Wear a Speedo.

Stay in the shade before the start.

Carry an iced water bottle on the bike. It allows you to drink if you want, but also be able to wet down your head and kit.

Personally, I feel like caps trap heat unless there is chilled water or ice at aid stations to dump in them.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Keep ice cubes (not crushed) in a little cooler (like lunchbox size) in transition. Throw a bunch inside the front of your suit, the back pockets of your suit, and in a hat before the run, and maybe even before the bike. I suppose you could take a little bag of ice out of the cooler and dump it where it belongs as you run if you are really pressed for seconds.

I typically don't wear a hat for the run. I can't decide if a hat traps in the heat or if the shade is more important.
Always wondered that too, never could come up with the answer one way or another.
Swimming in Tomato Soup, that sounds lovely ;-) Good luck either way, other than bringing a cooler
full of ice as was mentioned, i don't have much here, i always sucked in the heat racing anyway.

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http://www.PatGriskusTri.com USAT Certified Race Director
2024 Races: USAT State of CT Age Group Championship/State of CT HS Champs/ CT Club Championship - Sat June 15th (Oly/Du/Sprint) Hopkins Vineyard Tri at Lake Waramaug Saturday July 13th http://www.HopkinsVineyardTri.com

When is the race? If you have another week to go I would do a few sauna sessions if you have access to a gym that has one. Start with 15 min after a short warmup run or swim and build to about 30 minutes over the next few sessions.
Keep two cold bottles of water in transition and dump one over yourself as you run out. Run with the 2nd bottle in hand an keep pouring a little over the head every so often. I would use a visor not a hat.
I live in South Florida and I've done my share of insanely hot races down here 🥵

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What's your CdA?

Wear a visor. That and sunglasses will help you feel cooler.
Wear the aero helmet.

Few things I’ve done that have been pretty helpful:
- minimize your warmup pre race. Small jog, running drills, stretch cords. Don’t get in the soup before you have to.
- the night before, prep a nylon sock filled with ice. Put it down the back of your kit in t1 to cool you off from the swim and keep you cool on the bike. It’s worth the extra few seconds.
- ice in your bike bottle
- Freeze a water bottle to leave in transition. Grab it and pour it on your head as you leave t2

If you’re worried about blisters due to soggy feet, coat the areas on your feet that typically blister in liquid bandage on race morning. This trick was a legit game changer for me.

In the summer I regularly workout and race in 100f temps. I did Waco Oly last July. The water was 91f and the bike started at 94f.

For a sprint, I assume you’ll be swimming 4-700m, 12mi bike and 5k run.
Just swim like you normally would.
Put a panty hose leg filled with ice in that lunch box and put it down you front or back, as the rules for your event allow. You’ll only be 30mins, so it’ll probably still have ice which will help in the run.
For the run out a hat in that lunch box and it will be cold when you put it on.

If wearing socks, make sure there are no wrinkles, as blisters happen more quickly in heat.

Good luck.

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Not a coach. Not a FOP Tri/swimmer/biker/runner. Barely a MOP AGer.
But I'm learning and making progress.

Loads of good tips already. Key ones are:
1) heat acclimate in the week or two prior
2) ice cold fluids, ice or ice slushy drink - cool your core
3) consider pre-cooling in the 30 min prior to the gun going off. Assuming its hot out, try to get almost uncomfortably cold via ice cold towels and ingesting ice slushy.
ITU presentation on the topic here.
Bottle innovation here.

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https://athletica.ai/
https://hiitscience.com/

Acclimatation: you should have experience performin at hot

Avoid high temperature contrasts

Protect your body as most as possible from radiation. I assume no wetsuit, so use a good solar protection. Use cap.

Your bike bottle with ice. Use it for refresh yourself. Drink a lot. Refresh you a lot.

After the race, try to cool your body as soon as possible.

Avoid high temperature contrast.

I mean at first this sounded totally dumb to me, but on second thought... incredibly clever, could cost him 5 seconds at the most and ice makes all the difference!

I've always been looking to solve the problem of frozen bottles unfreezing while waiting for me in transition, and cool liquids becoming very warm. Maybe I could fit a vacuum flask in the bottle cage. Some of those flasks have lids that don't need to be unscrewed to drink from the flask, you just press a button.

As a plus, the setup would look so silly that I would get plenty of free race photos from interested onlookers and amateur photographers.



