Scottxs wrote:
At a certain point there are not any. IMCH was a death march. I'm from the south, train on the same terrain, but when its a 104 heat index nothing will work beyond what you did. I saw a pro...who will go unnamed......that I passed (he was on his second loop and I was on my first)....and he was walking and then stopped. I asked him if he was ok and he didn't speak.
He looked like death.
Chattanooga has become the old Louisville in regards to the heat. Ironman will have to move the race to a cooler month because the end of Sep is too unpredictable and Chatty now is the proud owner of the 2 of the top 3 highest DNF rates in IM. Attendance will drop.
Yes, you can go slower, walk, or crawl. You can lower expectations or get lucky your body has a really good day but you can't predict that.
Best advise to mitigate that kind of heat is........race in cooler climates. There nothing else you can really do. As you get older heat tolerance only gets worse.
This is the truth. I live in Houston and unfortunately have trained through the last 2 summers with fall ironmans. You have to go way slower, and you cannot let yourself overheat. Once you do it’s nearly impossible to recover without walking/resting.
Also it’s almost impossible to drink enough. I had a 5hr ride a few weeks ago where I lost something like 17lbs of sweat over the course of it. (Morning weight is 165lbs. Though was only 5lbs lighter at the end of the ride due to drinking 6 liters of fluid over the course of it). I can’t imagine having to run a marathon after that.