If you are going to race in the heat, you need to train in the heat, but if you're
not going to be racing in the heat, I don't see any benefit to running in the heat if you can avoid it. I don't buy that bit about increasing oxygen uptake in a manner similar to altitude - I'd sure like to see more info on that than a post on Let's Run for proof, and it doesn't look like many in the Let's Run crowd bought it, either. You would be much better of running early in the morning or in the evening - the coolest parts of the day you can so you can run faster for longer. Wearing nylon sweat pants that won't let sweat evaporate when the temp is above 80 sounds like a recipe for heatstroke, rather than good training, leon2. Be careful. I wonder if the athletes like Deena are still training wearing extra clothing to simulate heat just for the training effect with no particulaly hot races in the near future. Somehow, I doubt it.
However, if you
are going to race in the heat, it's the same prinicples as practicing for any race - try to train under race conditions. We have quite a few hot races in the summer, and we found that we always did better early in the summer season than our usual rivals because we train in the late afternoon. Races are usually 9-10am or in the early evening, so the race temps are much hotter than those you find in the early am and we were more heat acclimitized than those who run in the early morning and were'nt used to the heat of midmorning or early evening. So, although our summer race times were slower, they weren't as much slower as those who hadn't been running in the heat.
My hints for adjusting training to the heat: saltier, shadier, slower, and shorter.
You need to keep hydrated, that goes without saying (plus it doesn't begin with "s" so it didn't fit the effect I was looking for
), but you also need to keep your electolytes up, so drink something that has salt in it and don't avoid the salt shaker.
While training in the heat will help you race in the heat, I don't see any benefits to getting sunburned. In the late afternoon the sun isn't nearly so high, so you still get the benefits of training in the heat for acclimitization, without the extra UV. When we did train in the middle of the day, we tried to find the shadiest area we could.
Slower unfortunately comes with the heat for long distances for sure.
However, you can still keep up speed if you keep it shorter. We sometimes switch from 800s to 400s or even 200s for track workouts. Same speed so your legs still get that practice, but for shorter distances so you don't overheat.
Hint for race day - stay inside where's it's air conditioned for as long as possible. That's not the day to practice running in the heat. I saw that advice a few years ago, but with the wearing of ice vests by Olympic athletes, looks like it's still considered a good thing. Starting out from as cool as possible seems to be beneficial - rather than being out in the heat or warming up much first. The longer you can keep your temperature from getting elevated the better.
