I doubt it. How often do you think you hear the word humidity and something good comes to mind? For me, running in humidity feels like jogging through someone’s back hair, and that would be honestly probably feel better than running in Texas humidity. Unless that person is in Texas with a lot of back hair than it is the worse of both worlds.

Many of us have heard of the benefits of altitude training for running performance. The East Africans, who dominate the marathon world, generally live and train in at 8,000+ feet of elevation.

Running in elevation leads to body improvement in aerobic capacity and overall performance. It also makes it hard to breathe but we can focus on the benefits for now. Who wouldn’t want those attributes made available to reach their running dreams?

What about the benefits of humidity? Do such things exist?

The thought popped into my head on a run this week as I felt sorry about myself slowly morphing into a human puddle five minutes into a classic summer run. God Bless Texas. There had to be some sort of benefit or reward for getting through a humid Texas run. Maybe, just maybe, humidity leads to some sort of a miracle superpower for us Southerners.

I decided to do some research and see what I could find out about this subject. After looking at many sweaty images without any runners smiling in photos, I found some insights into benefits of running in humidity.

Here are the top scientific (see – made up) reasons why running in humidity may lead to you becoming the sweatier, slower version of Jim Walmsley.

1. Burning More Calories — That means a six-pack right?

The harder you run means that you must burn more calories. That’s a guess. I base this off by putting the speed up on the treadmill and seeing the calories burned per hour increase. So, the harder you run, the more you sweat. And running in humidity means a lot of sweat. Therefore if you follow my newly found truth, humidity must lead to burning more calories! Which the real victory means you get to eat more fried food somewhat guilt-free.

2. Improved Mental (Stubbornness) Toughness

During a run in humidity, anything can make you feel stoppable. The 30 pounds of sweat dragging the body down and the difficulty in breathing does not help make it easy to run. It doesn’t even make it easy to move forward at a walking pace. So this has to be where they say the concept of toughness comes in, right?

WHO else can handle this pain?? WHO else can handle this suffering??? YOU ARE BAD TO THE BONE!!! Or maybe stubborn. Or maybe it’s the same thing but you are probably able to tackle hard things after training in humidity like ultra marathons and filing your own taxes.

3. Heat Tolerance Increase

If you can handle the humidity, or at least didn’t die when training in it, you will be better prepped for those low humidity races. You may be better prepped for the humid races too although is anyone actually ever prepared for those? Maybe Pam Reed (Former winner of the Badwater 135). Since I’m not Pam or any other incredible athlete, no matter how much I sweat and run in the humidity, I never am ready for humid races.

So is it worth it?

No way! But do you have a choice? Maybe it is worth it if you want to save money and not run on a treadmill inside. I would recommend cutting from other areas of your budget first before condemning yourself to Texas and many other areas where the only way to run outside is to basically swim in sweat.

How’s the humidity for your area? Are you dreaming of escaping to a running Oasis across the world or do you live the dream right now?

Average Runner Paul