It ain't half hot...

I hate running in the heat but I suppose it's a price I'm willing to pay for the otherwise great lifestyle in Madrid. How can I be complaining about the heat in November? Thing is, I decided to run indoors in the work gym today. The air conditioning is set at about the right temperature for sitting around in a t-shirt and shorts, but as soon as you start actually doing anything you - at least I - start sweating buckets. (To give you some idea, if I spend more than an hour on the elliptic machine, the puddle of sweat goes as far as causing a short circuit which puts all the machines out of action - seriously!)

Today was worse than usual because I was running late and hit the lunchtime rush hour. When there are lots of other hot and sweaty bodies working out, it gets even more stifling. On the running machine, you don't have the cooling benefit of the air rushing past you so it's inevitable that your performance is going to be affected but that I should have to run 35% slower to achieve the same heart rate (intensity) as I would have running outdoors is just ridiculous! I suppose it is good to train heat tolerance now and again but it's got to the point where I can't do a proper workout indoors. It may also explain why I spent too much time running at too high an intensity the last couple of years - its only since I started biking that I found good outdoor trails and so, previously, I did almost all of my training on the running machine.