Heat Acclimation: Why You Feel Slower—and How to Race Better in the Heat

Training consistently but suddenly feeling slower? Your normal pace is harder to hold, your heart rate is higher, and every workout seems to take more out of you.

That does not necessarily mean you are losing fitness. Heat can mask the fitness you have built while adding stress your body must learn to manage. In this episode, Coach Justin and Coach Katie explain how heat acclimation works, how to prepare for hot and humid conditions, and how to build heat exposure into training without compromising recovery.

What You’ll Learn

• Why heat makes your normal pace feel harder even when your fitness is intact
• How active training, sauna sessions, and other passive heat methods create adaptation
• Why chasing cool-weather pace in hot conditions can undermine your training
• How summer heat training can support stronger performance when temperatures fall

Timestamps

00:00 Podcast update and current training plans
18:12 Why major races are being changed or canceled because of heat
27:36 The environmental risk athletes often leave out of race preparation
39:14 What heat acclimation changes inside the body
44:50 Race-day cooling strategies—and why they cannot replace preparation
50:20 Why every workout should not become a heat-training session
52:25 Active versus passive heat-acclimation protocols
58:10 How runners should adjust summer training volume and intensity
1:04:59 Why you should stop chasing pace during hot workouts
1:09:30 Feeling slow does not mean you are losing fitness
1:12:51 How heat masks fitness—and why it appears when temperatures fall

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome everyone to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. I'm your host, Coach Justin, and I'm here with Coach Katie. And today's episode is 107. And today we're going to come to you with a topic on heat acclimation. Um, but before we dig into this, uh, we're going we've uh Katie and I have been uh discussing a little bit. We're in the heat of summertime right now, and so there's races that are taking place all over. Uh I know that you know, with my race day coaching tour, I'm I'm at race venues a lot more than than I'm used to. And with with uh my active athlete roster, uh I've we've come to the conclusion that we're going to go back to our one episode per week uh until we get on the other side of summer. We just we want to make sure that we're bringing you good quality episodes and not just, you know, oh, I just gonna throw out an episode just to have it out there. So uh while we get through the summer with our own training, our own athletes, and you know, all the other stuff that goes along with being, you know, coaches and business owners, uh, we're going to uh go back to one episode, make sure it's a nice quality episode for you. And then once we get on the other side of that, we'll uh we'll address maybe going back to two episodes. I know that I've got some race plans of my own that are that are in the mix, but I have not pulled a trigger yet. So I'm not quite sure uh if I'll do maybe another little documentary on that prep. But um Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I have the high rocks race. So I feel like people are listening to those, but if you like if you do like those race like training updates that we're doing, I know I did my road to grandma's and then you did your last half Iron Man for Florida like last year. I feel like please let us know because I feel like I do see people listening, but I don't know if you know people are enjoying those or not. So and we would love that feedback because if you do, we would be I mean, those are kind of fun to do in a way, but I just want to make sure it's something worth my time and people are actually listening because I have that high rocks. I would probably be able to do some updates for that. You know, come that's in November. So keep us updated. Let us know what you if you enjoy listening to those and yeah, that that sort of content. And then, you know, I've done the deep dives and things like that too. It's always it's always helpful to know if those are are interesting because I would be able to do some more of those maybe once we get back from this summertime.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Maybe what we'll do is we'll we'll put a couple polls out in our closed Facebook group and see if if uh you would like to sound in on if you find those particular kinds of episodes uh helpful or entertaining, useful to you. Uh we'll go ahead and we'll throw a poll out there. So if you're not in the group, go out and look for the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast group. It's a closed group on Facebook. You answer one simple question and agree to the group rules, it'll let you write on in, and we'll have that poll uh pinned to the top of the thread. And uh we'll let we'll let the the listeners tell us what what they think and what they like. Um that'll be one way that we can start to interact a little bit more. I've got some ideas that are floating around in my head for that closed Facebook group to increase some engagement. So that's gonna be the first thing we're gonna do. Yeah, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Uh thanks to the to vote.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Yeah, be sure to to check that out. I will get that out pretty soon. So I know that this episode is going to air in the next couple days, so I'll make sure to get it out there when when we uh publish the episode so that it's available. Um so Katie, I I know that you you just finished grandma's and uh so let's do like a little chit chat back and forth. What is it that we're both kind of we're doing right now? I'm feeling like super distracted right now. So I'm trying to get my brain busy with stuff. My brain to uh get fired up right now and get focused. Uh so Katie, tell tell me what you what you've been up to.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Um well I shook an entire week off after like I didn't do anything, literally nothing. Maybe some walking around, but that's it after grandma's. I just need I kind of needed like a full, really needed like a full reset, I think. Um if you were listening to my road to grandma's my kind of marathon recap, you'll get the gist of it. But I didn't, I didn't reach my PR goal, but I'm actually okay, okay with it just given how difficult that race was. It was one of those that really makes you contemplate things a little bit. And you know, sometimes those races are are necessary to make us sort of realize I don't know what we're really training for and what what you know my goals are. So I don't I don't see myself uh doing another marathon anytime real soon. And if I do, I'm gonna change the way I approach it. But I think at this point I am pretty content with what I've achieved with the marathon. And that was my 11th marathon. So I'm not saying I'll never do another one again. It just may be different the way I approach it and how I set my goals for it. So I'm kind of a little bit at peace with it, but I did need a big reset, sort of just some time off from running completely and training. And luckily with the travel, that made it easy because I didn't really have any temptation to run. I was we were pretty busy traveling in in Minnesota, and then we traveled through the Badlands National Park and um Rushmore and the crazy horse statue, or it's not really a statue, it's like a major carving in the side of a mountain. But there was a cool couple of cool things we saw in the Black Hills, and we drove home, and so I got back, and then all day Sunday, you know, I was cleaning, so I did a little bit of movement, but I really didn't start moving again until the last few days, and I didn't even wear my watch because part of the issue with the traveling, and I mentioned this in my road to grandma's, but we didn't we ended up having some stress with traveling, and I didn't bring my watch charger. I had to leave that with my mom and she had to ship a bunch of stuff out to us, so I didn't have like a running watch for several days, so I hadn't, which was kind of almost liberating. I'm like, I don't have anything. I just would go run on my treadmill, and I just just was like, I'm gonna try to do 20 minutes and just do whatever I feel like really easy. And so I wasn't recording anything, any heart rates. So it's been kind of nice. I think today's the first day I wore my watch and just kind of ran outside. Um, and I'm just not really doing anything, any sort of scheduled plan. I'm just trying to slowly get back into running and slowly get back into strength training. And I might do like a mile race, like literally just a fast mile in August. But I think my next race isn't going to be until October, and it's a 5K, and then I have the high rocks, and then maybe another 5K. So that's that's about all I'm probably gonna do the rest of this year. So I don't have a the high rocks is exciting because I'm that one is just a totally out of my wheelhouse kind of situation. So very totally new to me, just totally something I've never done before. So that'll be a big one, but I'm not doing I'm not even doing a half marathon, I don't think. I think I'm just gonna focus on speed. So I'm pretty I'm actually really excited about it. But yeah, that's that's my update. Just trying to ease back in slowly. I don't I really want to make sure that I'm um ready to run again and and I'm excited too. So yeah. No major other updates. How about you? What are you what are you training? Like, what are you training for now? I know you're busy with like coaching stuff and you know, going to the races as a coach, because you you were just at a which race were you just at? Can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah, so we went to the Colonial Beach uh Kinetic multi-sport. It was the Colonial Beach Sprint and Olympic triathlon. So it was on a Sunday and it was down in Colonial Beach, Virginia. Um it was I had a fantastic time. I love the kinetic multi-sport race. These guys put on a fabulous race, and I have no problem plugging them on this podcast. Uh, I've done many of their races. Uh that's where many of my podiums have come from. And Greg, who runs the company, is he puts on a fantastic race, uh, great venues, uh, well organized, well supplied. Um and the vibe of the athletes are is just really, really awesome. Um been to a few other races this year as the race day coaching tour. And so what that is is uh I decided this year to uh just kind of be a servant to to athletes. So I bought a big 10 by 10 uh canopy tent and uh got some uh some materials and put together a table and all kinds of stuff and made a big old banner uh and just called new to trathlon, ask a coach. And so what it is, it's kind of an extension of the Trathlon 101 series that I put together where I'm now going and face-to-face, interacting with athletes and answering questions for them. So, whatever their question is, they show up at the race venue and I um we're there at packet pickup, which is typically like that Friday or the day before the race happens. We're there at packet pickup, all set up and ready to go. And then we're there throughout the entire race day uh answering last minute questions, helping people out. Um, this one, this is the second time I was able to do a transition clinic. And so right after the athlete briefing during packet pickup, I'll go through a short demonstration on how to set up your transition area and kind of point out to the athletes like where they're going to be going, like the logistics of the day. So it's just like, you know, that's where you're gonna come out of the water, and that's where you go into transition, and then that's where you leave to go on the bike, and that's where the mountain line is going to be. So I'm really kind of like just helping them out. There's absolutely zero expectations, and uh I I'm having a really good time. Uh mainly I wanted to do this uh as a little caveat because I'm a very like introverted person, and so I have a hard time just interacting with people. I'm super envious of those people that can just walk up to anybody and just start talking. Um, but I I'm that's just never been me. And I think that that's an important characteristic to develop as a coach is just the ability to just interact with people and be a little bit more of an extrovert or at least fake it to where they don't realize that you're so introverted.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Um and so I've I've really wanted to hone in on that skill set and start to develop. I don't want to say my communication skills or my people skills, but bottom line, that's kind of what it is, um, and just really improve in that area of my life. Um, so that's where the business is going. I just launched a special training team, uh special training group for the Richmond Tri Club, which is here in my area. Uh, we have a club race and it's uh it's another kinetic race, so it's called the giant acorn race, and it's another sprint and Olympic race that's in September. So I've put together a an Olympic training group and a sprint training group for members of the Richmond Tri Club, where I will provide them a uh a race-specific coaching plan uh to get through. Um and so I just launched that yesterday, uh this week. And so training starts for the team of the Olympic team on Monday. So that's uh that's another thing. This so it required a special page that I had to build for the website and all that kind of stuff, which is super time consuming. Uh my athlete roster is growing, so I'm I'm thankful uh for Tabula Rasta Racing, you know, increasing the athlete roster. I'm still trying to decide on like what I'm doing as an athlete. So that's all the coaching stuff. So you can kind of see that there's a lot that's going on in the in the coaching aspect, but as an endurance athlete myself, I kind of uh I went into the year with just the expectation of just finishing off the two races that I had already signed up for at the end of last year. Uh I think I talked about it on one other episode. Uh before I did Iron Man Florida, I had signed up for uh the uh Smithfield Sprint and the Jamestown Olympic, both with kinetic multi sports. And uh I signed up on a Black Friday kind of thing. And so I was after Florida, I was like, I really don't want to race, but uh I felt that I should. And come to find out both of those races I grabbed podiums for, and so I'm uh super thankful for that. Um, but it left me kind of feeling like I I didn't want it, I didn't want to finish. I I want to still compete, I want to still be in the mix. Um, but with everything that's going on as a coach and you know, my other full-time job that you know actually pays the bills, uh it's it's challenging to try and juggle these things. I'm trying to figure out what's more important, growing the business or or growing as an athlete, but I want to compete. And so I'm trying to figure out how to do that uh and still not dig myself in such a massive hole, both physically, mentally, emotionally. Um, so I've not pulled the trigger yet, so I don't want to commit to it on air until I actually do it, but I'm about 90% there, so I'm about to uh pull the trigger on a on a method that I've never done before. So these these uh yeah, I I don't want to go into too much because I'll give it all away and I don't want to do that because I haven't pulled the trigger yet. So yeah, uh I don't want to be pigeonholed to it.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

