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Well, after briefly putting growing my hair on hold for college interviews, I'm now about six months in, just at the beginning of the awkward phase. However, I'm really struggling right now to not cut my hair. See, I've always been overweight, but about two months ago I took up jogging, changed my eating habits, and have started to see big changes in my health. I've also fallen in love with running, something I never expected would happen. The problem is, I live in a very hot, humid area. Today was the first day that I've run in 90-degree weather, and by the end of my run, I was ready to go shave my head. My hair traps such an incredible amount of heat, and I can only imagine that it will just get worse as the weather gets hotter and more humid and my hair gets longer. Quite frankly, I want to have long hair, but I want to keep losing weight more. Continuing running is more important to me than continuing to grow my hair out, but I really hope that one of you will have dealt with this problem and will know what to do to prevent me from cooking my own brain.
Well unfortunately if it bugs you now, it's still gonna bug you when it's long -- just you'll be able to tie it up, which works for most people, so don't give up!
Hi Bass,Guitar
You don't have to put off growing your hair for college and job interviews,i heard of long hair men in the past and still today get short hair wigs and wear the wigs to interviews,nobody is going to know you have a short hair wig on and just for eight hours a day they wear the wigs to work,if i was a man my hair would be just as long as it is now and i would do this if i was a man,and that's good that you're running and taking care of your health, i just joined aa gym about two months ago,i am also overweight but that is going to change,i am going to turn back the clock on my health and anatomy,when you run in the hot weather tie your hair back,don't give up on your hair keep it growing.Margie
I am SO not a runner, but I do know a thing or two about heat, living in southern Arizona. To absorb the sweat, roll up a bandana and tie it around your melon. This keeps your eyes safe from salt water, and helps cool you down. If you ned extra cooling, try one of those headbands with the beads that soak up water and release it slowly. These are great in heat, but I'm not so sure about the humidity. Where do you live, anyway? Here in AZ, it gets humid during the monsoon season, but it's only about a month long.
Lon
Even in the monsoon, Arizona doesn't get humid like the East and Deep South. Problem is, at very high humidity, evaporative cooling just doesn't work very well. A wet headband just turns into a hot wetter headband. Even bare skin doesn't cool very well, you just get a sheen of sweat.
To this day, I can't estimate temperatures in the West...it can be in the 80s here, in the shade, with a light breeze and I'll guess 10-20 degrees low. You can actually get chilled at low humidity and high temperatures (80s) when exercising under certain conditions.
90F/90% is the reason I live in San Francisco and not North Carolina. On the rare occasions it gets hot, the humidity is low, so it is merely uncomfortable.
All I can suggest is keeping it up and avoiding exercising in the worst of the heat and humidity. And what I've heard is that as you become more fit, your body gets more efficient and you tend to overheat less...that is, you generate heat per pound, but you lose it per square inch, and you lose pounds much faster than square inches[1], so as you progress, each square inch has proportionally less waste heat to dispose of so the heat stress becomes less.
[1] Also, you lose a huge amount of heat through your lungs, and that won't change as you lose weight.
I'm just past my five month grow out and am also a runner Ok so the heat over here is probably nothing compared you where you live but you still work up a sweat on a warm day. I was worried that I might find my hair becoming annoying and getting into my eyes. So if I'm running on hot day I wet my hair with cold water before i start and after i finish to avoid overheating. I also wear a lightweight skull cap which keeps the sweat and hair out of my eyes. I love the feeling of it blowing in the wind now! Stick with it your brain won't boil!
Minimizing the area that the hair takes up is the best solution.
This is why ponytails help a lot, the volume is minimized and so is the heat that is retained.
I say just wait a couple more months until you can tie a fairly decent ponytail, and if the bangs don't fit you can hold them down with one of those clips.
Best of luck!
-Mihnea
I started running in the 70s and I run in the when the weather is
passabl and comfortable. In pouring rain/heavy snow/freezing
cold/sweltering heat I run indoors at the local YMCA.
Either way I keep my hair tied in a pony tail or braided.
Besides i'm more concerned about the air I breath than the
heat.
Yep. The first summer I ran, I thought I was going to die (and I didn't even have long hair then). It does get easier: I stopped running that summer, and restarted when it got cooler. After running in the winter (and freezing my butt off), summer didn't seem nearly so bad.
I like running just before sunset, because it's nice and cool here. Right at sunrise is even cooler; I feel like I must be nuts for getting up at 6am to run, but by about 6:02 that passes. Also, look for routes with trees for shade (if you have trees where you are). If you can find a running-shoe store, they might be able to tell you where some cooler runs are.
A friend of mine has a "buff" (see link below); that might help keep your hair off your skin a little, which could help.
Be sure to drink enough fluids when you're running in the heat. Everything seems a lot worse if you get dehydrated.
''Buff''
I think you pretty much have to run at or just before sunrise on days when the high temperature is way up there. wear as little as possible and try to run enough to get a workout before it gets to be too much to tolerate.
Hey there. I've been jogging quite a lot lately as part of my fitness programme. The thing is that becuase I live in Belgium, the very hot summer periods are fairly brief and we have a lot of rain and temperate conditions here. Right now the temperature here is probably around 30 C or more (almost 90 Fahrenheit). The way I deal with it is by getting a ponytail (two actually, because my front hair isn't all long enough to stay in a low down ponytail just yet). I've seen quite a few long hairs jogging with ponytails in my park/forest too, so that way it won't trap heat much or get in your way.
Good luck.