357 - How To Race Smarter & Faster in Hot, Humid Conditions
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
In this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon discusses strategies for performing well in hot and humid conditions. He emphasizes the importance of heat training, which increases plasma volume and sweat rates, enhancing the body's cooling mechanisms. Key strategies include avoiding pre-race fatigue, adapting pacing plans, and using hydration and cooling techniques. Dixon recommends sauna or steam room sessions post-workout to boost plasma volume and suggests practical tips like choosing light, breathable race apparel and using cooling sleeves. He also highlights the importance of smart hydration and walk breaks to manage overheating. Dixon encourages athletes to integrate these methods into their training to improve overall performance in all conditions.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
00:-1:49 Promo
2:18-4:02 Intro
4:05–Meat and Potatoes
4:30-12:45 Why Heat and Humidity Are a Double Whammy
13:45-17:49 The Mistakes That Sink Athletes in the Heat
18:17 Story of Rasmus Henning
22:11-end Practical Pre-Race Prep for Heat Adaptation
Purple Patch and Episode Resources
Heat Prep Checklist: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/freetrainingtips/how-to-race-effectively-in-hot-and-humid-conditions
Heat Acclamation Training: Heat Prep Checklist: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/freetrainingtips/improve-triathlon-performance-in-the-heat-with-the-sauna-protocol-heat-acclimation-training
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:01
In today's show, we're going to talk about heat humidity and ensuring that you can perform in events that bring the curve ball. You're also going to learn about how heat training can be a tool for better performance in all temperatures. This is just one topic of high performance. When you're a Purple Patch athlete, you not only receive personalized guidance on all topics of performance, but you also learn how to filter the things that are going to help you perform, but also filter out and disregard the things that just prove to be distractions. This gives you time back, simplifies your life and helps you go even faster. It also makes things a lot more fun. Our programs are designed ground up for time starved athletes, and we support you and educate you across everything you need to know you have access to, not just myself, but the entire team of Purple Patch coaches. And so I ask you, why would you take second best Why would you add confusion and workload to an already busy, time starved life? Why would you put in all the effort and get sub optimal returns? Spice up your life, have fun, go faster, all while improving the quality of life beyond sport, join Purple Patch, whether you're a tri squad member or you would likely in depth, personalize one to one coaching no matter what the program is realize that you are important to me and the entire Purple Patch team. We value you, and we hope that you join our journey. And so if you'd like help in your choice, ping us. Info@purplepatchfitness.com that's info@purplepatchfitness.com we'll set up a complimentary consultation, and we will empower you to kick start your performance journey with us. Alrighty, enjoy it hot and sticky. Today. It's all about performance in the heat. Enjoy the show. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential. You reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 02:19
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and today we talk about heat, not just heat, humid heat and humidity. If you're racing or training in hot and humid conditions. This is a show for you. It might be Texas, maybe Hawaii or sun, swampy summer back home, wherever you live, this episode is going to prove to be your playbook. Now, I'm not trying to turn you into a superhuman. I can't weave magic and enable the heat to evaporate. It is corophobic. It is challenging. But what I want to do is go through today and give you some strategies. Help you build a toolkit. Over the course of today's show, we're going to do a few things. Number one, we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive into understanding why heat is such a challenge. What's actually happening there physiologically? We're going to talk about a three pronged competition that's occurring within our body when we have to operate in heat and humidity. We're also going to build out some strategies to ensure that you can not just arrive to your race day better prepared, but navigate race day in a really smart and cohesive manner. And then finally, we're going to absolutely explore how we can use heat protocols to not only ensure that you can perform in heat, but actually go faster in any condition. It is a tool of better performance globally. And so that is it, heat and humidity, everything you need to know all packed into one very useful Purple Patch podcast. And so without further ado, I can tell you it is time for the meat and potatoes you does,
Matt Dixon 04:06