But don't speak to it.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

I think it's going to be really fun. It's uh it's gonna be a different way of training for me and a different aspect of racing. And I'm kind of excited about it, but I'm still kind of nervous at the same time, so I haven't pulled the trigger.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Right. Um that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

And and I still have the I still have the desire to go and get my uh my my certified strength and conditioning coach certification uh to to kind of round out my my coaching expertise. I know that you and I have talked about that as well, so I'm trying to figure out like how to put that in into the mix while also redesigning, redesigning and relaunching my website on a different platform. So I've got a so if there's anybody who's out there who is a web developer who would love to do this on a discount basis, or even I can I can barter and I can give you I can do some training plans for you and you'll rebuild my website, uh reach out and let me know because I'd be willing to talk about that. So uh take one more thing off my plate. But from from the sounds of it, it I've just got a lot going on. I think this is why I think going to the one episode a week um isn't something that I want to do because I really enjoy doing this, but I want I I don't want to do a bunch of things poorly. I'd rather do a couple things really well. Um so during the thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

I think just people for the most part will understand they would want what we're you know, they would want to listen to something that they feel like we've put some thought into versus like just putting something out. So um and I think we'll be back to it. Like maybe if we do sign up for something, you know, people are enjoying those, you know, um race prep or kind of the the updates on how our um race prep is going. I think then I would I would love to continue doing that. I mean, I like I said, this whole high rocks thing for me is gonna be a a totally new thing. So I'd love to share like my journey if people are interested. So just let us know in that poll or reach out. Um but I think it's interesting you kind of mentioned something that I think I'm also going through is that you know, the amount of time it takes to train, like how much I've been thinking a lot about how much time I've put into the marathon to grandmas. And this is, you know, there's no guarantee. And I put in a lot of work and it didn't go exactly as I was planning. And I think I'm just coming to a conclusion now that I need to I have other things that I want to accomplish, like the CSCS, the strength and conditioning certification. I do want to work a little bit more on my business. Um, you know, I want to continue the podcast, and so there are a lot of things I want to do, and spending hours training, like several hours a week training, is just takes a lot of time. So that's kind of also why I've decided to just do some shorter races and focus a little differently. Um but it is I I've been really yeah, I'll be curious when you just if you when it if you decide, like I don't, you know what you're you're talking about, like a different method, but I know if I ever do a marathon again, the way I approach it will be a bit different and it'll be an interesting experiment to try maybe less volume and sort of a different way to approach it, because I feel like we're always told as athletes to the more you do, the more volume you do, the better you'll you're gonna be. And I'm sort of questioning that a little bit, you know, like what it, you know, is that is that maybe that's true, but is there other ways you can go about it and still get a good result? It may not be the very best result, but it may be still good. So yeah, I'll be curious, you'll have to like keep us updated with what you decide. But like anything, I gotta I've gotta make the decision quick.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

