Race Effectively in Hot and Humid Conditions
You train your heart out, preparing for the big race. You have the desire and ambition and dare to dream of a wonderful performance in your next triathlon or endurance race. But, then, you look at the weather forecast. Oh no. It is going to be a hot one. There are plenty of articles about preparing for a triathlon or endurance races in hot environments and even the benefits of heat training. However, today we tackle executing and achieving your best performance on race day when it is hot and humid. Heat and humidity have some of the most negative impacts on an athlete’s performance. Still, few understand the strategies required to navigate and perform their best in the race.
Let’s Get Cracking:
The Impact of Heat Stress on Performance
Racing can be a thrill, but the bathroom lines pre-race also show the indisputable fact that it is high stress. Adding heat and humidity on top of this amplifies the situation. The heat and humidity must be addressed to race to your trained potential. A hot and humid race is physiologically demanding for any triathlete or endurance athlete.
Discomfort:
High effort in heat and humidity creates a distracting and claustrophobic sensation for many. You likely realize that a positive mindset is a powerful driver of your best physical performance, but staying positive is more challenging when the environment is unpleasant. In addition, the brain drives the body in many aspects of performance, and heat has a real effect on cognition.
Competition within the Competition:
While you are racing others, your body is chasing its own best performance, a competition of sorts with itself. It all comes down to your total blood volume. During a race, your body works hard and generates heat. The blood in your body, all circulating in a closed system (we hope), goes to the muscles to create the energy for work. From there, to the skin to shuttle off the heat that work produces. What’s leftover goes to the gut to aid the absorption and digestion of calories. In warmer temperatures, we generate more heat and are less effective at dissipating the heat we produce. So, the competition increases between muscles (for work) and skin (to remove heat), with the battle amplified as we become dehydrated (reducing blood volume). As the body gets hotter and your core temperature rises, there's a decline in performance. This is because the skin will always win the battle I laid out, as it is a key body's protective mechanism. If we could somehow allow heat to keep rising, it would put our brains and organs in a dangerous position. I realize our goals are important, but our body determines that life is more significant than these goals.
Give me Fuel:
With the battle of muscle and skin raging, another casualty tends to be our ability to effectively absorb and digest fluids and calories, which are required to maintain work levels in the middle to the back-end of most endurance events. We shed fluids and burn calories, and the heat stress added on top of work-rate stress severely limits the effectiveness of our GI system. So, it is no surprise that so many folks experience bloated stomachs, GI distress, and other nutrition-related issues in hotter environments. The good news is we can become a better fueling machine by finding our unique physiological makeup and training our gut in preparation for our races.
Core Temperature Buildup:
No matter your fitness level and preparation, working at a higher temperature rate than your body can dissipate heat will lead to a build-up. The hotter we become at our core, the steeper the performance decline. This can impair performance, but it can also disable the ability to continue and become dangerous. Toughness can only overcome so much, and a rise in core temperature can tip to a level at which race-performance ability stops completely.
Racing Mindset for the Heat
To combat the adverse effects of hot and humid conditions, it is essential to establish the appropriate performance mindset. To be clear, I am not calling for toughness to be the main driver for race day performance. Instead, a healthy dose of pragmatism and problem solving is key. A little more ninja, a little less nightclub doorman, is your path to performance. However, there are a few steps that can be helpful.
Don’t Drive Your Car into the Lake:
Your GPS might be guiding the way, but you still drive the car. A similar concept applies to heat performance. You may have pre-race training potential, but it is essential to apply logic to the situation and create a race strategy that suits the hot environment. So many athletes come undone in racing due to low adaptability in race expectations. You might believe that you can hold an 8-minute mile pace for your race distance. Great, but if race day includes 96-degree temperatures, your race pace will be slower. Your goal is to get from A to B as fast as possible, no matter the environmental challenge. Adjusted pacing and added patience are seldom wrong. I have honestly never heard an athlete say that they began with a too-conservative pacing strategy following a race in the heat and humidity. Many athletes sought explanations of ‘what went wrong when their races unraveled.
Don’t Take It Personally:
It sounds strange, but many athletes take adversity personally, as though it is happening to them. It isn’t. These are the day's conditions that every competing athlete must navigate, so establish your problem-solving mindset to build your best strategies. Rather than wasting mental energy repeatedly checking the forecast in a desperate hope that it won’t be hot, embrace a little Purple Patch saying. ‘So what, now what?’ It is hot and humid, so what do I need to do to reduce the impact and optimize my performance relative to the conditions.
