jayfurr | 3-Day For The Cure: But It's A Dry Heat!

Thank you very much, Mister I-Honk-At-People-Doing-Stretches-By-The-Side-Of-The-Road. You were the only thing that kept my training walk tonight in Tucson, Arizona from being perfect.

I live in northern New England. I train for 3-Day training walks in the hills and valleys and mountains of Vermont. Training in the dry heat of the Sonoran Desert is definitely a different experience for me. I'm here on business for a couple of days and could have just relaxed in the hotel pool with a margarita after work, but no sooner had I gotten back to my hotel than I threw on my heart rate monitor/GPS doodad, grabbed my trusty pink Nalgene bottle and my sunglasses, and headed out for what turned into an eight mile training walk.

In, I might add, 95-degree heat and 4% humidity.

Yeah, it's a DRY HEAT. I know. I know.

A dry heat may not feel as hot as a nice humid muggy Dixie heatwave beatdown like the summer days I endured as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia. I remember all too well the 100-degree heat with 100% humidity. Walking around was like going for a steam bath fully clothed. Trying to sleep in an a dorm room that utterly lacked air conditioning was next to impossible. Yeah, I know "muggy".

But even though tonight's training walk brought cries of "I'll trade ya!" from numerous friends, walking in really hot, dry conditions can be downright dangerous. You're still sweating but the sweat's evaporating away. So you don't feel sweaty, but over time you wind up crusted with salt. I wonder where all that salt came from? That's right, inside you. And if you're just toddling along drinking water, that salt's not getting replaced.

That's if you're drinking at all; paradoxically, on really hot dry days some people just don't feel thirsty. By the time you realize how dehydrated your body really is and how much salt and liquid you've lost, you're already feeling dizzy and simply chugging a bottle of water won't help. You've got to be proactive.

So I made sure tonight to drink plenty of water AND sport drink -- PowerAde, specifically -- as I walked. I drained a 1-liter bottle of water twice AND drank two quarts of PowerAde. Slightly more than a gallon of liquid, all in all -- but I'm going to keep drinking until bedtime. Healthy liquids, that is. Not margaritas. :)