yes, folks, the meat and potatoes. Over the last few weeks, we've had a lot of really fun episodes. We've had guests, we've had the Purple Patch coaches. We've done a great session with Matt scaring and myself. Today, it is just me, and so you're going to have to put up with me yammering on and pontificating all day. Luckily, the topic is intriguing and the education is actionable. And so this is going to be very, very helpful if you have to race in heat. And let me tell you, the vast majority of races are in heat. Now me as a professional athlete, well, I was on the heavier side. Let's call it six foot two, about 185 pounds. When I raced, I was what would night mount be known as a big unit of an athlete, and I did not like heat, but I couldn't allow that to be an excuse. In fact, I want you to eradicate that mindset. I'm not good in heat because we are. I am you are empowered to do something about it. There is a case that people are genetically better and more equipped to operate well in heat, lucky for them, but many, many people are not. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything about it. In fact, it's a growth mindset. Opportunity. We're not in good in heat yet, but we can become better, and that's what today is about, ensuring that we set up a smart approach for you to be successful. But before we dive into the action and what we can actually do about it, let's first rip apart why heat and humidity are such a double whammy, such a challenge. I want to try and simplify the why behind heat related performance decline, and I want to make sure that it's in pretty relatable, really easy to grasp terms. It starts with core temperature and blood volume. There is a big internal battle going on here when we exercise, when we train, if you're a triathlete, swim, bike and run, in order for us to generate the energy to do work, one of the byproducts is heat. We generate heat from the inside out, and that's going to raise our core temperature. The body is a master of managing our internal temperature. And so what it does as we exercise, and much like an oven being turned on, it begins to heat up. The body dissipates that heat. The primary way it dissipates heat is through the skin, and so blood rushes to the skin, and we get rid of that heat, and that prevents from some really bad things happening to our brain and organs. It becomes more challenging to dissipate that heat if you've got high temperatures outside, and even more, if you have humidity, because one of the major sources of heat dissipation is evaporation, in other words, sweat evaporating from the skin. But if there's already a lot of moisture in the air, the body's less effective of doing it. So we have two things going on in heat. Firstly, the body is less effective as a cooling machine. It's not as good at getting rid of the heat. Secondly, we've got an external heat source, sun, radiant heat coming onto our skin, so therefore things become a greater challenge. But what's going on inside?
Matt Dixon 8:21
Well, here's the key concept that's very, very important for us to understand, because it informs what's happening to our body, what the challenges is, and some of the strategies that we want to try and deploy, we are desperate to offload this heat, and the vehicle to do that is our blood. Our blood is made up of two main components, firstly, our red blood cells, and that carries red blood cells carry out oxygen to our muscles so that we can generate heat, and also gets rid of those byproducts, carbon dioxide and other things, and we remove those out of our breathing. Okay, so that's one vehicle. That's our red blood cells. About 45% of our total blood volume. The rest of it is our plasma, and our plasma, plasma is really our body water, alrighty. What's happening in the body here is where that we have an ongoing three way tug of war between our blood because the muscles need oxygen, so that's blood is shunting to the muscles. The skin needs to offload that heat that is being generated, so blood needs to go to the skin to offload that, and the gut needs help digesting the calories and the fluids that we're consuming to keep our exercise or our racing going. So you've got three things going on here. Alrighty, when it's hot, we're generating more heat and we have an external heat source, this battle becomes particularly important, and here's the fact, between muscle, skin and the gut, the skin will always win. Alrighty, the skin will always win. And that means that performance is going to suffer if you're not prepared, because if we are shunting more and more of a ratio of our blood to the skin to try and offload this heat. And it's less effective because of the high heat and high temperatures as well as the high humidity, we have less blood to go around towards our muscles. So for energy potential delivery, our muscles or oxygen going to there, and our gut to actually absorb the calories that we need to fuel our exercise and our racing. So the first thing that actually dissipates here is our gut, and that's why absorbing calories in heat, hot conditions tends to be a little bit more challenging than in cooler conditions. But. Because we've got so much blood going to the skin, and of course, we want to try and maintain going to the muscle, because we're looking for that effort. So that's it. So it's really challenging. So this sort of three way tug of war, the best sort of analogy that I can give you, it's a little bit like trying to run house that's on half the power supply. So you may be the house is demanding 150 amps of power supply, and you're only given 100 amps. It's really challenging. There's one other important element that we want to think about this competition. We talked about red blood cells. We talked about plasma volume. That plasma is your body water.
