We’re living in wild, strange, terrifying times as temperature records around the world are being shattered. Some have said we’ve moved from global warming to global boiling.
I have a hard time writing about this without thinking about what that means for the planet, the environment and for people and non human animals all over the world that the world is so very hot.
This blog’s Cate is cycling in Montenagro and is reporting very hot temperatures there.
Meanwhile, the water temperature in Flordia is in the 90s, which poses a threat to coral reefs and other marine life. And it’s so hot in Arizona that people are being treated in hospital for burn injuries after falling and landing on the pavement.
See After Earth’s hottest week on record, extreme weather surprises everyone — even climate scientists and Longer heatwaves driven by ‘turbo-charged’ climate change, say scientists. It’s all very unsettling news.
Now this is a feminist fitness blog and so I’m tempted to share tips about exercising in the heat. Like this one, 8 mistakes to avoid if you’re going out in the heat. But obviously that’s not enough.
I’m also wanting to write about the changing relationship I’m experiencing between seasons and sports. Summer has been, for a long time, for me, the season of century bike rides. There’s the friends for life bike rally, six days of long rides. I plan long bike trips on paths and roads on days that are getting increasingly hot. It doesn’t matter how early we start it’s still stinking hot out there where I live.
There are also random dangerous storms. The other night, riding to physio, I was out in a pop up thunder storm and pretty quickly had large hail bouncing off my helmet and hail stones stuck behind my glasses. Last summer Sarah and I got stuck riding in the worst storm we’ve ever experienced. That was also the year I learned a new word, “derecho”–a widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms.
More and more the heat and the wild weather is making this less fun. And I like the heat. I love summer. It’s my favorite season. Maybe summer going forward is a time for swimming not cycling. I could make fall my cycling season, the time for long bike rides, but the problem is lack of daylight.
I’m not sure what to make of it all.
I do know that air conditioned bike paths can’t be the answer. See Dubai is planning a 93-km air-conditioned cycleway dubbed The Loop.
Is global warming and wild weather changing your sense of the fitness seasons? What are you doing differently?
Air conditioned bike paths. Oy vey (as my paternal grandmother would have said)–how is it that our answer is always, “consume more resources” to solve for our destructive overconsumption. And yes, I’m complicit in this and can’t figure out how to solve the puzzle.