It happens every year. August rolls around, and my training falls apart. But this year will be different, right? No Louisiana heat and humidity. Instead, I have California breezes and coastal views. Still, same story (I was sick for the whole first week, including a three day stretch where I barely left my room). August is conspiring to ruin my fall and solidifying its spot as my least favorite month. August please go away. You’re the worst.
First, it’s hard to train in August. Even on the cooler coast, it’s still not optimal training weather. Running harder for slower paces is mentally draining. I also seem to get sick in August each year. My body is just scheduled to shut down. It knows fall is around the corner, and it doesn’t want to be active until summer is on its way out.
The sports calendar is also depressing. We are so close to football, but it’s all just a big tease. There are just so many training camp and fall camp stories and practice reports you can watch before falling asleep.
And what’s the alternative? We can watch the Little League World Series. Yay. I can watch a bunch of kids, whom I don’t know, play sloppy baseball and tell us all about their favorite cafeteria foods. And it’s game after game after game.
At least we get to celebrate some awesome holidays right? Wrong. August is 31 days long, and none of them are special.
This year we got to see what an August holiday would look like when a solar eclipse traversed the country. And how did that go? Traffic screeched to a halt, people wandered around outside posting blurry indiscernible pictures on social media, and our president widened his list of personal screw ups to include staring directly at a solar eclipse.
No cool running shoes come out in August. They know better than debuting in a month where most of the country is inside, hiding from the scorching sun. And for those who do venture out, August can be brutal (read my report from running The Hottest Half in Dallas last year here).
The worst part of August, however, is how close it is to September. In September we will have football and cooler weather. We get the Berlin Marathon and its list of elite athletes gunning for world records to set up the second half of the year’s marathon majors.
As a runner and sports fan (who hasn’t yet had to worry about an icy winter), September marks the beginning of 8+ amazing months of training and racing and sporting events. August please go away.
Just in case I’ve hurt August’s feelings too much, I’ll try to come up with a few positive thoughts about this horrid month.
I’ll update this article if I can think of any…