Matt Dixon 10:40
What starts to occur as another factor in this in heat is hydration, because as we get dehydrated, what starts to occur is that plasma volume starts to shrink because our body water. So imagine myself and I have six liters of blood, hopefully in a closed system, going around, pumping from my heart, delivering oxygen, going to the skin, little bit, to the gut, returning back to the lungs, dissipating out the CO two and other items, uploading my oxygen back to the pump, around and around and around. I've got six liters. Imagine if I'm racing and I'm not doing a good job of hydration. Now, maybe I've got five and three quarter liters, maybe I've got five and a half liters of total blood volume. In other words, I've got less blood in my blood. So therefore the tug of war gets amplified. It becomes more challenging. But remember, the skin always wins. And so this is a reason, one of the reasons that dehydration is such a factor in performance, because if the skin is always going to win, what we start to have over time and duration of events in heat is an increase in perceived effort, a decrease in your total economy and efficiency as an athlete, and you Start to ultimately have a lower ability to generate pace, power, etc. And so hydration is a key factor in this, because we care about blood volume, alrighty. So these are some of the challenges we face as athletes. So one of the mistakes that many athletes make when it comes to operating in heat? Well, there are a few highly fixable errors that we should unpack the first, and I think this is the umbrella, almost foundational mistake that cannot be overstated. It's so important, and it's not about failing to hydrate. It's not about what clothes you wear. It's not about did or did you not do your heat protocol. It's something that's very simple but critical, and that is you showing up to your key race, tired, under, recovered in a fog of fatigue. This is important for general race performance, I see many, many athletes, wholly committed training, hard, high work ethic, showing up, very fit but fatigued. But the challenges of this are amplified when you add the external stressor of heat and humidity. There's no better case study of this than the Hawaii Ironman World Championships. It's the big occasion, the Holy Grail. This is where athletes train and dedicate the whole year to get ready for performance. But such a high percentage of athletes in that environment have real challenges, and a big part of it is how they show up. There are very few athletes that toe the line in Hawaii with a lack of fitness, but many of them are carrying fatigue, and you see it express in those conditions. Showing up fatigued is a key thing that we want to avoid, and in fact, anything else we talk about today, heat protocols, hydration, clothing, etc, all of that pales in importance relative to just showing up. In fact, it really is an expression of the Purple Patch methodology amplified. If you want to perform well in heat, you better have the courage to be fit and fresh. That's the one that I want you to think about Super that's it. Don't show up fatigued. A second big mistake is starting the race with exactly the same pacing plan as a cool weather day. In other words, stubbornness. This is what I want to achieve. I want to do this time I expect to swim, bike and run to this pace, and no matter what is happening externally, environmentally, this is what I'm going to do. That sort of stubbornness is a real limiter for athletes. There are many stories, and I'm going to actually talk about one of the stories around. Performance within context racing, the race that's in front of you. And many athletes struggle with this. This is one of the challenges of having a time goal that is fixed, because ultimately we have to, if we're going to be successful, manage and race the day that our body provides on the day and what the environment is pressed against us. And so a lack of stubbornness and a bit of bravery for under fatigue is two big catalysts for you to perform in heat. A third bit big mistake is an over reliance on power and pace metrics over perceived effort. There's a caveat here. I think heart rate can be interesting and important because it is a measure of your internal cost. And so in high heat, we can actually look at your heart rate and really understand, hey, it's elevated, but it's really elevated. So heart rate is a good tool in heat. It's not your driving factor. Perceived effort is important. You are going to feel more perceived effort is going to be slightly claustrophobic in heat just because of the environment. And if you are prepared, you can navigate it.
