How To Train For A Hot Race If You Live In A Cold Climate

Audio Transcript

Today’s question is from Bob.

Bob, “How should I train to be heat adapted for an out of town race, if I live in a cold place?”

That happens to a lot of runners who are in the Northern areas: NorthEast, Midwest, Northwest, who are training throughout the winter and then racing spring half marathons and marathons: five ks, 10 ks, and they don’t have the time to get heat adapted as they would training in the summer.

We’ve done a lot of research on just how much heat can affect your performance, even when you’re heat adapted.

If you’re curious about what those numbers are, and what the performances disadvantages can be, I encourage you to check it out.

You can visit runnersconnect.net/blog and search heat, or go to Google and search Runners Connect heat, and you’re going to see a lot of articles that we’ve written about the science, about just how much you’ll slow down the heat.

We even have a pretty awesome calculator that’s part of our training plans where you can enter the temperature, and the dew point and it’s going to tell you exactly how much your training paces are going to slow down based on that heat.

It’s a pretty significant number in most cases.

One of the best ways to combat that is to be heat adapted, because when your body is adapted to the heat, those performance declines are going to get a little bit less.

It is important that if there’s potential that you’re going to run in hot weather or even a warm weather race, and you only have the ability to train in cooler weather, that you try to get yourself heat adapted.

There are three or four ways that you can do this.

The first is, you’ll want to make sure that you dress warmly all the time. For all of your runs, you want to overdress.

It could mean wearing a hat, even if it’s 50 or 60 degrees out. It is tough to overdress when it’s 10, 15 degrees outside. That’s difficult but you can still do it. As many of you know, you can still sweat significantly in the winter if you overdress.

Just add a little bit more of what you would normally wear for whatever given temperature. You can pretend that it’s 10 to 20 degrees colder outside than it really is.

I want to caution you with that. With all of these tips that I’m going to give you, you need to be careful.

It is possible that you could dehydrate yourself. You could get in some serious trouble by training too much in the heat. If it’s 100 degrees outside, and you go and try to do a hard workout, there are going to be some repercussions. The same thing can be said for all of the tips that I’m going to give you here.

If it’s 60 degrees, don’t go out in your snow suit and a plastic trash bag and try to run. That’s only going to lead to bad results, so be realistic here.

Dress like it’s 10 to 20 degrees cooler so that you’re not hurting yourself but you’re giving yourself a chance to heat adapt.

You can combine that with running on the treadmill and overdressing. That’s really good for when it’s the middle of winter, when it’s 10 degrees outside. Overdressing is hard to do no matter what you wear.

You can do your run on the treadmill and still overdress, so that could mean wearing pants and a long suit shirt or even wearing a hat. You may look a little silly in the gym, but you can get away with it.

The other thing that you can do with the treadmill is you can change or alter the temperature of the room that you’re training in.

If your treadmill is setup in the garage, you can bring in a heater. If it’s setup in the basement, you can heat it and do your workout in those conditions.

One thing to remember with any of these heat adaptation tricks, especially when it comes to the running itself, is that your performance is going to decline.

If you’re going to do your long runs or your speed workouts on a treadmill, while you are overdressed or in hot conditions in your basemen, you’ll need to anticipate that your performance is going to decline as much as it would, if you were actually training in those conditions.

If you make it 75 degrees humid in your basement, it’ll feel like you’re running 75 degrees in humid, outside.

Your performance is going to decline. Keep that in mind.

Don’t think that it’s not working for you or get frustrated with your workouts if they don’t go well, if you’re using heat adaptation strategies.

The third is going to be utilizing a sauna or a steam room.

This is probably only available to those of you who have nice commercial gyms around you, but a sauna and a steam room can help surround your body with those temperatures.

I used to like doing my ab workouts in the sauna.

I would try to go to the sauna at the gym at less crowded times. I wouldn’t go at 6PM or six, or seven o’clock in the morning.

I would try to go a little bit earlier. Sometimes, when I got out of work early, I’d go at four. I would do my ab workouts or my core workouts in the sauna.

I would bring a little yoga mat in there and go through my routine.

I found that worked really well, because the core routines weren’t super hard, but they were enough where I wasn’t just sitting there.

It was a balance of both worlds, where I wasn’t just sitting there and not getting a lot of adaptation, but I also wasn’t trying to do anything too difficult. As you know, saunas are very hot so you want to be careful that you’re not overdoing it.

Even if you’re just sitting in there, it can be a subtle way for your body to start adapting to that temperature difference.

The last thing that you want to do is to take a lot of liquids like it is hot outside.

One of the things that gets a lot of runners in trouble is when they go to race in hot and humid climates after training in the winter, and then take a lot of fluid.

Their stomachs aren’t adapted to taking in all that fluid. The more fluid that you have to intake, the more it’s going to potentially slosh around in your stomach. You want to make sure that you adapt your body to that.

What happens in the winter is because it’s so cold outside, you don’t feel like you need to drink as much as you do when it’s hot.

It could be that in training, you’re drinking less than you might do when training for any type of race. When you combine that with the fact that you’re now racing in a hot condition, you find that your body won’t be able to take in those fluids.

Drink like it’s hot. Drink when you’re not thirsty and I’m talking about during your runs, or right after your runs.

Go through your hydration plan as if it was a 70, 80 degree day. That’s going to help a lot.

For those of you who have used our nutrition blueprint before, you’ll know that there is a calculator there that will tell you exactly how much you’ll need to drink for every given temperature that you might race in.

Use that calculator and say, even though it’s 40 degrees outside when you’re running, make believe that it’s 80.

Use those calculations as if it was 80 degrees and that’s going to allow your body to adapt to taking in that fluid. Those are four really good ways to help heat adapt yourself.

If you are currently training, and it’s a cold environment and you’re racing in the spring, start to implement at least three or four of those ideas. That will significantly improve your performance if it turns out to be warm on race day.

Finally, I want to thank our sponsor, Pacific Health Labs, who are the makers of the natural sports nutrition product, Endurox R4.

Their recovery drink has the optimal blend of four to one ratio of carbohydrates to protein, which has been scientifically proven to help increase carbohydrate in protein uptake to make sure that your muscles are actually getting recovered.

Recovery is the most important part of training. You don’t get better by doing harder workouts or during your actual workouts.

The way you get better and the way you improve is when you recover from those hard workouts.

If you don’t recover from those hard workouts, you’re only going to be tearing yourself down. That’s why a performance recovery product like Endurox R4 is so important.

For busy runners, all you have to do is take that shake, put it in the water, and boom, you’re good to go. You can bring it with you on your runs if you travel to trails, you can bring it to the gym with you.

If you’re at home, it’s easy, and quick.

Nutrition is also critical. Getting your recovery nutrition on point is going to make that difference between recovering from that workout and being able to benefit and get better from it, and just having that workout continually break you down.

If you want to check out Endurox R4, which I believe is probably one of the best recovery drinks on the market, head to pacifichealthlabs.com, and use the code RT20 for free shipping and 20% off your first order.

I hope you guys enjoyed the answer to today’s question. I hope you have a great day today and happy running.