  Colorado's borders seem to point to the fact that as our country expanded westward, governmental officials lost all creativity and just drew large rectangles on the map and designated them states.  There's a reason the four corners are in this part of the country: lack of imagination.
A more important difference lies in the weather.  While west Texas is, like the Front Range of Colorado where I lived, an arid area, the humidity goes up as one travels east towards the Gulf of Mexico.  Incidentally, due to the relative importance of the two countries, shouldn't we rename it the Gulf of America?  Consider that the next time you're munching on some Freedom Fries.

Having been raised in Illinois, I am used to humidity at moderate levels, and in the San Antonio area the humidity seems around the amount that I grew up with, which is great.  As compared with the deep South where even the bugs sweat, I can handle this, although it's much more humid than what I had grown accustomed to among the Rocky Mountains.  The temperatures on the other hand, which have been hitting over 100 degrees daily, is a bit more than I'm used to. 

I didn't really have a problem with the heat until I went for a run yesterday afternoon.  I felt pretty good doing several laps on the track outside, then I stopped running and went into the gym for some pushups and situps.  Suddenly I was extrememly hot, thirsty, and drenched in sweat.  Fortunately the gym was air conditioned, which I know because it was less muggy and nobody else's face was beet red like mine.  Apparently all that heat was building up while I was exercising outside for all of 10 minutes. 

It took me 20 minutes to cool down enough to stop pumping water out of every pore in my body.  The water fountain couldn't dispense water fast enough to satiate my thirst in less than a dozen visits.  Before I could hop on the treadmill for another 1.5 miles I had to make repeated trips to alternately stand in front of one of the industrial fans and the paper towel dispensers trying to dry off between sets of pushups and situps.  There's something wrong with getting up from the mat where you've been doing situps for 30 seconds and needing a squeegee and a mop to clean it up.  I guess I'm going to have to get used to this new climatical paradigm.  There definitely will be no wearing the same shirt to workout in twice without washing it first.  On the bright side if I do my running outside I don't have to wear a hot sweaty shirt, and my body acts as a natural reflective device for safety purposes.  Looks like I will be breaking up my cardio and strength training into separate days.