So because training has training has to start, but I I I've never really stopped training. So even since the last the last race that I did, I still have have continued to build and build and build and just you know it's got a little bit less of a focus, but the volume is still there, so that's why I'm not too concerned about you know, oh I I need to make this decision, you know, in order for training to start, because it's already there, it just needs to be dialed in a little bit more specific um for for the endeavor that would be undertaken. But yeah, that makes sense. I think it's good.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Um I'll keep it. All right, so let's uh let's get into this. Okay, keep us posted. So let's dig in. I mean, I think this episode's timely because it is I mean, it's getting hot. Let's face it. There's lots of like heat advisories. There's I don't know, Europe is getting some sort of crazy heat dome. Um, so I mean the people over there I don't even know if I would advise people to train in the heat that they're having, but um so yeah, and then you know, I think I talked to also in my grandma's marathon episodes, at least a few of them, about my own experimentation with some more passive heat and and a little bit like it, I mean it got a little bit warm a few days, so I did run in the heat, but some of my passive heat training uh experiments. So this is probably a a timely discussion, I would say. So I don't know how do you want to how do you want to get started with this? Like what what are your I know you had some thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, heat heat has been in the news uh a lot, even in the in the endurance world, mainly because uh they just canceled uh Iron Man France 70.3, so it was in Nice. Uh they canceled that with like only like 48 hours notice. It was just it was super, super short. People were there like picking up race packets, and then they just outright canceled the whole thing. Um, it was not done because Iron Man wanted to cancel it, it was kind of handed down to them by you know French regulators, and they're just like, we're nixing this. We don't want to overload hospitals and everything else because there's you know medical staff that's going to be needed in order to support races and things, and knowing there are athletes out there that fail to to acclimate uh for for the environment, and you can only imagine like what that stress would be on the resources of that particular area. Iron Man Frankfurt, uh, which is Frankfurt, Germany. It was a full Iron Man. They shortened that one to uh they shortened the marathon down to a half marathon uh because of the heat. And so this is something that's been that's been rolling around uh just over the past week or so. I'm kind of torn because uh for me as an endurance athlete, I understand that that that's part of the that's part of the gig, right? We we these are summertime races, so you can't you can't sign up for a race that's in June or July or August and say, oh, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be concerned about the heat uh and not be prepared. So part of me is just like I I wish that they wouldn't have canceled the races, but left it up to the athlete to determine on what they what it is that they wanted to do, because these athletes spend months and months and months training for these events just to have it have the rug pulled out from under them forty, forty-eight hours before the race is going to start.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

And then you put all that effort in and you have your bike shipped and all these things, and all of us and they're just like, Yeah, we're not doing it.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

I mean, these these are adults, and so they're yeah, they're responsible enough to make a decision on what it is that they want to do, and if they're willing to undertake the risk uh that's tied to doing it, and if they're just going to adjust their their execution strategy to control for the environment. So I don't I don't know if I completely agree with the decision to to cut races short because of the heat. Um, but I understand that there's a large segment of athletes that that think it was the right call to make. Um thinking up taking the the larger the larger view of it, but again, I just I don't think it was the right call. Um I I think it should be up to the athlete on whether they're willing to to undertake the risk.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

And yeah, maybe they got an option. I don't know if it would have been that easy to be like.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Yeah, I mean you can't really you can't really sign away completely. Liability. So there if some athlete would have gone out there and said, I'm willing to take the risk and then heaven forbid something happened, um, you know, I it would still be, you know, the liability would still fall under Iron Man on whether, you know, something would whether they would be financially responsible or if it would open them up to litigation. I don't really know because I mean you can't really sign away all liability just by signing a couple waivers. It doesn't work that way. Um, so yeah, that is a good that is I guess we have to we have to really keep in mind that this is a business that these guys are running. And you know, they they have to weigh the risk that they're willing to take uh by holding events. I understand it. Um so I I think that b because I question the call, I I question it because I'm a little bit more emotionally involved. Like if I had just spent you know six months training for a race and it got yanked from under me, it was something that I can't control. It wasn't a decision that I made and say I'm not willing to take on that risk. I think I would have met I would have had a difficult time making that decision. And so I'm a little bit more emotionally connected because I know what it would have felt like. So I don't know if I can make a rational call like that. So I don't know if I would ever be a very good race director. I don't think that that's a job for me.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Um I feel like there's a few reasons why maybe that wouldn't be a job. But that might be one of them is the weather, the you know, the it's already hard enough as an athlete, like worrying about the weather on race day, you know what I mean, to have to be like a race director and make those calls. Because I could see um I could see it from both perspectives. That's a little bit because I can also see it from the perspective of like the rice director and the, you know, the the authorities and and the I can definitely see the reasoning there if they're you know the hospitals are already kind of full or at capacity because of the heat, you know, and they're worrying about then having all of these people competing and maybe some of them not being prepared enough. And sometimes the heat, even when you're acclimated to it, it's hard to acclimate it to it and be prepared for like that length of a race. You know, you just there's so many possibilities that could go wrong. I could definitely see why they would do that. It's just I it it does, you know, from an athlete perspective, it does kind of make me upset thinking if I were in the shoes of someone who had traveled that far and put in that effort, and then yeah, we're canceling and I'm already there. It's like, okay, I've paid all this money, I've done all this training. And from that perspective, I can see so I definitely see both sides of it, and I think it's tough. And I honestly maybe, you know, this might be a weird year, but I feel like there might be have to be some thought about when these races are happening, and maybe it's gonna just get too risky to have those types of races in some of these hotter summer months, and you know, the race the races are gonna have to be moved to earlier in the spring or later in the fall, you know. Um, in some of these locations. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

They did that, they did that with Iron Man Louisville. Uh it used to be in August, and uh it just I mean, going going to Louisville uh right there at that time, it was it was brutal. I mean, it was just cooking, like racing on the sun. And then they moved the race to October and basically killed the race. I mean, so it's uh they ended up the the locality just didn't want it anymore, and it was no longer kind of the same race. But I mean, you know, there was Iron Man Chattanooga one year that was you know had the high one of the highest DNF rates because of the heat, and then the very next year it was it was fine. But I I mean, I don't know. Sometimes it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

It's hard because then you have all these months like we're not gonna you already have several winter months.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

You can't cram like 20 races in the span of like three months in in the spring and then three months in in the fall and expect to still be able to to offer as many races to people that that is being demanded. So I mean it it's gotta be a hard business decision on whether you know you start moving races because of of the environment in which they're in. And the risk of the heat or something. It's a hard it's a hard call to make.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

I think I think it is a hard call to make, and I can s like I said, see it from both angles. But let's just like, I don't know, like let's let's kind of shift a little bit. Like I'm curious, like if somebody does have, you know, because I'm assuming like hopefully most of the people who were training, you know, that might be where it's frustrating is maybe you were training for that race in France, and you're like, I've been doing the heat training, like I was ready for that, and they can't, you know, because then you're even more frustrated because you're like, I've done the heat training. But I I'm gonna suppose that there might be like a certain level of people or certain amount of people who had signed up for that race that hadn't even considered being prepared, even though they signed up for like a race in June, which you probably should be aware that it might be hot, and so maybe some sort of acclimation to the heat would be smart. Like maybe, you know, there are probably some subset of people who didn't and who would have probably really suffered and maybe been in the medical tent. So that's maybe maybe we can shift a little bit to like why you know, for this for races in this time frame, you know, assuming we're gonna continue to have races in June, July, August, even September can be kind of tricky a little bit. You know, it can still be warm, and that's like four months out of the year. So assuming we're still gonna have races, then what you know why is it important to be yeah?

