Ready for Summer?

On running when it gets *really* hot, and getting out into the woods

👋 Hey there! I’m Terrell and this is The Half Marathoner, a weekly newsletter on running (and much more). If this is the first time you’re seeing me in your inbox, welcome! And if you’ve been around for a while, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription, which helps me keep the lights on and keep this wonderful, always insightful and super-supportive community going. It’s just over $1 a week, and there’s so much to check out when you do:

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s summer. (Although I know some parts of the U.S., like in Minnesota and Wisconsin, were experiencing frost warnings as recently as earlier this week!)

But where I live in the deep South, summer is most definitely here. Temperatures have started rising into the middle and upper eighties most days; it’s still nice outside when you’re in the shade, but step out of it and into the direct sun, and you’ll feel the warmth cover you like a blanket.

This time of year has always posed a bit of a challenge for my running. It’s given me a convenient excuse not to run, especially on days when the mercury rises above 90. (Come for a run on Atlanta’s city streets in July and August, and you’ll see what I mean! 🥵)

There are times, though, when inspiration hits me and I head into the plentiful wooded areas just outside the city, running along trails built on old railroad beds, through and around old Civil War battlefield sites, and through the woods of housing developments that seem to get bigger with each passing year.

On those trails, it’s easier to feel like I’ve stepped out of the busyness of the city where I live, that I’ve jumped off the roller-coaster, even just for a little while. You soak up the trees, the smell of the mulch that’s only recently been laid out on the trail, the sunlight peeking through the trees just over your head.

Unlike a lot of other cities, Atlanta doesn’t have many big, open public parks. Sure, it has a few; but ours are few and far between compared to what you’ll find in cities like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, London, etc.

What we do have is a whole world just outside the city, full of places that lie right along the edge of suburbia and the wilderness. There’s even one just a few minutes’ drive from my house, and I go there as often as I can — to run, to walk, to just watch and listen to the river flowing by.

Every once in a while, I’ll return to books I’ve read before, when something I see or hear strikes a chord in my memory to remind me of them. This week that happened with an old book I’ve probably mentioned before called Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human, by Vybarr Cregan-Reid.

In the book’s second half, the author describes a run he took through the redwood forests of Northern California while on a trip there for work. (On one trail, he sees a sign warning of mountain lion sightings, which a colleague had told him not worry about — still, he writes, “I’m all for the wild when there are flowers to sniff, but I really would prefer not to be eaten.”)

What he’s doing, he realizes, is what in Japan is known as Shirin-yoku, or “forest bathing.” There have even been studies to measure its effects, he adds, noting how “spending a little time breathing in the air of the forest [has] neuropsychological effects that bring about real changes in our nervous and immune systems.”

Ticking off a list of improved physiological markers scientists have found their subjects experience as a result of spending time in the woods, Cregan-Reid adds that even their sleep got better: “Is it any wonder that so many bedtime stories seem to take place in a forest?”

It’s a way of flipping one of Nietzsche’s most famous sayings — not to gaze too long into an abyss, because when you do, the abyss gazes back into you — on its head. “When we run outside, it is not just about us looking at the environment,” he writes. “The natural world also sends something back to us, through our eyes or the soles of our feet: the effects can be greater feelings of happiness, stress relief, even enhanced levels of creativity.”

I share all that with you because, probably like you, I’ve seen the forecasts of the heat on the way later this summer. In all likelihood, it’s going to get hot — and I mean really hot. That’s gonna be a pretty big curveball for those of us who want to keep up with our running, but who live anywhere south of International Falls.

For me, I think, the woods will be calling. What do you plan to do? What will be your escape?

As always, I love hearing your thoughts and comments — keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell