The July Problem
Nothing about this month looks like progress. It's building anyway.
July always feels like an awkward month for running.
Even more so for me the past couple of years. For two summers now, summer has meant returning to running and trying to regain my fitness as I rehabbed injuries. The body already feels less than optimal to begin with, and add on top of that the fact that July is probably the most awkward month for runners.
For those familiar with the sport/hobby/personality lifestyle, many of us runners are driven by several factors — but one of the main ones is usually racing, and at the very least not wanting to feel like we are dying. For those of us in warmer, more tropical and humid climates — this is what makes July weird.
The watch says one thing and my body says another, and the two of them won’t agree — probably until October. I go out for what should be an easy run, the heat pushes my heart rate somewhere it wouldn’t go until a faster pace on a cooler day, so I back off. That’s not weakness — that’s just how a body works in ninety-degree air. But then I’m standing in my driveway afterward looking at a pace that would’ve embarrassed me in March, wondering if any of this is actually building anything.
I know better than to trust that feeling. I learned it last summer, slowly, over weeks I didn’t enjoy. The paces stayed slow. The runs felt like they were going nowhere. And then November came, and I stood at the start of the Norfolk Harbor Half Marathon with a fitness I couldn’t see all summer and ran a race that told the truth the watch had been hiding in July.
You’d think that would settle it for good. It didn’t. Here I am again — second summer in a row rebuilding through the same heat, having the same argument with the same watch, needing to remember a lesson I already paid for once.
There has to be a lesson in there, right?
This lesson is not about learning to trust effort over pace and then you’re done.
The lesson is that you have to relearn it every single time the season asks you to.
July doesn’t reward you for already knowing better. It just asks the question again.
What helps me answer it isn’t willpower. It’s the community — those who drive me to be my best each and every day.
It’s Tuesday nights: The RunSomeMo crowd that keeps showing up at the brewery in the thick of this. The training plans have barely started. Fall races may be on the calendar — but they are distant goals, measured against the heat and humidity of summer.
It is a time of people logging what feel like slow and sweaty miles that we think will never show up on a race result — in the worst running weather this area offers. If you asked us why, I’m not sure anyone could give you a clean answer. But the showing up is the answer. That’s what’s being built.
Runners are built through consistency. For runners of every fitness level and conditioning, it is about logging the miles and not judging yourself against what you think is your best. All because you are still a work in progress — especially in less than optimal (even downright dangerous) conditions.
I want to remind you of what July actually is: base season.
The slow, unglamorous work of building an engine nobody claps for. Every easy mile in this heat is laying down something October gets to spend. It doesn’t feel like progress because we’ve been taught to only count what we can see. A pace. A medal. A finish line photo. July builds in the dark.
As a pastor I spend my Sundays talking through this exact thing, honestly. The church calendar calls this stretch Ordinary Time, the long season between the big holidays where nothing dramatic happens and everything important does. A season without visible proof is not a season without growth. It’s just growth you don’t get to watch.
So here’s what I’d hand you this week, runner to runner. Take one run where you don’t look at the watch until it’s over. Pick the shadiest route you know. Let the effort be honest and let the pace be whatever the heat decides it gets to be. And when you’re back in your driveway and the number is ugly, say it out loud: this is what building looks like in July.
October is coming either way. The only question is whether you spend the summer arguing with your watch or trusting your body. I’m working on choosing the second one. Again. Come relearn it with me.