I decided to hit the hills yesterday and moved my evening run to ~4:30pm. The temp was ~95 degrees. For a 9 mile run, I was going to do an 8:19 pace, about 30s/mi under my usual easy run pace. The 4.5 out was into the wind and I averaged ~8:04/mi, however, after the turn my body just died. It got to the point where I was negotiating with myself, “jog to the base of the hill and you can walk up it.” About 1 car passed me every mile and I was praying that someone would offer me a ride because I would absolutely say yes. It was crazy. Ended up doing 1:27 for the whole run and sat in a cold shower for ~30 mins whilst chugging water.
I only put 16oz of water in the fuel belt and it was gone at the halfway point. That was problem #1.
That was yesterday’s experience that got me thinking, does training in the extreme heat provide any sort of advantage? Or, is it actually negative because I wasted 1:27 dragging my stumbling ass up and down rolling hills…and a better run at 80 degrees provide significantly more fitness?
I live and train in south florida (south of Tampa)
I’ve come to believe that training in heat only provides a couple of VERY limited advantages.
Pros:
Mental toughness. You will learn to keep pushing even when your body is telling you that you’re about to die.
Nutrition planning. You will learn about the volume of liquids/electrolytes/food that you need/can tolerate in the heat.
Cons:
Your body is spending it’s energy trying to stay functional, so you can’t stress the target muscles to the point they will repair in a stronger state
Your form degrades to be poor, so you’re training to have poor form
Your race will likely not be as bad of conditions, so you won’t need the mental toughness.
In the end, it’s best to train in as ideal weather as possible. (ie: around here, that means early in the morning most days, or sometimes evenings)
I will say that at Italy 70.3, when it was in the mid 80’s and I had come to realize at the beginning of the run that I was a)too fat and b)completely undertrained:
my experience training in the heat allowed me to realize I need a whole bunch more liquids and electrolytes. 2 aid stations and lots of ironman perform later, I managed
to finish the damn thing.
does training in the extreme heat provide any sort of advantage?
Sure - at a minimum you learned you need more fluids and maybe should have backed the pace off even more. File that bit of new knowledge away and it will probably come in handy some day.
Plus I find a shitty workout now and then is a good motivator. Its good to feel like you are a worthless piece of crap now and then. If it takes a 95 degree day to do that, take advantage of it!
Your body is spending it’s energy trying to stay functional, so you can’t stress the target muscles to the point they will repair in a stronger state
Your form degrades to be poor, so you’re training to have poor form 3. Your race will likely not be as bad of conditions, so you won’t need the mental toughness.
x2 The races that I’ve done in ‘bad’ conditions have all been wet, cold, and windy… the mental toughness from the heat does nothing to help that I can’t feel my toes
I’d rather have a good workout than a shitty workout. That’s a better motivator.
I’ve been doing about 75% of my running on the treadmill lately as it is simply too hot to justify running outside and not get in quality runs/workouts. I can heat acclimatize on the bike.
On a slightly same but different note I can tell you that when I first moved to Florida my performance went down BIG time. My body has slowly adapted to the heat and I don’t think a thing of it as long as I bring enough fluids. Note I’m 16 years removed from first moving here, but the age hasn’t effected me, in fact I enjoy the heat much more than being a little chilled even!
This is a sports psychology question, not really a training question. I don’t think anyone can seriously argue that its good to run in really hot weather (unless you plan on racing in really hot weather, then it is necessary). But, the orginal poster’s problem is he ended up running in hot weather and feels like he wasted his time. With that attitude, he’s going to convince himself the workout was worthless and he did not get anything done, wasted his time and has thus set back his training. This is the classic mental recipe for failure. Real athletes don’t think that way. So, my advice stands. You did the workout, it sucked, find the positive in it, learn from the weaknesses it exposed and convince yourself you’ll be better for it.
I don’t know about that. I live in the South and the first month of training and racing in the heat is rough! My speed suffers alot. But running in the cold after all summer in the heat is awesome. I can fly!
Do you have any data that training in excessive heat is of little to no benefit?
That was yesterday’s experience that got me thinking, does training in the extreme heat provide any sort of advantage? Or, is it actually negative because I wasted 1:27 dragging my stumbling ass up and down rolling hills…and a better run at 80 degrees provide significantly more fitness?
