Training with the Heat

With the summer already upon us, it's really starting to heat up. We've already had temperatures of over 100 *F for multiple days, with the heat index much higher. Just standing outside gets your shirt soaked.


Despite the heat, I must continue training as I have a race in less than a month, and then in August a few more. With that said, training in the heat is no fun. To try and battle the heat, I've been attempting a few different things to beat the heat.


Early Mornings
You would think in the mornings it would be nice and cool and perfect running weather, right? Well take a look at what the other day's temperature vs humidity looked like.

Click to enlarge - Temperature vs Humidty on June 28th in Houston

So in the early morning (around 5), the temperature is about 80* and the humidity is about 90%, and putting that in the handy-dandy heat index calculator, we get the heat index is about 87*. So running in the morning is still quite the workout with battling the heat! I'll usually come back from my run nice and sweaty and usually feeling kinda gross from the mugginess. But it's the best way to beat the high heat and out of the sun during the day.


That's Houston for you. Can't complain too much because if you're looking at the chart, you'll realize that it got up 93 before the thunderstorms really let loose! (Thunderstorms happen in the spike in humidity and drop in temperature, around 3pm).


During the Day/Afternoon
Not too much of a surprise, but I have a hard time waking up early every morning (I like sleep). Every now and then I'll get a workout during lunch, which means a little shorter of a workout but typically I'll go inside on a treadmill where it's a bit cooler (A/C!) and I have quicker access to a shower.


If it's after work, my favorite spot is memorial park. Why you ask? Well not only is it a great running trail, but they also have some off-road trails that offer a significant amount of shade along with some trail running thrills. Despite the heat, I really enjoy doing runs on the trails. There's something about whizzing past trees and making sharp cuts left and right that's so much more enjoyable than watching more flatness come into your unobstructed view while running on a regular running trail.






The issue with the high heat, whether it's in the 80* mornings or 95-100* evenings, is keeping the body cool. If I'm running at a rate that's making my body work pretty hard (say around 7'/mile), the body begins to produce a lot of heat (basic physics and common sense). However, when the temperature is hot enough, my body begins doing more work to keep itself cool then to keep up the pace, thus making it more difficult to run fast and preventing me from overheating immediately. And nobody really likes being a victim of heat exhaustion or heat stroke.


So what can you learn from me rambling about all this? Well different symptoms set in for different levels of what level your body temperature is at.


Body Temperature                                           Symptoms

  101-104 *F                                                    Muscle Weakness, Fatigue


  104-105                                                         Disorientation, Severe muscle weakness, loss of balance


  Above 105                                                     Diminished sweating, loss of consciousness






So don't be afraid to take breaks if you're feeling pretty hot and drink water!


Good luck.. and just because I happened to pull this data up, here is the month of June:

You've lost at Hangman?

A childhood favorite.. hangman. I'm sure we've all had a bunch of downtime playing the silly game. First you just guessed at random, then learned the vowels, then learned that "E" is the most popular letter, then started reading and learning harder words to guess like "oxymoron" and "lexicon." Now if you ever play (especially with Hanging with Friends), you probably just guess as best you can, but mostly random guesses.

Well get ready for all that to change!

Imagine an engineer/scientist/analyst who got bored one day and did an in depth analysis to the science and statistics behind guessing words for hangman. Well that happened. Now, basically we can be hangman wizards.

So here's the gist of it...  You have some blank spots on a board in front of you that you need to fill in with some letters. The problem is, you need to guess correctly otherwise you die. You aren't too sure but you think the best order to guess in is the following:

ETAOIN SHRDLU CMFWYP VBGKQJ XZ

If you guessed this order, you're close, but still have some refining to do! Maybe you've seen this list before... It's the most common occurrences of letters in literature (from left to right). So basically, if you put some common sense into the way the statistics were formed, you can actually break the letter priority based on word length and what's used in a dictionary/random words, as opposed to priority based on what you'd find in a novel.