Matt Dixon 15:45
But similar to your pace, you might need to manage expectations on your power output, which is a measure of absolute work ultimately, or your pace that you're hitting on the run. If you have that external factor, that's a big mistake of just stubbornly chasing pace, chasing power, and ignoring how your body's actually operating in the conditions. A fourth big mistake is chasing hydration too late. Realize that it is close to impossible to overcome dehydration and subsequent raises in core temperature once they have occurred during an individual race. And so you need to be proactive, not reactive, on your hydration. A great expression of this is actually in a really long distance race, like an Iron Man, where in hydration on the bike, we care about it for bike performance, but in truth, what we're looking to do is finish that bike performance, your 112 miles in an Iron Man not too dehydrated, so that your body has the ability to perform close to potential in that run. And so you're hydrating proactively, less for pure bike performance and more for bike into run performance to cement this. If you were just riding 112 miles, and that was the end of the race, it was a time troll, you would likely be absolutely fine with getting more dehydrated in the last 20 miles before real performance decline occurs. But in an Iron Man, it can be catastrophic, and so we want to be proactive in this. That's a fourth big mistake. And finally, athletes that just ignore early signs of overheating, it's a big factor. They just feel it coming on, and they ignore it again, coming back up to sticking to their race plan, not adjusting, not adapting at all. I see this a lot on the run where folks believe that walk breaks are a crime against humanity instead of what they actually are, which is a performance tool to run faster in your racing, but they stubbornly Run, run, run, run with more and more declining form and technique increase in perceived effort and absolute cost. Thermostat blows, boom. Now they're forced to walk, and so ignoring the early signs of overheating are really, really important. Now I can't tell you how many athletes that I've seen have arrived to the start line ready with so much work and so much effort, the body is primed, and yet they have a fixed mindset. And I think that's really one of the dangers of having highly specific times or expectations. Just last year, I even had an athlete that I was coaching that blew themselves to pieces at a very hot race, the Hawaii Ironman 70.3 so the half Iron Man edition of the race in Hawaii, and their challenge is that they chase their regular running paces despite the fact that it was immeasurably hotter than they typically racing. And much of that run course is going over a golf course that has a lot of greenery, high humidity, added on to the regular cone of humidity. It's very challenging. It is a tough, tough race, but let me tell you, this athlete had a tough journey home. Now this fixed mindset, despite lots of education and warning prior of I'm just going to chase it and try and just will my way to win, ended up with catastrophe. But compare this to a former great athlete, Danish professional, Rasmus Henning. Rasmus Henning, Iron Man China, 2009 he had a managed and cautious three hour and 38 Marathon. Now it was 115
Matt Dixon 20:03
degrees Fahrenheit. Rasmus on a cool, normal condition marathon would typically run somewhere between two hours and 40 minutes and two hours and 50 minutes that was off the bike. But this was no normal day. It was incredibly hot and humid, and he realized that he had to have a radical shift in mindset. He had to race the race that was in front of him. And so, yeah, look for Rasmus. And many of us, I realized, would dream to have a three and a half odd hour marathon coming off of the bike. But for Rasmus, this was slow. It was almost an hour slower than its typical level, but it was fast enough to win. And so the big message here is race, the race in front of you. So what can you do? It's hot, it's humid. What can we do to get ready? Well, we know that we want to show up fit and fresh, but there are some really practical pre race prep that you can do for heat adaptation, to actually physiologically, get your body to perform better in E in heat. So first thing mention, easy win fundamentals. Get really fit. That's good. When you get fitter, you sweat earlier, you sweat more. Your body is is a more effective cooling machine. Good. Then we talked about it. You need sharp, fresh so the body's not less effective, less economical, carrying around fatigue, that's good. You also want to make sure that you're not cramming heat adaptation into the final few days of your race. You don't want to be adding a stress of heat adaptation by desperately when you arrive to race site, trying to go out in the middle of the sun and train in race week in those harsh conditions. Instead, we want to get the body equipped to become the most effective cooling machine it can in the weeks leading up to the race, and it turns out there's a performance advantage to doing this. There are a few main tools that you can use in your toolbox. The first is leveraging a sauna or steam room. If you have access to that, it's really good. But the good news is you don't need access to that in order for this to be effective. There are also some DIY home protocols that you can use. There's also a third element, which is to integrate some heat training into your actual sessions. So let's start with that, integrating into your training sessions. Now, when we talk about this, I think it's important to ground ourselves as an athlete, you are already managing huge competing stressors. You have everything that you have in your life, family, work, etc. You potentially have travel with that work. You have, hopefully really high quality sleep, but if you have any compromised sleep, that's a stressor. Hopefully you're fueling and eating with really good quality foods, but if not, that's a stressor. Are you hydrating on a daily basis? If not, that's a stressor. So we're always managing that, and then we're loading training stress, and we're looking to get the most specific training stress we can, and we're trying to maximize the amount within the context of our busy lives. So we're always juggling and managing a whole bunch of competing demands. Realize that when we talk about adding heat preparation, whether it's the sauna, which we'll come to, whether it's DIY, or whether it's this, adding heat training stimulus into your regular training, we are strategically adding an additional stressor on top of it. So you got to be smart on this. It is very much the last thing. In other words, it's the first thing to go if you're starting to accumulate fatigue, if you're starting to fit navigate periods of high stress already. So with your training edition, what this is, is putting yourself deliberately in high heat environments. That's either training in the middle of the day, or maybe it's training inside, on a treadmill or a bike where you've got additional clothing on, maybe removing the fan, even in an extreme case, putting those two pieces of equipment in something like a bathroom with the shower running, where it's really creating high heat and humidity.