Thanks.
I seem to remember reading something along the way about heat acclimitization - increased blood plasma volume and decreased salt content in sweat. Not sure if it was a reputable study or some Runner’s World article though.
All for the heat training, live and race in Texas however.
The more you do it, the more your body will acclimate.
If you want to enjoy your workouts run in the morning and get the most out of them, if you want to put some hair on your chest do your long runs in the afternoon and put some SPF on that chest before hand.
Running in the heat sucks, but if you do it enough it will pay out on hot race days.
Training in the heat can help you on race day when you have a warmer than normal temp, but in terms of actually training it is not good. You run slower and that means you get less adaptation. It is also bad in the long run because running in 95 degree heat really uses a lot of water. Like, more than you can really replenish on the run without a sloshy stomache. So you end up spending the rest of the day trying to take in water. When I absolutely have to run at that temp I keep it to 30 minutes and I start out with a wet shirt and ice under my hat.
This morning it was 80 at 6:30 and that is about as warm as I like to try and run intervals, which I did this morning. There was a bit of breeze, so it was manageable. In another month, 85 will be the low and I’ll be better adapted, but June was pretty mild around here, heat-wise, so running at 75-80 still feels hot.
Chad
I decided to hit the hills yesterday and moved my evening run to ~4:30pm. The temp was ~95 degrees. For a 9 mile run, I was going to do an 8:19 pace, about 30s/mi under my usual easy run pace. The 4.5 out was into the wind and I averaged ~8:04/mi, however, after the turn my body just died. It got to the point where I was negotiating with myself, “jog to the base of the hill and you can walk up it.” About 1 car passed me every mile and I was praying that someone would offer me a ride because I would absolutely say yes. It was crazy. Ended up doing 1:27 for the whole run and sat in a cold shower for ~30 mins whilst chugging water.
I only put 16oz of water in the fuel belt and it was gone at the halfway point. That was problem #1.
That was yesterday’s experience that got me thinking, does training in the extreme heat provide any sort of advantage? Or, is it actually negative because I wasted 1:27 dragging my stumbling ass up and down rolling hills…and a better run at 80 degrees provide significantly more fitness?
Thanks.
after a couple of weeks training in the heat your perspiration will become less concentrated, containing less sodium. if I remember correctly, the amount of sodium chloride can decrease from something like 1g/litre to 0,1g/litre. in theory this should make you able to perform better in heat without suffering from loss of electrolytes and cramping. this effect doesn’t last very long though, a couple of months in colder temperatures reverses the sweating back to normal.
I look at it the same way as doing a brick. You get a better workout running in cooler conditions and not off the bike. But it’s nice to know what it feels like so during a race you are prepared.
I do my runs in the heat of the day 1 x a month or less, I try to practice cooling methods when I do them. But I get much better workouts when I run when it’s cooler.
…you can’t stress the target muscles to the point they will repair in a stronger state
Your form degrades to be poor, so you’re training to have poor form
This is a bit extreme. I agree that key workouts are best done in less than 100 degree temps, but one can definitely put in a good enough effort to gain training benefits. Even in extreme heat you can stress yourself enough to gain benefits. And whether (or how much) form degrades is a lot more about how well you react to fatigue than it is about heat.
For me, the biggest issue is recovery. I’m trying to get up to 100mpw running right now (in central SC) and the recovery cost of training in the heat seems to be the biggest obstacle.
Isn’t the goal here to force adaptation to an external stimulus? Be it running hills or taking in calories or achieving efficiency in hot/humid conditions.
As a former swimmer, we’d wear drag suits in practice to force us to work harder to go fast. On race day we’d swim fast because physically we had put in the work and mentally it just felt easier. I’d say that there is a huge advantage when your training stimulus is harder than race conditions (terrain/climate/etc).
Now as a caveat, I’m not saying go train in Death Valley every day, but I’m all in favor of an extra shirt or a hilly trail run to push the envelope a little.
I agree with the general theme that you can do more to advance fitness when you’re not overheating, but there is definitely** some** advantage. The biggest is physiological adaptation. If you live somewhere hot, there’s always a possibility you’ll race in heat. I’ve personally noticed significant improvements in my performance when I’ve sucked up slogs in DC heat.
