Training smart through the hot season pays off when temperatures cool down.
By Sarah Lorge Butler for Runners’ World

Melisa Christian, a dentist and a 2:41 marathoner, has qualified for two Olympic Marathon Trials despite—or perhaps because of—training in the heat of Dallas.  To log her 80-plus miles per week through the summer months, when overnight temperatures rarely drop below 75 degrees and the humidity wraps around her like a blanket, she gets up before dawn and drives her running route, dropping bottles of water and electrolyte mix every few miles.  The payoff comes when she runs a fall race, often the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon in Minneapolis.  Going from the intensity of the Dallas heat to the cool northern climes, Christian gets an instant boost, both physically and psychologically. “You feel a lot more fresh and vibrant.” She says. “You’re not drenched in sweat just toeing the line. It seems so much easier”

It’s well proven that to stand a chance of racing well in the heat, you have to train in the heat. But sauna suffer-fests have another benefit: They prepare you to run faster in cooler weather, too. In 2010, researchers had competitive cyclists spend 10 workouts pedaling at a low intensity in a 104 degree F room, while another eight duplicated the effort in cool temps. Outside of the lab, everyone maintained their normal training regimens. After two weeks, the performance level of the control group remained the same, but the heat-acclimated group surprised researchers by not only showing gains in hot temperatures but also charting five to seven percent gains in a cool environment.

“That’s a huge difference in athletes who are already so well trained,” says Santiago Lorenzo, Ph.D., the exercise physiologist who led the study.

Bob Braman sees similar gains with his men’s cross-country team at Florida State University every fall. When his runners arrive in sweltering Tallahassee during August, the coach uses an informal 20 percent calculation for his team. If they’re running 70 miles per week in the hot weather, he believes that’s worth about 84 miles per week in more temperate conditions. Paces are slower, too, “We’ve got to be careful,” he says. “Running in 80 percent humidity or 88 degree F, a workout is a lot harder. You don’t get to altitude and try to run your workouts at sea-level pace. Same thing with us.” When his runners get to their first serious race, in Indiana in the beginning of October, “it feels like someone took a back-pack off their backs,” he says. The entire team usually races well.

Cooler Heads Prevail

Talk yourself through hard times on hot-weather runs

 – Picture the results:  Before you head out for a run, remind yourself that each workout you do helps to acclimate you to the heat, which will help you handle race day much better.

– Speak out: Find a mantra you can repeat during a scorcher. Try: “I am fit enough to handle this.” Coach Dara Wittenberg loves the words of Haruki Murakami: “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

– Visualize: Imagine you are running in Antarctica. Bring all your senses to bear and make it as real as possible. “Feel your skin tingling from the cold air,” Wittenberg says “it really works.”

This isn’t so bad, is it?: After two weeks of training in the heat, you’ll experience less discomfort and adapt. Athletes in Santiago Lorenzo’s study started to feel better after just three exposures.