SPEAKER_00 27:36

The way the way that I view it is that we spend all this time researching and building the best training plan that we can come up with, the most creative workouts uh that we can think of, all the specificity that we're gonna need in order to conquer a particular race course. Um and then we work really hard on dialing in our nutrition. We're buying all these expensive products that we're going to use to fuel us on race day. And we spend money on recovery tools, compression boots, massage therapy, uh PT. We do all this other kind of stuff in order to make us physically prepared to endure training and to to execute on race day. But I feel very little thought is given to what I'll call the systemic risk of race day. And to me, heat represent heat and altitude represent two of the systemic risks that an athlete faces. It does not matter how physically prepared you are, how well trained you are, how consistent you've been, if you can if you're racing in the heat and you have not prepared your body to handle the heat, I don't care how deep your fitness is. If you're going to a race that is at altitude and you have not acclimated to what it feels like to breathe in those conditions and your body is not prepared, again, I do not care how fit you are and how prepared you feel because your race is I I seriously question how you're going to be able to execute that race without adjusting your expectations. So if you're looking for PRs or you're looking for particular performance goals and you have not uh evaluated the systemic risk that your body is going to be under in those conditions, then you have you have only done part of the job. And I'll I'll own it, I I did that as an athlete myself early, you know, when I was racing early when I first started into the sport. I I didn't prepare myself for the heat. When it got hot outside, I would stay inside. And when I would go to race, it was a huge, rude, rude awakening on what it was like. And there were many times I was resulted to to walk more than I wanted to, found myself in the medical tent more times than what I would really like to, hooked up to IVs and things. And so I I own the mistake as well. So, but it hasn't been until recently to when I really start to sit down and think about, you know, hey, I'm giving all this time and thought to building the best training plan, but it doesn't matter how well this plan is if I can't race in the heat. And so I said, well, I can either stop racing in the heat and just do races in October and November, or in, you know, March and April, and just that's my race time, or I can learn how to prepare my body to be in that environment. And so I had to sit down and think about how am I going to do this and how am I going to do it in a way that allows me to be consistent in my training and not dig myself such a deep hole because I'm executing workouts and adverse conditions uh to where I can still be consistent and and recover. So it it takes it takes a lot of thought. Yeah, I feel like a lot of preparation.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

I mean, I'm the type of person that avoids racing in the So I'm like the I'm like the one that doesn't race and like it will it's a short race, I will, but I generally avoid sign like I generally wouldn't sign up for a marathon. In fact, June doing grandma's was risky because I knew it's generally cool that time of year, but I knew it could be warm. And you know, that was that was almost like kind of getting on the risky end of things for me. Usually I won't sign up for anything like that between June and till yeah, through September. And the only times I generally look at marathons are early spring or fall, you know, into maybe December, or sometimes if it's like Arizona, maybe January or February. But uh so I'm so I'm the type of person in that other scenario of avoiding races that are, you know, that are gonna matter, like a longer duration race in the heat. Um and then when it comes to altitude, like I'm already I always look for races that are at sea level, like because I'm taking the advantage I have as training at like a mile high and going to sea level. Um, so generally, I do agree with you. I think it's harder maybe to figure out when you're right when you're training at sea level how to get altitude training. But um heat training is a pretty, you know, they they call it the poor man's altitude. So maybe there's something to heat training and an altitude as well and benefiting you there. But um I think there's still benefits, but you know, I, you know, for grandma's, I wasn't doing heat training. I mean, in a way, I guess it might have helped me if it was hot at grandma's, but I wasn't heat training and doing the sauna work because I was worried about the heat. I was doing it because I wanted to continue the benefit of my altitude training and do it, you know, try to sort of keep some of that plasma volume and red blood cells elevated so I could continue to not lose that benefit. And so, you know, regardless as if you have a hot race or you're training for a race in the summer, I still think athletes could really benefit from heat training in terms of performance or or some of the benefits uh regard, you know, regardless. So I I I'm gonna put that out there too, is it's like, yeah, of course, if you're training it for a race in the heat of the summer months, you probably is probably necessary, if not mandatory. But considering it for other for other benefits, you know, maybe even if you like I do think for sure I notice a huge benefit when I've been training in the heat all summer. And then I do that October race, you know, but when it's cool. Like all those benefits of getting acclimated when I do race and it's in in the perfect, you know, or or cooler temperature. I generally have some of my best races I've noticed kind of in that fall time frame after I've been running in the heat all summer. So I do think there's something to that as well as a consideration here.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

So yeah, I don't know, I don't know Yeah, if if you if you don't have access to to out to altitude, I mean heat heat training is going to be your next best bet unless you're willing to to take some time to go to altitude in order to get some of that acclimation that's there, but it's hard to hold on to it. Um and especially if you're going from altitude to sea level, you have to be you have to time it just right in order to have to be able to maintain those that advantage. And I think I think if you hadn't done the heat training that you did, and the because the extra time that you spent at sea level before the race, I think you lost a lot of your advantage from from training in altitude.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

So I think I did even with the heat training, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

I yeah, I I think you spent a lot of time at out at at sea level. I think if you may have been able to time that a little bit better, you might have have been a little bit more advantaged, but it was outside of your control because you had other like family engagements that that was a reason that that you went there. Yeah, and it's hard to say.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

I mean, there's so many. Um, I mean, I did the heat, it might have helped a little bit, and maybe I could have timed it a little better to do more of it. I don't know if I just didn't do enough of it, but um, I also I really I mean there's that there's that factor I think that played a role. And then uh so there's maybe five minutes there or something. But I also think that that flu, you know, that I got and the the the struggle I had after that, it just was part of it too. So there's so many, yeah, so many factors that kind of probably went into why that didn't go the way I was hoping. But I do think the altitude, and I knew and that was one of my fears too, and I knew it. But you know, a good lesson to learn is next time I will um plan that not plan it out quite that way. I'll try to make sure that I time it a little better, but um, but there is an advantage. Uh and unfortunately, I do think uh on the flip side of it, you lose you lose the altitude training effect quickly, fairly quickly. I mean, really, when I was reading, it was within two one to two weeks, you can lose a lot of that. And so that was why I was worried about it. But to gain the benefit of it, I feel like when I was doing research before an altitude training, it can take like two to three weeks to gain the benefit to have all those adaptations. So the tough part is is do you, if you have a race at altitude, how do you manage that? You know, do you um go up to altitude like two to three weeks before your race? Like if you work remotely, maybe you can, you know, I'm thinking someone who wants to train in race like the Leadville 100, where it starts at 10,000 feet, the race. That's the that is the where Leadville is located, you know what I mean? And you go up to close, maybe 13,000, 14,000 close to like it's a really high, you know, race. And I really just don't think you can go from sea level and do that race in any capacity where you're gonna have a fantastic day. You know, you might be able to complete it, but that ox lack of oxygen is just gonna get you pretty, pretty badly. It gets me when I'm out where I'm at in Denver or around Denver, go up there. Like that 10,000 feet still gets to me, and I'm more acclimated.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

So, you know, I think that's I think in order to be completely, yeah, to be completely acclimated, you do need that that longer duration. But I think the research was also showing us that even if you were there for three days, the body starts the acclimation process within three days. So as long if you can arrive at your race venue uh at a minimum three days before, then the body starts the acclimation process. You're not gonna be fully acclimated, but you the body has started the adjustment. So, you know, I I know it would be really challenging in order to say, okay, well, I'm just gonna tell I'm just gonna spend two weeks at the race venue in order to be prepared. But even if you're not gonna be able to do that and think that's your only option, it's not your only option, but you know, if you want full acclimation, then yeah, that's probably the case. But I don't I don't want you showing up like the day before because it's that second day, which is the worst day uh of your body's reaction to the change in altitude. So if you can get past that second day and race on that third day, that's better than racing on the second one.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

Or if you have like a full week or something, maybe better. But and then it's kind of the opposite for for going from altitude to sea level, it's kind of like almost more optimal if you go down and almost race like within a couple days, I think is what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yeah, if you're going from altitude to sea level, you want to time it such that there's very little time between the time that you get to the venue and your actual race. So the more time that you're there at sea level, the more your body has starts to lose that acclimation or the advantage that you had from training at altitude.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

So that's typically how I've done it, and I've had some good races. It's you know, so um it may be it may be the lesson to me that the next time I do a marathon, if I do want to try to race it fast to to time it a little bit better and not time it along with other things.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

