Beat The Heat

Prepare for a scorching race day and you’ll run better in any weather

Hot tips for summer performance

THE PERENNIAL risk of summertime races is soaring temperatures on race day. Fortunately, there are ways to prepare for the heat, even at relatively short notice. The goal with such preparation is to increase your volume of plasma, the liquid component of blood, so you can send blood to your skin to cool yourself without compromising the supply carrying oxygen to muscles. And if you’re lucky and race day is cool, you’ll still get a boost from these techniques.

RUN HOT

The best way to prepare for race-day heat is to run for 60-90 minutes at an easy or moderate pace in conditions like the hottest you expect to face. You’ll be acclimatised after eight to 14 sessions, but those days don’t have to be consecutive: you can space them as far apart as once every three days. If you can arrange a treadmill in a room at, say, 23-28C, that’s great. If the room isn’t as warm as you’d like, wearing long sleeves and tights, and avoiding the use of a fan, can make an indoor run feel several degrees hotter than a comparable outdoor run.

Fitting in that many heat runs can be tough, but a review found that three to seven heat-adaptation runs produced a plasma volume increase of 3.5 per cent – not as much as the seven per cent gain from longer training periods, but still worthwhile.

TOP UP

Running in heat is an added stress, so you don’t want acclimatisation to interfere with your taper. Heat adaptations last up to twice as long as you spend building them – the effects of five heat-adaptation runs could last 10 days. You can extend this with top-up sessions, adding one or two heat runs a week before your race. For example, plan five heat runs in seven days starting three weeks before race day; do hard workouts in cooler conditions on the other two days so you can hit your goal paces. Then consolidate your gains with two more top-up heat sessions six and eight days before the race.

HYDRATE

Drink according to thirst during your heat runs. This could leave you mildly dehydrated, which may serve as another trigger for plasma expansion. Weigh yourself before and after to make sure you’re not losing more than about two per cent of your weight, then rehydrate immediately. Also, take in some carbohydrate and protein within 10 minutes of finishing to maximise your plasma gains.

HIT THE SAUNA

Finnish Olympic champion Lasse Viren swore by his postrun sauna sessions. He may have been onto something: a 2007 study found that runners who took a postrun sauna for about 30 minutes at 90C four times a week for three weeks boosted their plasma volume by seven per cent and endurance by 1.9 per cent. And this year, Australian scientists found that just four 30-minute postrun sauna sessions at 87C degrees also increased plasma volume. To supplement your heat runs with sauna sessions, start with five to 10 mins at 79C and build up, and don’t hit the sauna the same day as a heat run.