Sometimes it’s best to throw in the towel.

to hit almost 90 degrees in Boston on Patriots’ Day 2012, just in time

for the 116th running of the Boston Marathon. This was not a welcome forecast for the nearly 27,000 runners expected to race. It was particularly bad news for me. To say the least, I don’t run well when it’s hot.

In the 2005 Boston Marathon, when temperatures hit only 66 degrees, I struggled mightily. My slow time of 4:48 at that race put me in danger of missing my afternoon flight. As a result, I ran through the finish line eating no food and drinking no water so I could get to my hotel ASAP to pick up my luggage, catch acab, and make my flight. When I arrived at the security line at Logan Airport, I suddenly felt faint. Next thing I knew, I was in a wheelchair, and a stranger was holding a Gatorade bottle to my lips. It was all somewhat disconcerting, especially since I’d never fainted before. On the positive side, I was whisked through the security line and caught my scheduled flight.

When I got back home and told my running friends about my experience in Boston’s heat, I was severely chastised. “How could you not hydrate?” they would ask. “You skipped taking in some food at the end? You’re such a numbskull.”

While my friends were obviously not very sympathetic with the demands of my flight schedule, their candor proved a point. So I chalked up my experience at Boston as a lesson to be filed away with all the other things I’ve learned on the myriad paths of multiple marathons.

That is what’s interesting about the sport of marathoning. While the aging process and the relentless breakdown of cells over time invariably means slowing down and finally giving up on besting PRs, age begets experience and experience begets wisdom. The wise runner knows that a marathon is more than just speed—it’s also about endurance and knowing how to adjust to different conditions, including heat.

Wen reports weren’t looking good. Forecasts called for the temperature

Running the 2012 Boston Marathon in 80- to 90-degree temperatures suggests all kinds of strategies. One strategy, of course, would have been to take the Boston Athletic Association’s kind, thoughtful, and unprecedented offer of a come-back-next-year deferral to runners who picked up their bibs but chose not to run. In making this offer, race organizers expected up to 2,000 deferrals. The actual number was far less. After all, this is Boston. Most of the runners here likely see the heat as an interesting test of their endurance skills.

In fact, the high temperatures turned out to be a sort of test for me as well. It was a test that pitted one theory of running against another. Those contrasting theories were debated over a magnifico carboloading dinner I had with a running friend at Mama Maria’s in the North End of Boston, where we split orders of rabbit pasta and wild mushroom pasta …mm.

My dinner companion had qualified for Boston with a PR of just over three hours. In spite of the forecasted heat, he was hoping to break his three-hour mark and set a PR. Although I thought to myself, This guy’s bonkers, I more diplomatically reminded him that the heat should force him to plan a slower marathon—not a faster one. When I outlined my race plan, he gave me the sort of smirk that Steve McQueen often used in The Great Escape—a smirk that registers loud and clear, “You run your race, and I’Il run mine.”

Going to the book for plans

So what was my plan? I qualified for Boston at the California International Marathon in Sacramento in December 2010 with a time of 3:58:41, a pace of 9:07. After my fainting experience at the 2005 Boston Marathon, I had done some research on proper pacing when running in the heat. In his book Training Plans, Jeff Galloway recommends running 30 seconds per mile slower for each 5 degrees of temperature increase above 60 degrees.

Weather reports indicated a range of 83 to 88 degrees on race day in Boston. Assuming an average of 85 degrees (25 degrees greater than 60 degrees), that suggests slowing down 2 1/2 minutes (five times 30 seconds = 150 seconds) per mile. For me, it meant slowing from my qualifying pace of about 9:00 to 11:30, which would increase my finish time from about four to five hours. That is a big comedown, at least in terms of speed. But if endurance was my principal goal, slowing my pace was the only plan that would allow me to adapt to the likely conditions on race day.

There was one other strategy I used. It came from a tip I got at the race expo. While waiting in line to buy some Boston memorabilia, I sidled up to a fellow wizened sexagenarian runner and started talking about various tricks to beat the heat.

This man of experience told me something he learned not on the racecourse but in the jungles of Vietnam. The trick he used was to wrap a cold, wet towel