But um it's well let's let's talk about the physiological let's talk about what the body is doing. I know that we've talked about it before, but let's bring it up in this episode because I think it's it's worth the discussion on why why we think this is important. Somebody could be sitting there just like, why do I care? I I I don't I don't get it. And so I want to talk a little bit just briefly about what's the physiological change that's taking place in the body uh when racing in the heat. So the way that I look at it is that I want the my body to start sweating as quickly as possible. So I don't want to be outside for like an hour or two and my body hasn't really started to sweat yet. I really want it to start to sweat within five minutes of just being outside. That's what heat acclimation is. So it's it's the body's reaction to pulling blood to the skin, uh not to the surface of the skin, but it's it's it's the redirection of blood so that the body starts to cool itself. Well, there is there's a consequence of that in terms of your ability to absorb and take in in nutrition. So if you're training in the heat, you also have to adjust for that. It's like, okay, how am I going to change my nutrition strategy? Because my blood is being redirected to to for my body to effectively cool itself, which means that there's going to be less blood volume available to help me digest food. So I may need to change from a a food or like a solids-based nutrition plan to more liquid, so that's a little bit easier for my body to absorb. But you want that, you want your body to start to cool it, to attempt to cool itself quicker. Yeah. And so that's that's why it's important.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

And that sweat, I think people would think the opposite. Like, you know, like I'm sweating so much. Like, isn't that a good thing?

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Yeah, the presence of sweat is not an indication that you're working hard or that you're you're you have a high level of effort going on. No, it the presence of sweat is an indication that the body is hot and so it's trying to cool itself. It has nothing to do with your effort level.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

So and it's not a bad thing. Like you, you know, sweating is a good thing. Like I when I was doing the sauna thing, like where I was in the sauna, because I don't when I was in Vermont, because I don't use the sauna, I don't have access to one easily. Here I wish I did in Colorado. I wish I had one. Um I just remember like sweating profusely. Like I'm in the sauna and I'm like sweating. And there's this other woman over there who she's does not sweat. I'm and I'm thinking to myself, why is it that I'm like, I mean, I look like I took a shower. I'm sweating. I've got like sweat everywhere. I'm like kind of turning red. And she wasn't, but it she also she also mentioned she had AFib. And I'm like, is it even good to be in the sauna? I don't know. But I'm thinking, you know, after kind of reading some of the benefits and and looking through it, I'm like, oh well, it's probably actually that I'm more acclimated to the heat. Like my body started to cool my like that maybe is better that I was sweating a lot. And the fact that she wasn't maybe was more concerning. But as I'm in there with her, I'm like, gosh, you don't even look like you're sweating at all, you know. So she I was like, you don't, I'm like, look like I've been taking a shower and you don't even look like you're wet at all. I think that's something people might think, like in that scenario, like, oh, because she's not sweating and she looks cool cool as a cucumber in my mind, is the way I thought about it. She's actually more acclimated. But in this sense, it was maybe because I was sweating so much, maybe it was actually that I was more acclimated. I that's something I think people need to think about, is yeah, because when I was looking at this woman, I'm like, what's going on? You know, but I think it was actually she probably had less acclimation.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

I just that's just something I think people maybe would get would get confused when it comes to Yeah, not not sweating when you when it's uh hot is a bad sign. It's a bad sign in terms of of uh your acclimation. So it's not that, oh, I'm not sweating, I must be heat acclimated. No, that it's uh it's the complete opposite. Um it's that that quick release of sweat when the body starts to sweat very, very quickly or s or soon uh based on your exposure to the heat. That's when that's the indication that your acclimation is improving. And we all have wearables now, so if you have a Garmin, there's there's a there's a metric that's gonna show up on your watch or your bike computer which measures your heat acclimation. So it it tracks how much time that you've spent out in the heat and it measures your heart rate and relative to the time that that you've been exposed, and it keeps track of your acclimation in terms of a percentage, so it's gonna to say, you know, your heat acclimation is 60% or you know 40%. So you're the goal is to try and get that number higher and higher and higher. Um because I've experienced races and really hot conditions where I felt I felt actually fantastic. And but other I would talk to others and they're just like, oh my gosh, the the heat is so brutal. It just killed me. And I was like I didn't really I didn't really feel the heat all that much and I felt much more prepared. I felt like my performance was better and they look like they had just been sent through the ringer and I felt pretty good. I think it's because I'm I'm very purposeful with my heat acclimation protocol when I'm preparing for a race and I'm so glad that it's something that I started I started doing. And even you know during during the race there's there's strategies that I use to try and keep the body as cool because you can't go into a race you're just like oh I'm just gonna dump ice down my kit or whatever and try and stay cool. The fact of the matter is is that you you're not guaranteed that ice. And so if you're relying on something being available on the on the on the race course in order to help you manage your body temperature you're opening yourself up to some some more risk that that wouldn't be necessary. So you know when I go through an aid station I'm grabbing you know a cup of water I I tell myself I get two cups one cup for the mouth one cup for my head and you know I don't I don't rely on ice because it's never guaranteed. It's nice if it's there so it's a super bonus but at least the the cold water is helpful and I dump it on my head um because that's where the most of the heat the heat loss is from.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

I just dump one did it during grandma's and even it wasn't that hot but I'm dumping water on my head and they did have ice every aid station. Yeah if they have ice I take a little bit I might put it down my kit but if you hold on to it if you can put it in your hands yeah. Yeah there's some like res like nerve or receptors in your hand and there's actual research on this if you can hang on to it it helps cool you because of the I don't know if there's a specific I don't know if it matters which hand, but so for a lot of it I would put a few cubes down my shirt just to kind of cool myself. And then I would hold onto the ice until it melted. And um I don't yeah I don't think it was the heat that caught me in this race because it was only in this like low 60s but um it I think it helped. I never felt warm or hot so I think it was helping. But that you know if you do have the ice or a sponge this is why when if you watch um like with the Western states trail 100 that just happened if you watch any of the coverage the athletes and the and obviously this is different than in a race where like an Iron Man or a marathon where you don't have the crew to help you but in a race where there's a crew this is why watch very carefully as soon as they get into the aid station their crew is immediately taking their hat, dunking it in cold water, giving them a cold like ice icy um you know something to put around their neck and to cool like it's almost like that's the first thing they're doing before they're even fueling most of the time because it's so hot and they like we recognize that if they can get the body to cool down that's going to help performance. So watch carefully at what they're doing because you know if if you are doing like an ultra and you have a crew, you know, that might be something to consider if it's going to be hot is having those resources to be able to cool you down. But it you know but if you're not acclimated the heat in the first place like you're saying, you know, those methods help but you're you know you're still gonna have an influence on performance.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

So yeah it's like turning a faucet onto a drip onto a raging fire. Is it helpful? Maybe but you know it's you're you're never gonna you're never gonna get caught up on that one.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

Yeah so I think the other another thing too with the increased sweat rate there's kind of going through some of the adaptations is like our the amount of sodium and salt and electrolytes we're losing does decrease a little bit so you lose a little bit more so you do because you're maybe sweating earlier and you're losing more sweat you do have to really prioritize hydration.