Matt Dixon 25:03
So this is putting the body in that stimulus of high heat and humidity to force adaptations, because the body is an adaptive machine, it's good. Here's the key thing with this. You only want to do this in the less specific sessions, so you want to protect the integrity of those very, very demanding interval sessions or race simulators, as much as you can, you want the quality of the physiological and mechanical stimulus reserved for the specific intervals. So any key sessions that you're doing, I would promote not adding heat stimulus to that. Yeah, instead, do it on the lower stress and just reduce the lower stress, even lower zone one and zone two work the conversational exercise. In fact, one of the things that we have a lot of athletes do is, if they're going out for, let's say, a three hour bike ride, we might say, Okay, go out for two and a half hours, the last half an hour inside extra clothes, no fan. Hot environment. Get the heat stimulus. So really protect the integrity. I don't want to have a high heat. No fan environment. When you're trying to do six by four minutes best effort, you're having two trains going on track in competing directions. We don't want to do that really. Reserve it for those low, low stress sessions where you're adding a little bit of a stress but therefore you're reducing actual workload even more. That's the way that you introduce in the final month, two to three weeks, up to four weeks at most, before your hot race, you're introducing it into the equation orbit. So that's how you manipulate and you add clothing, you reduce fans, you put yourself in a hot environment, etc. And that's good. That's great. Now if you are forced to train in Texas or Florida, you kind of get it anyway, because quite often, unless you train very early in the morning, you're forced to operate in high heat environment. When I first started doing the sport, I was living in South Carolina, doing my master's degree, I was heat adapted because I trained a lot in the afternoons on the bike, and so I had more blood in my blood. That was a nice benefit of it. It's pretty sticky while I was doing it, though, I have to say, what about the sauna protocol? So this is the Mac day. This is what you want to do, and I'm going to talk you through it a little bit. I like athletes to do this two to three weeks before travel day, heading to the race already. Most days, it's great if you can do it all, but most people don't have the access to it. Most days you want to integrate this after your training session. So again, we protect the integrity of the actual training session. Let's just use a case study. Imagine that you're sitting on the bike trainer for an hour and you do a 15 minute treadmill runoff, great. 75 minutes. How you execute this is when you have completed the session. Number one, you don't rehydrate, alrighty. So for the last 10 or 15 minutes, you try and avoid too much heat hydration, because we're looking to place the body and the kidneys under stress. It you then immediately jump into the sauna. You get into that sauna or steam room, and you sit in there for 1015, 2025, 30 minutes. Now, over the course of the days, as you lead up towards the travel to the race, you might begin to get familiar your body will actually start to benefit from the physiological adaptations. You'll get familiar with it, you'll be able to extend the duration in there, but at least 10 minutes of a stimulus, and it should be uncomfortable. While you are sitting in there, you are not rehydrating, no fluids, alrighty. What we're doing there is we're placing a lot of stress on the body. The kidneys are going, oh my goodness me, this is hot. I need to call myself down, and they release a hormone, vasopressin, and that is a call to action for the body to increase plasma volume. So if I had my six liters, maybe I've got six and a quarter, six and a third. Now, six and a half liters, I've got more blood to circulate. Therefore I'm removing the tension on the ropes of that three way tug of war, skin, gut and, of course, muscles. So when you do that on a day to day basis, we're starting to become more effective as a cooling machine. You want to do it daily or any other day, and you want to pull the plug and not do it on days that you're feeling particularly fatigued. Now, if you don't have access to a sauna or a steam room. Don't worry, you can do it with a hot bath with running water. Fill up the bath as hot as you can take. Okay, get in, soak, undo the plug, run hot water to keep it topping up, keep it topping up. And you want to be lying there neck high. It is claustrophobic, and it's exactly the same protocol, no hydration during and then finish and complete. It really, really good, high value stuff. Now with both of those protocols, in fact, with all three of those protocols, to be frank, when you are finished with them,
Matt Dixon 29:38