Focus on Controllable’s:
Staying in the moment is a well-worn cliche, but it is essential. When you operate in a challenging environment, you need to remain focused on the controllable factors at any moment in the race. This approach and mindset take commitment. You need to have self-awareness and continually check in with yourself. Some key questions to ask yourself include: How is your body feeling? How is your energy? How is your mood? How does your stomach feel? Keeping your mind in the game and task-focused will deliver the best speed. You will also minimize distractions and self-pity that can bubble up in these harsh environments.
Race-Specific Strategies
Below is a checklist of approaches to keep you physically in the game and help you nail a great triathlon or endurance race in the heat.
Equipment:
Let's start with the equipment that can play a significant role in your performance. Many athletes bypass this as a focus, yet it can play a vital role in hot conditions.
Cooling Fabric:
Most modern racing kits are designed specifically for heat dissipation. The color of the fabric tends to matter less, but the quality of the heat shedding properties are important. A few materials include reflective material, particularly helpful on shoulders and back.
Covers:
Hats, visors, head cooling bandanas, and arm coolers are all valuable. If you are prone to high heat stress, then a neck scarf that can hold ice cubes and cool moisture can have a massive positive impact.
Sunscreen:
It sounds simple, but high-quality sunscreen is critical. Sunburnt skin cannot function optimally and will amplify heat stress. Zealios is our preferred performance sunscreen.
Fueling and Hydration:
This is where your actions can significantly impact performance. Higher blood volume means better cooling ability. Proper fueling and hydration strategies often require thinking ahead, as most races begin cooler, with heat building in the day. When it starts getting hot, you want to be set up for success. Before the higher temperatures set in, make sure you are properly hydrated. Dehydration is not something you can recover from quickly. Proper hydration is critical. I would urge you against combining calories, electrolytes, and water in a single bottle to navigate your fueling and hydration. It limits the ability to manage the stomach if things go wrong and can often impair the chance for proper hydration. I realize the convenience, but it does send you down a cul-de-sac of limited options. Make hydration the priority, and nail it before it gets hot, with calories coming out of the pockets. Here is an informative article from our Precision Fuel and Hydration partners on heat preparation.
Cooling Strategies:
The body cools best from the inside out, but you can also accelerate cooling or maintain core temperature with some of these tricks:
Ice Cold Drinks:
Can cool your inside core temperature.
Cooling Your Thermoregulators:
This short-term stress reliever is a tool in your arsenal. Coldwater and ice on your wrists and forearms, upper shoulders and neck, and even the groin can be helpful. If you are fortunate, you might be able to pause at a running aid station and grab some ice or cold water used to keep bottles cold.
Pacing Strategies:
The queen of all the race tactics is effective pacing relative to the environment. This tactic is also where you will set yourself apart from your peers. Pace management -- with a strategic mindset -- is central to your success.
Walk Breaks:
A practical, effective, and proactive strategy to maintain running form and pace. I am a big believer in walk-breaks for most amateur athletes. You run as well as you can, as long as you can, and then walk. Repeat this strategy as often as you can during runs. This formula creates long-term magic. In addition to the physical benefits, a run-walk plan also provides you with a mental and physical reset. Think about the body as a pressure cooker. It builds and builds as you run, and if you just keep going, the heat stress will inevitably slow you down into terminal decline. A pressure release can keep spirits up and provide physiological relief, especially if you deploy some of the strategies already mentioned.
Back Off:
Seriously. If the stress is too high, and the pace feels like you are amplifying irreversible heat stress, then scale expectations. Don't quit on yourself. Instead, give yourself some controlled relief and settle the stress. In these few minutes, aim to do all you can to reduce the strain on your body and cool your nervous system. Best executed near an aid station, it is no failure to give yourself short-term relief for long-term gain. Be smart and remain committed to the bigger picture.
Break the Project Down:
It can be overwhelming, claustrophobic, and emotional to complete a race in the heat. Break the project down into bite-size pieces to help you stay focused. These mini-challenges will help you feel successful on race day. Gamify the experience. We are adaptable to these challenging environments.
Sauna Protocol and Head Acclimation Training
Now that you know what to do in hot and humid triathlon or endurance races, the focus shifts to preparation. We have a protocol to help prepare for your next hot and humid race. Even if you are not prepping for a hot one, this protocol is an excellent technique in your training arsenal, so those hot days don’t surprise you.
One final point -- your commitment is to get to the finish line as fast as possible, no matter what happens. This mindset is the single thing that never changes.
Under this banner, if things begin to unravel and your pace declines, don’t let the body follow the mind. Stay on it, mission-focused, and keep driving forward. Forget the pace clock and race dreams. Finish the race as best you can while controlling everything you can. That never changes. And, while you do that, remain open-minded, as you never know how you might feel in ten minutes. I have seen, time and time again, athletes make on-course recoveries just by keeping their heads on straight.
Hopefully, this article helps you have a great race, no matter the conditions.
Cheers,
Matt Dixon