SPEAKER_02 48:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

Because you're maybe losing a little bit more water. So you do want to make sure you're drinking plenty but when you do lose the sweat you're not losing as much sodium. So not to say you don't need to take in some still but you you know the you're not you know you're maybe not needing to take in as much electrolytes as you would otherwise so I would say that would be a benefit um and you're lower there's lowered heart rate you get the benefit there of maybe even resting heart rate and potentially during exercise and then um just you're helping your body cool so now your core temperature is lower. And I think that's where people really get into problems is once your core temperature starts to rise to a certain level that's when things can really start to become heat stroke, heat, you know, heat illness um so keeping your core temperature lower is really important. Like even your base core temperature might be a little bit lower, but in general just while you're exercising because you know heat stroke and heat illness um can be a real problem. So yeah those would be I think the bait I don't know is there any other I mean it's the stroke volume and the um there is like volume like plasma volume that increases yeah the increase in red blood cells. In red blood yeah so that's where the heat it's the poor man's altitude because it's yeah different mechanism but sort of similar outcome I would say down the same pathway.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Mm-hmm. So you know you still you still get you still get there. It's like two plus two is four, but so is three plus one. You know so it's that kind of it's that kind of mindset. So it's like okay well there's more than one way to do this. Right. Um but it's not the same way but it is a way.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Yeah so I guess like we're saying all these benefits and you know I don't know but it so what if so should someone go through and do heat training in the heat seven every single run or every single workout seven days a week and do the sauna?

unknown 50:19

No.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Is that the way to do that bad decision. So yeah when it comes to executing when it comes to executing a method uh in order to heat acclimate you have to consider the the training volume that that you're under as well as the stress that the body is under when it's in the environment uh so yeah like we've said a hundred times before stress is stress and so heat acclimation is a stressor onto the body just like going out for a run ride or swim you know whatever it is that you're doing so you have to make that adjustment I don't want you to go out and do your long run uh and so let's say that you're out running for for two hours and then you're going to jump right into the sauna for a little bit that that might be a bad decision because now you've the body has been under stress for two hours of running and now you're going to force it to be under more stress for another what 30 minutes of of sitting in a sauna. So you have to consider that because your job is to manage the duration in which your body is under stress. And now rather than recovering from a two hour run you have to recover from a two and a half hour stress event so you have to be a little bit more purposeful now on how you're going to recover from that in order to execute the next day's uh training session. So you have so maybe the way that I approach it there's there's two kinds of protocols that you can do. You can either do like a seven day protocol uh in which case you don't have to spend as long doing it but you have to adjust your training plan to accommodate for the additional stress. So that might that that's that could be a challenge. Yeah but you don't have to do it like every day for right if you're under a time constraint and you say I have to I have to get heat acclimated for my race you can do it in the span of like seven to fourteen days but it's very purposeful. It's every single day that you're exposed in order to to build that acclimation. So you have to adjust your training plan accordingly so that you don't overstress it. But if you say I want to I want to slow roll this thing a little bit so I'm on you know a 12 week training plan. So I want to slowly accumulate stress so that I don't have to make as such big adjustments to the training volume itself so that I can still perform then you know it's reasonable to throw in a three-day protocol where three days a week uh you do some workouts. So I guess there's a distinction that we should make. So I I do want to say okay yes now there's a stressor we can ex we can extend the number of sessions that we're doing it over a longer period of time so that we do it less frequently during the week so that we don't have to make as such big adjustments to the training plan. So that means okay three of let's say you tick you choose a short run a a longer bike um like a moderate bike session you know or something like that you you find those workouts where you might be able to say I can stay in zone two for those and use those those as your heat acclimation sessions um knowing full well that it's not going to be a zone two stressor it's going to be something that's a little bit higher because heat is the multiplier to that. Or you can so that's active heat acclimation where you're actually in the environment and you're working out. One of the things that I do in my plan is that I don't actually do very many run heat acclimation workouts because for me running is harder to recover from and so that multiplier effect is going to be even greater. And so I choose like my bike workouts to be my heat acclimation sessions. My body is not beat up as much when I'm on a bike ride even if it's a long bike ride and you know let's say I'm on the gravel bike so it's it's you know hard riding it's still not as hard on my body as going out for a run. So I save a lot of my heat acclimation my active heat acclimation for my bike workouts. It's easier to recover from and it doesn't dig me as deep of a hole. But I also have a passive heat acclimation protocol that I use in conjunction with that. So your your passive heat acclimation is going to be things like the hot tub therapy like the hot tub exposure or or sauna exposure. So it can be like a a humid sauna or it could be an infrared sauna it either either one works whatever you have um uh access to I have uh in I have access to infrared sauna and I I absolutely enjoy that I love it um and so that's actually a bigger piece of my heat acclimation protocol is the sauna it's passive I just do it let's say I'll go to the gym and I'll do you know a run and then I'll go right from the run into the the sauna. And it it I'm not in there very long and my runs aren't very long either. So I don't I don't go and do like a two hour run and then go jump in the sauna. We're talking an hour at most for a run and combine that with with a sauna you know in order to keep my heart rate elevated a little bit more but that that heart rate is going to rise when you're sitting in there. So if I I look at my watch and I keep track of what my heart rate is while I'm in the sauna and just sitting there my heart rate can get up to like 120, 125. And so my resting heart rate is in the 50s. So if I'm just sitting there you know and it's it my heart rate is already like four times what what it would normally be just like sitting still in a room in a comfortable environment you can see that's the stressor to the body and that illustrates it very well. So I I I do I do like two to three sauna sessions a week and they're like 20 minutes 20 minute sessions um or 25 and I combine it with contrast therapy. So I'll sit in the sauna for 20 minutes and then I'll go straight from the sauna to the coal plunge tub and put just put my feet in the tub because I have you know I have feet issues with Achilles and and arthritis in in my ankles and so I'll spend I'll just go back and forth. So it's 20 minute sauna five minute feet plunge into the coal tub and then I'll go right back into the sauna for another 20 to 25 minutes and then back to the tub and then that's it. So no more than 50 minutes of that of that contrast therapy protocol and that's still only once a week for something like that. You know and otherwise I'll just do 20 minutes I'll just do one round 20 minutes in the sauna five minutes in the tub and then I'm done and it's usually at the end of a workout. But I make sure that when I come home I'm drinking some electrolytes in order to rehydrate because when I get out of sauna I am absolutely drenched there's a nice puddle of water that is left into the sauna it's super disgusting but it's it's doing its job. And so but you have to make sure that you're very purposeful with your rehydration.

