Day 132 – EU – Croatia [Marina to Split]

03/07/20

40.5km

  From Marina (Croatia) to Split (Croatia)

Europe

My body took its first toll, following a continuous week of 40+ Celsius temperatures

I was feeling very grateful so far, through the first 130 days of the journey, that my body had held up so well, and that I had not had a single injury or bad day on the road. Well, that was before today!

I left around 6am, with temperatures already around 25 Celsius. I was feeling good knowing that the first 10km of the run should be pretty sheltered from the sun, being between the coastline and the bordering mountain range.

But as I hit km 8 of the run, not 1hr yet into the run and still before 7am – my body sent me a strong signal that it had had enough of the brutal heat. All of a sudden, my sweating accelerated to a very abnormal rate. It was like a tap was open. Sweat dripping nearly on a continuous flow from my head, arms,.. my shoes filling with water.

I didn’t wait, something was obviously going very wrong: I headed straight to a minimart by the side of the road, sat in the shade and took out all the water I had. As I sat down, a puddle quickly formed underneath me and two small streams started running from my shoes. Things were not going well!

I kept as calm as I could and drank about 1 litre of water within 20 minutes. I was a bit scared of what to do in case it wouldn’t stop. But it did eventually. I let my body cool down and when I felt ready, I started running again.

From this point on I took breaks every 3km on average, to let the machine cool down and avoid another incident. It went well but I walked (or ran) on eggshells.

It is lucky that tomorrow is a rest day. I need to chill out and stay out of the heat for a while. I have said here before that I should start my runs before dawn. That would involve waking up at about 4am and I still need to get to adjust to it. With a requirement of 8 to 9hrs sleep a night, you can see that I have to re-organise my days (and feeding times) significantly!

Time to chill out, replenish and get ready: summer is only starting in Southern Europe…!

Check my daily run GPS data on or

Here is the map of today’s run: