Runners' World - Better Run For Shade?

How to Handle Running in the Heat
Richard A. Lovett/Runners' World, Jul 26

However many bad-weather-will-make-you-tougher quotes we collect, there’s still one aspect of weather that most of us do our best to dodge: heat. In fact, many of us do everything we can to avoid it: running at dawn or in the late evening or even seeking shelter on treadmills in air-conditioned gyms. It is, however, possible to run in heat.

In the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Portuguese distance star Maria Fernanda Moreira Ribeiro set an Olympic 10,000-meter record under hot, humid conditions (82 degrees with 60 percent relative humidity, according to historical data from Weather Underground). In the process, she posted a time of 31:01.63—one that 16 years later would still have put her in the top 10 in the much more temperate conditions of the London Olympics. The bottom line is that the human body is remarkably adaptable to heat. Its ability to adapt to high temperatures is faster and more dramatic than its ability to adjust to any other environmental stress that nature can throw at us, such as altitude or cold...

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Training Peaks: Beat the Heat

Race Day Strategies to Beat the Heat
Jim Peterman, Training Peaks/August 9, 2017


The dog days of summer are here but so too are some of the best races of the year. Performing well in these races requires both fitness and an ability to withstand the heat.


Heat acclimatization in the weeks prior to an event is the most important step for beating the heat on race day.1 However, in addition to acclimatizing to the heat, there are a number of different strategies that can help you keep cool and improve performance on race day.


When you are exercising, roughly 75 percent of the energy required for muscle contraction is lost as heat. Hot summer days make it difficult for the body to get rid of all this heat. As a result, your body temperature begins to increase which can lead to dizziness, headaches, nausea, and even brain damage.


As you might guess, all of these symptoms can affect performance. Therefore, the key to maximizing performance in the summer (and what the strategies listed below attempt to achieve) is to limit the increase in body temperature...


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