SPEAKER_01 57:26

That's why I like the sauna more than the hot tub because I could see I could visually see that it's sweating in the hot tub one. Yeah the hot tub you're hot and you're uncomfortable but you can't see the the um the visual of the sweat and then the the and the sweat all around you when you get up. But I like I like that I think for runners like I'm thinking um you know because with triathl I I with triathlon because you do have potentially like a lot of time if you're doing both the bike and the run that you might be in the heat I do think you have to be really careful. For runners you know I really think like three days a week of very specific um heat training is probably enough and maybe doing more than that like you do have to be really careful. So there may be a scenario of somebody who's like I I just don't have an opportunity to um run when it's cooler in the morning or maybe it's just like they're like training in Houston, Texas and there's never a cooler in the morning because it's already 85 degrees and this is my experience from my personal experience living in Houston, Texas for my dietetic internship I remember trying to train at 530 in the morning and it was already 83 degrees and crazy high humidity so it never actually cooled down. You know I did a lot of training I did a lot of swimming actually during that timeframe because I just I couldn't run so much in the heat you know so you we have to you have to kind of think about you know um how like what your alternatives are like I think there is an opportunity if you need to train in the heat like you know you have to train in the heat if you have no other opportunity then you're really gonna have to adjust your expectations because um an hour run in the heat is going to have a different stress on the body than an hour run in nicer weather. So you have to either slow your pace down to kind of balance out that stress, which you might have to slow your pace down anyways. So you are going to have to change your expectation and this is where I think for we had this whole conversation about minute based approach to training. I think in the summer specifically if you're um what might be wise to change your training plan to more of a minutes based approach because this is exactly where you know if you're trying to get nine miles, let's say, but now it's 90 degrees and 90% humidity outside that nine miles is maybe going to be like I mean 30 seconds a minute slower per mile potentially I mean there could be a significant amount of slowing down and having that expectation first of all knowing that it's gonna slow down like don't be in the heat thinking you're going to run the same pace. You're just setting that yourself up for disaster because you're you're gonna fail and you're gonna hit a point where your body cannot maintain that pace because the heat is too high. You're not able to dissipate that heat enough. So having that expectation but if that's taking you a minute or so longer per mile I mean you're adding at least 10 minutes to that run. So what maybe would take you let's say 70 minutes to complete now is taking you almost an hour 20 or an hour 30 to complete that's more time that you're out there too. So again it's a stress equation. So if you're kind of constantly training in the heat you have to both think about the time you're out there and the pace you're running and kind of adjust your expectations a little bit for that. And if you have the opportunity to do some of your running outside in the heat to kind of get that heat acclimate get acclimized to the heat, but you can do some of your maybe really more intense runs on a treadmill or in a cooler environment, that would be what I would recommend. So you can still get the benefit of the heat maybe some of your like lower intensity days are out in the heat or even some of your easy days if you can balance it all out correctly so you're not taking away from your quality days. And then doing some of those really quality workouts in a cooler environment that would probably be the more ideal situation to because even when you try to do a quality workout outside I still feel like you you need to do some of that quality work where actually hitting some of your goal paces and you're you know you're to have it be at more of a a controlled environment and then doing some of your work outside. Just also for the stress piece of it because trying to do a hard workout in the heat is just going to take a lot more out of you even if you're adjusting your pace. I just think it just takes so much out of you to constantly do every workout in the heat. So that's that's how I would approach it. For an athlete who let's say this scenario is they don't live in the heat. They live somewhere where it's pretty cool most of the time you know they don't really have the opportunity to do a hot training day or even here in Colorado like it gets hot here, but we don't have the humidity so I don't get like the full benefit. Yeah granted it does get up to 95 degrees and there are days I run in the in that sort of heat but I don't have the humidity so I'm not I'm not getting like the full on heat training that's gonna it's gonna feel it's gonna feel different.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

It's gonna feel different right yeah so you you going from Fort Collins Colorado down to Florida and let's say that you're gonna do we're gonna run a marathon in Florida even though you're heat acclimated and you have altitude you running in humidity is going to feel so much harder.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:58

Yeah it's such a different even just going from here to New York where it was not that hot there was a few hot days but it was humid in in Vermont we had a 90 degree day and a humid day that I did run. I was actually grateful I got the opportunity to do that because it was a little bit more humid in Minnesota too. But yeah if I just gone from if it had been a hot race in Minnesota and I had gone from here, even if I done the heat training and gone to Minnesota with the humidity I wouldn't have been prepared. And I'm not really sure maybe the you know the a sauna like a um a humid sauna or maybe there's ways you would want you could try to to get used to that because I'm not entirely sure I would have been prepared for the humidity of it being up here. It's so dry it just sucks you the it's like a raisin living up here. You just have all the moisture sucked out of you essentially so you're you know um and I think it's a different kind of feel like I can do I can do a 95 degree day here still have to slow down my pace but it's just not the same as what it would be like in Florida at the same temperature with a higher humidity. So that's also something you know and then that's why the dew point and we had that we have had a conversation before about heat where we talked a lot about dew point things like that. But you do have to kind of consider that um when you're adjusting your goals and expectations for um your your training runs and things but it is a different a different kind of heat. So would I benefit from maybe sauna like a a humid sauna probably if I were going to go train. Luckily I'm not going to go do another race anytime soon in Florida or anything like that. But it's just things you want to consider is thinking about the race environment what's the where are you training and what's the potential you know for where you're gonna be what is it like and trying to do the best you can in your training at least to acclimate to that which is hard sometimes when it comes to altitude or humidity if you're not in a humid or high altitude environment. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:03

No your thoughts you're no I don't know if you have a runner like is there anything you're yeah so I guess I would say if you're if you have a mix of both passive and active uh protocol for heat acclimation in your training plan. For all of the ones that are active so that means that you're doing a workout outside I almost recommend just removing pace from your watch completely. Don't don't even look at it. Don't even be tempted um I would remove it from the screen completely and I would just have time uh and heart rate on there and use and use those two as a barometer. We're not racing by heart rate but it's still good to kind of see I want you to see and reconcile like what is my heart rate in in the humidity because one thing that I experienced in a race I did uh I am in North Carolina 70 point three and uh I got off the bike and it was It was hot. I mean, it was hot outside and a little humid. And I looked down at my watch and I saw that my heart rate was like one sixty-five, one seventy-five. And I had just come at a transition out to go out to the run. And so it freaked me out because I never I never looked at heart rate during my training. And so when I glanced down and saw my heart rate, I had no uh no baseline to say like what should my heart rate be. I just saw that really high number and it freaked me out. And I adjusted my execution, not really knowing I was like, okay, what is that what it should be? Um, so at least having some kind of experience uh on what that heart rate is going to be during those types of efforts at least will allow you to put into context what you see on race day, even though you may have pace and heart rate and all kinds of other stuff on your watch when you execute a race, uh just having that experience on what that number is going to be or could be, I think is going to be valuable. But I think having pace on there removes the tendency to try and chase performance from that perspective. Uh, and then starting to say, no, why I, you know, my my zone two pace is this. And so I I need to validate myself and make myself feel like, okay, I'm I am making progress. I need to be able to hold my zone two pace, and you get out in the heat and you can't maintain that zone two pace, and you start chasing it. Now you're starting to dig the hole. And it's going to be hard to dig to get out of that hole and to recover rather than just say, hey, I want to run by effort. I want to run by feel. And but you know what zone two feels like, and you don't need a pace to tell you what it is. You just know what it feels like. Now go and run with that. That's what I tell my athletes, and that's what I do in my own training plan. It's like I'm I'm removed pace from my watch, and I'm just going to run I know how it feels to run comfortably. Uh, is it hard? Yeah, because it's freaking hot outside. So it is going to feel hard, but I've got no I've got nothing going on there that's judging performance.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:08

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:09

I'll I'll judge performance after the fact and say, okay, how how successful was that? And say, okay, well, maybe that's the pace that I can see on race day under those kind of conditions, but I didn't purposefully go out and chase that pace. I I used it after the fact to reinforce, okay, now I'm starting to build expectations because if you know, if I have a race that's in uh let's say April or May, and I spent that whole winter training outside, you know, my performance outside during the race is going to be different than what I saw during training because I trained in the cold and trained in the cool weather, and now I'm forcing my body to race in something that's not like that. You know, you're you're going to have to adjust those expectations. You can't say, Oh, I went out and you know, this winter I was able to hold an eight-minute mile, uh, and my race is in is in May. Now that eight-minute mile is going to be hard. That's gonna be hard to maintain, even though you have the fitness that's there. It heat, how how can I describe it? It's it's it's it's an equalizer. Uh you you do not observe your full potential when you're racing in heat. You have the fitness, and you're not getting slower, you're not getting weaker, you're just running in more adverse conditions. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:30