What I mean is, if you have a 2 letter word, there are fewer letters to choose from because there aren't a ton of 2 letter words, so your letter priority will be different than a 5 letter word (make sense?). So let's look at the different combinations then based on word length:

Length of Word
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
#1	A	A	A	A	S	E	E	E	E	E	E	E	I	I	I	I	I	I	I	I
#2	I	O	E	E	E	S	S	S	S	I	I	I	E	E	E	E	E	S	E	O
#3		E	O	S	A	A	I	I	I	S	S	S	N	T	T	T	T	E	T	E
#4		I	I	O	R	R	A	A	R	R	N	N	T	S	N	S	N	T	O	T
#5		M	T	I	O	I	R	R	A	A	A	T	S	N	S	N	S	O	N	R
#6		H	S	R	I	O	N	N	N	N	R	A	A	A	O	A	O	N	A	S
#7		N	U	L	L	L	T	T	T	T	T	R	O	O	A	O	A	R	S	A
#8		U	P	T	T	N	O	O	O	O	O	O	R	R	R	R	R	A	R	N
#9		S	R	N	N	T	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	C
#10		T	N	U	U	D	D	D	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	L
#11		Y	D	D	D	U	U	C	D	D	U	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P
#12		B	B	P	C	C	C	U	U	U	D	U	U	U	U	U	U	M	M	H
#13		L	G	M	Y	M	G	G	G	G	P	M	M	M	M	M	M	U	U	U
#14		P	M	H	P	P	P	M	M	M	M	D	G	D	D	H	H	H	H	M
#15		X	Y	C	M	G	M	P	P	P	G	G	D	H	H	D	D	D	D	Y
#16		D	L	B	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	G	G	Y	G	G	G	D
#17		F	H	K	G	B	B	B	B	B	B	Y	Y	Y	Y	G	Y	Y	Y	G
#18		R	W	G	B	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	B	B	B	B	B	B	B	B	B
#19		W	F	Y	K	K	F	F	F	F	F	V	V	V	V	V	V	V	V	Z
#20		G	C	W	F	F	K	K	V	V	V	F	F	F	F	F	F	Z	F	V
#21		J	K	F	W	W	W	W	K	K	K	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	F	Z	F
#22		K	X	V	V	V	V	V	W	W	W	K	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	K
#23			V	J	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	W	K	K	W	W	Q	Q	K	X
#24			J	Z	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	W	W	K	Q	W	W	J	J
#25			Z	X	J	J	J	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	K	J	K	Q	Q
#26			Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	J	J	J	J	J	J	J	J	J	K		W

After your mind has recovered from being blown up, you may begin to understand this a bit more. It's saying that if you have a 5 letter word, the most common letter becomes "S" followed by "E" and so on down the list. But if you have a 4 letter word, your best first guess would be "A." Now you're probably saying to yourself, "But if I guess that a 6 letter word will have an E and it doesn't, then priority shifts because it probably contains a vowel so S wouldn't be the next logical guess anymore, but maybe it's the letter A instead?" And to that I would say... you are correct, and smart!

The also might be thinking to yourself, "Is there really no 18 letter word that contains a J? I was just thinking about that the other day." (You also may have too much time on your hands if that's what you're thinking about).

So basically you're just hoping for a cheat sheet you can print out to carry around with you. If you're playing Hanging with Friends or something similar, and get a 14 letter word you want to know what letters to guess. Let me help you out.

Number of letters	Optimal calling order
1	A I
2	A O E I U M B H
3	A E O I U Y H B C K
4	A E O I U Y S B F
5	S E A O I U Y H
6	E A I O U S Y
7	E I A O U S
8	E I A O U
9	E I A O U
10	E I O A U
11	E I O A D
12	E I O A F
13	I E O A
14	I E O
15	I E A
16	I E H
17	I E R
18	I E A
19	I E A
20	I E

BAM!

Let me break down what this means. You get something that looks the following:

5 letter word... Go!

So you should guess S first. If no S, then E. If no E, then A... until you get a letter. Then you should probably just go down that bigger chart up there or use common sense (whichever you're better at). If it's a 6 letter word, use that row. Hopefully you get the idea.

Cool right?

Now you'll be the master at Hangman!

__________________________________________

I can take no credit for this in-depth analysis. I actually used quite a bit of this person's work and must give them credit. Originally found the information here.