If you're going to pour water on your head, a visor is much much better than a hat. Most of the water will slide over the top of the hat and towards your arms. The visor keeps the water on your head and running down the sides of the head. Probably similar if you wear nothing, but then you'll have water and, even worse, sweat all over your eyes.

Btw - if "nothing was evaporating anyway", you'd pass out within minutes. And look at the PROs. Do they not pour water all over themselves in hot and humid races, including sprints such as Huatulco World Cup?

If you're going to use ice, a hat has the advantage that you can put ice in it. The hat will keep the ice on top of your head, which a visor won't. But you must have ice in the first place. Don't listen to those who say it won't melt between you accessing transition before the race and starting the run, unless you use a cooler/vacuum flask to store it. You'll have warm water and not ice.



Hell yes. You must drink.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

I've done this with good results

You've gotten some good advice already.

I'll say first that since you led with you're racing for competition to really think about pacing. Weather changes things, especially on the run. You might be able to come close to fitness on the swim/bike but if you misjudge the run in the heat you'll go backwards more than you should. Use a pace calculator like this one & really feel like you're holding back in the first 3k. I would aim to have 3k-4k be your fastest k of the run up to that point. If you've done that, you're on your way to a strong finish.

As far as everything else goes, I tend to move towards comfort versus aero gains in trash conditions. A sleeveless tri suit might be better than a short sleeved one. An aero road helmet might be better than a tri helmet. Some races in the heat are swim cap optional. I'm pro hat with ice stashed in transition. Put ice in your tri suit in T1/T2 & ice in the hat in T2. Hold ice in your hands running out of T2. It's not gonna cost you time. Just be efficient with it. Throw water on your wrists/head at every aid station on the run.

I think you can eat/drink (a little) in sprint races whether it's hot or not. ITU athletes drank & took gels in Montreal last week. Sip a little on the bike & maybe a gel towards the end right before the run or at the start.

The appeal to silly has only encouraged me:
1. The cooler is a soft one, about 10x5x5 (like the one below). Maybe 2x the size of a smaller downtube H20 bottle. It's actually pretty inconspicuous, smaller than the footprint of my running shoes. I put in a layer of ice, then my hat with ice in it (have to fold up the hat), and close the soft lid. I don't zip it, for time's sake. So, T2: shoes on, belt on, hat on with ice, grab two handsful of ice, go. Throw the ice down the front, then the back.



2. I do like the idea of like a big old Igloo cooler in transition. This + a bucket would get you a front-page thread for sure.

3. I have a friend (even this is getting too silly for me to confess to) who did a lot of experimenting with how to keep the ice in the cap and how to distribute it. Mesh bags, ziplock bags with little holes in them, etc.

4. Some wads of ice in your suit, especially where they settle, looks worse than silly: stupid or even lewd. However, when course support is thin, or the whole course is in the sun and it's 80, I haven't (or, at least, my friends haven't) come up with anything as cheap and easy and effective.


EDIT: I just checked upthread and saw this phrase: "Put a panty hose leg filled with ice in that lunch box." I now admit to everything above!!

Thanks everyone, great advice. I found an article by Matt Dixon with a lot of similar advice and a couple product suggestions. Does anyone have experience with the arm coolers that he suggests? I'm usually pretty skeptical that anything for sale is going to actually help but DeSoto is an excellent brand.

The hot weather pace calculator is really neat, except for the ugly dose of reality that it serves up.

Here is my plan based on your advice:

• Bring a large cooler full of ice along with a 5 gal. bucket.
• At T2, pull on a pair of panty hose and then stuff them with ice.

Desoto arm coolers are great. They can actually go on pretty quickly in transition.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

This process seems rather superfluous. Why take the time in transition do this. Take a page out of the hot weather cycling handbook and pre-make ice socks with the panty hose the morning of and have those stashed in your cooler. You should be able to make at least ten ice socks with a single pair of basic nylons. The all you are required to do is grab, go, and stuff it into the areas that you need cooled. At 70.3 Hawaii last year I used a small, mesh garment bag with a zipper and restocked with ice at aid stations. I could put it in my kit and the ice would stay where I wanted it to stay. This would work for a sprint as well if you had it in your cooler at the start of the race.

I also agree with the heavily iced/chilled water bottle for the bike. You can even add an ice sock for the bike and an iced/chilled flask/bottle for the run.