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...