And it feels like you. I I think that's the hardest part about summer is you just feel like you're slow, you just feel like you're slow. Like, you know, I'm um, I mean, even for workouts, like this is you're talking just zone two, but I mean, um, I don't have any specifically pulled up, but there are calculators you can use online if you have, let's say you have a workout and you're supposed to do like 5k pace or something. There are calculators you can put in the temperature or the dew point or those parameters and put put it in, it'll kind of give you what you would want to aim for for that, you know, a get a guesstimate. Obviously, you know, nothing's absolutely curve like precise, but it it helps you. And that that that's something I use sometimes just because for me, I have a really hard time with that. It's like that concept that he know it's my body's working harder. I know I have to adjust my pace, but I've I struggle with it. And because I'm like, well, I have this pay, you know, I'm I get I'm like most runners, I'm kind of like stuck on a pace idea. So having that calculator, something that's kind of like giving me a estimation of what I need to slow down for how much I need to slow down actually helps me because then I can adjust my goal. And then I I don't know, it just helps me figure that out. Because I do a lot of my training, especially like what as I adjust to 5K training, like I'm gonna do a lot of my training focusing on that pace. That's just the way it I that's the way it is, like kind of keeping I have pace goals in mind. And if it's hot outside, I know I need to adjust it, but if but for some reason my mind just struggles with that, and then I feel like I'm losing fitness and I my workouts are going terrible, even though it's like 90 degrees out. So I I will look at that and use those calculators sometimes, and it helps me because that I'm like, okay, like this there there is this justification for sort of like slowing down, and and I don't know. So if that helps someone, you know, but it it is a hard time of the year because there's so much of it is just slow. You think you're just running slow, you think your performance is declining even though it's not. Um, and that's why I think that's why I do love those fall races because you have all of those moments in the heat, and then you find it all kind of comes together for you when the weather cools and you're like, oh, wait a second, actually, I'm in fat fabulous shape, you know. So just keep that in mind. That happens to everyone struggling in the heat this time of year, and you will realize. But if you are if you know, but if you are running in in a hot race, you like we were sort of talking about this, Justin. You can't really, it's probably gonna be really hard for you to have a PR, even if you do all of the heat training and you're ready, because it's still gonna slow you down, like there's no way to overcome that. Um, so you have to kind of maybe adjust your expectations for the race anyways, but you're gonna be a lot better off and have a lot better result, even if it's not a PR. I mean, who knows? But you might have a really good result because you've heat trained. So, you know, the expectation probably needs to adjust anyways, but you'll be far better off than someone who hasn't adjusted to the heat. But if but if you are training all throughout the summer and you have like a November, October race and it's cool, you'll see the you'll see it. You'll be you'll see that you'll see the benefit of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:50

Um if I had to compare it to something that we've talked about a lot, and is that fatigue masks fitness, heat does the exact same thing. So heat behaves a lot like fatigue does. Um so one once once the heat is gone, then it's it's easier to observe the fitness that you've accumulated. You can't observe the fitness in the heat, just like you can't observe the fitness when you're under fatigued. It's when you shed the fatigue, is when you observe fitness. Likewise, when you shed the heat, now you can start to observe what your potential is and the fitness that you've accumulated in it. So that's when you can see your potential once all those are gone.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:30

So heat train. Heat train. Either way, whether you have a hot race or you are just hearing something that you have to do, it's mandatory. So I even think in the winter time it's making me think like, you know, I try to do some hot tub training, but it's like trying to figure out ways, even if it's a passive heat, because unless you were willing to bundle into five different sweatshirts to run on your treadmill in the middle of the winter to, you know, and have the hot, I guess you could have like the heater next to you, you know, but that seems like a lot of effort. Um, you know, maybe that's where even some passive heat training in the winter might be a worth worth a little bit of thought for people because especially if they have spring races, because again, you do there's that benefit you get, even if the race itself isn't in the heat. So more to think about there. But I know I have to run in like a few minutes.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:22

Um Yeah, I mean, especially if you if you're if you're thinking about doing like Iron Man Texas, uh, which is in April, and most of your training is going to take place during the wintertime. This is something that you that you should be considering. Because as I said at the beginning of this episode, I don't care how good your training plan is, I don't care how creative your workouts are and how you've increased your FTP or or anything like that, because the heat will wipe all of that out. It does not matter on how consistent you were or how you know creative your training plan was. If you don't know, if you cannot race in the heat, it does not matter. So yeah, I know you gotta get I know you gotta get going. And uh so let's wrap this thing up. So sure. Yeah. I want to thank you guys for joining us. This has been episode 107, 107 episodes. Wow, this is it's kind of uh it's something nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:13

Kind of hard to contemplate.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:15

So uh so thank you guys for joining us. We greatly appreciate the time that you dial in with us. Uh if this episode has been helpful to you, or if you know somebody else who's got a hot race that's coming up, and you're like, hey, have you thought about heat acclimation? If you haven't, here, listen to this episode, share it with somebody else. Uh if it helps you start to think about how you want to handle heat and you have a race coming up, uh, we hope that you have found this helpful. Please leave a review and a comment wherever it is that you're consuming your podcast content from. Uh, you know, give us a couple stars or whatever and put a comment. Those are greatly appreciated. It does help uh the exposure of the podcast and help us uh get a little bit higher up in the list so that people can find us a little bit easier because we do not have uh commercials, we do not have sponsors or anything like that. So you're not interrupted with uh commercials on Spotify or whatever, and we're not trying to sell you hemp mattresses and supplements and all that junk. So uh we uh we hope that you uh enjoy that actually and that you you're grateful for it. So in order to keep this going, we want to increase the exposure of the podcast. Those comments and reviews are helpful. If you listen to us on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe there or any of the other podcast platforms. Subscribe so you don't miss any of the future episodes that come out. Uh I we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast the Endurance Uh Athlete Journey Podcast Group. So it's that private group on Facebook. Uh you just answer one simple question, it lets you write on in and agree to the group rules. Uh this is where we have some additional interactions with listeners. Uh there will be a poll that'll be coming out as well. So to see what kind of content you like. I've been actually thinking about going out there pretty soon and throwing out some QA questions for people and see if we can get some uh some podcast topics that you would like for us to cover and uh or at least answer some of your questions. Uh I know that you guys aren't going to come to us with questions, so I'll go to you and ask if you have questions. So uh keep an eye out on that. That's something that I would like to do. Um as I as we say all the time, we're both active coaches, and so we're bringing on athletes onto our rosters. So if you would like uh some help in your endurance journey and you're thinking about bringing on a coach to help you progress, we hope that you'll consider one or both of us as your coach because Katie does dietetics for all sports. She also does run coaching and run plans. So if you would like to reach out to Katie, you can go to fuel the number two run dot com. If you're thinking about taking on a multi-sport or single sport uh coaching, I do uh custom one-on-one coaching as well as custom built training plans. You can go to tabula rasseracing.com and reach out to me. Both of us have additional content on our websites where we have blogs and and documentaries and everything else that's out there as well. So take advantage of those free resources to you. Uh, you can see what our coaching philosophies are and you can uh find out you know if our personalities fit. Uh and it's an important relationship that when you uh bring on a coach. So check us out and feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or if you'd like to talk, happy to do that. So again, thank you guys for joining us on this episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. This has been episode 107 on heat acclimation and heat training. Uh, I've been your host, Coach Justin, along with Coach Katie, and we look forward to coming to you again next time. Until then, happy training, everyone. Bye. All right, bye-bye. That wraps up today's episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Endurance sports have a way of teaching us patience, humility, and resilience. Lessons that carry far beyond the workout. Progress in endurance sports doesn't come from shortcuts. It comes from consistency, discipline, and doing the work when it's not glamorous. Wherever you are on your endurance journey, keep trusting the process and honoring the work you put in each day. If today's episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone to help on their endurance journey. Don't forget to join the conversation on our social sites to help build and foster a community where we all learn and support one another. We'll be back with more stories and insights from Coach Justin and Katie. Until then, visit the podcast website at the endurance athlete journey.buzzsprout.com for more episodes from the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Have questions or comments about the podcast? Feel free to send us an email at the endurance athlete journey at gmail.com. For all things coaching, visit Coach Katie at fuel the number two run dot com and Coach Justin at taboolarasta racing.com. Again, thank you for listening to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast and remember to find joy in the journey.