Sweaty!

These mornings - phew. The earlier I get up, the more humid it is! I hit the park yesterday and ran into a wall of fog. It was dense and warm - just like entering a bathroom steamed up by a hot shower. It was such a sweaty run - my clothes were soaked!

This year, here are a few things I've done to help with the summer sweating:

Newspapers in my shoes. By mile five yesterday, my shoes were squelching with sweat. I stuff my shoes with newspaper when I get home, and the paper wicks the moisture up out of the insoles (the gross part is pulling sweat-saturated newspaper out of your shoes when you get home after work). It definitely helps keep your shoes dry!

Nuun at the track. I am actually not a fan of Nuun. It contains sorbitol, which in the medical world is used to get stuff out of someone fast. Like if we need to remove excess potassium, we give you a drug that binds potassium, and we give you sorbitol to get it out of you fast. As in, diarrhea. Not on my list of things to drink while running! But someone gave me some tablets, and I've been bringing one in a cup of water when I go to the track. I drink it before my cool down, so I'm not too far from home just in case, ha ha. But it does help keep my blood pressure up when I've lost a ton of electrolytes to sweat.

Tiny towels. This sounds silly, but collecting those give-away towels from sports games and events and storing them downstairs in the kitchen makes them easy to grab and use to towel the sweat off before I go dripping all over the house. Because who wants to mop more than once a week?

Salt packs. For longer runs, I have been bringing a little salt. Sometimes I don't need or want calories (especially if it might upset my stomach, like during a tempo), but I do want the sodium that a gel or Gatorade would have. So instead I bring some salt in a piece of foil. I know others use those little paper restaurant salt packets, but anything wrapped in paper would last about 4 minutes in this humidity before melting to nothing! I just pour some kosher salt into foil, twist it up, and pull it out when I stop for water.

Wring, rinse, wring. When I get home, my clothes are saturated with sweat. I peel them off in the bathroom, wring the sweat out into the sink, then rinse them before wringing out a second time. The quick rinse prevents that awful sweaty-clothes smell from lingering after the clothes are washed.