you then want to get the body driving on adaptations and prepared for subsequent training. And so you do post workout, fueling carbohydrate and, of course, protein, and over the course of next two to three hours, plenty of fluids, get the body back to hydration status. So in practical terms, finish your bike train. Own little treadmill workout that we use now case study. Hop in the hot bath or the sauna or the steam room. Go through that finish cool down, have a shower. Get to fueling, get to hydration. Keep hydrating all the way up for the coming hours, so that the next time that you go and do a training session, you are fully restored. You do this day to day over the weeks, by the time you arrive, you are physiologically more adapted to perform in heat. It doesn't mean that it's going to feel easy. It doesn't mean that you're going to suddenly not have that claustrophobic feeling, but the will have physiological adaptations that will help you perform in heat. Now, one reminder here, more is not better. Smarter is better. Why does this work? Well, it comes back to that plasma volume. Ultimately, remember our tug of war we talked about is competition. When your heat adapted, you can cool more effectively, and I've alluded to it. Number one, you've got higher sweat rates. It actually comes on faster, but also you've got this greater blood volume. So therefore it is very, very similar to altitude training. You think about, when athletes go up to altitude, what are they trying to do? They're trying to boost blood volume, and they're trying to increase the amount of red blood cells that they have in their blood. Well, when you do heat adaptation training, one of the byproducts is you boost plasma volume. But the body always likes that homeostasis. So suddenly, now a percentage of red blood cells are lower. And over time, little bit of a longer late lead wave, but over time, that is a going to be a call to action for the body to actually generate and produce more red blood cells. And so this is a core performance tool. Yes, this protocol isn't just reserved for hot conditions. It has benefits for all competition. My only word of warning, and I know I keep saying it it's stressful, alrighty. So add it on top of your key training sessions. Ensure those are executed well, ensure it doesn't become counterproductive by fatigue accumulating, because it all collapses if you show up fit and fatigued, I would encourage you not to do hot training by designing those key sessions instead post workout low level zone one and zone two. So that's the preparation before, alrighty, the one other thing that I would add before just a note, is to become smarter on your hydration, and the best method for that is precision hydration sweat testing. Now we provide sweat testing at the Performance Center here in San Francisco, and we can, of course, set you up with that, but there are testing centers all over the globe, and also precision hydration have a fantastic suite of heat specific protocols to help you choose the right hydration for you. So a word on that, very quick word on while our rates of the fluids that we lose, in other words, how much we're sweating in any given hour, are highly variable dependent on your state of fatigue, state of training and conditions, the concentration of your sweat, so far as how many electrolytes are in your sweat is more genetic, and so you can test for that, and that has huge implication, implications for your performance in heat, because if you're matching the right amount of electrolyte concentration in the fluids that you're drinking is going to have a knock on effect in how effectively your bodies can actually absorb into cellular and also be leveraged. It's going to maintain your hydration status better. And so some people are really, really dilute. Others, like me, are kind of medium. Don't get that many cramps, pretty moderate as a salty sweater, not really just kind of moderate. Others are extreme outliers, and having that information can be incredibly powerful. And so if you're interested in learning more, we'll add some links into the show notes, but I would encourage you just feel free to reach out to us. We'll give you all of the tools. We can even guide you to your local test center if you do have one close to you. But even so, if you don't have one close to you, and then, of course, we'll give you the resources through precision hydration help that we don't get paid for that don't get paid for it, referring anyone to precision, but I think it's a really good resource for you. Just reach out to us info at Purple Patch fitness.com so let's just finish this off, and let's talk about managing race state in the heat, actually, boots on ground stuff already. We want to make sure that we can set you up with a plan to execute under the pressure of heat. So the first is let go of splits. This is a good mindset globally, because so much can happen in endurance racing, whether you're racing a marathon, whether you're racing a half Ironman, whether you're racing an old. A distance run, whether you're racing an Iron Man, okay? And we want to start by ensuring that if you have this external stress of heat and humidity, particularly if it's unanticipated, really start with realistic pacing based on heat. The very nice man that I talked about before with the Hawaii half Iron Man. He was typically about an hour and 45 minute half marathon runner off the bike, but in Hawaii, that's a very different game, and yet he stuck rigidly to that. I want to try and break 145 if he actually reviewed results from the last 25 years of that race, he would have seen that the delta between normal racing in that race is vast, 56789, 10, up to 20 minutes of variance of people that are racing pretty well there. And so it's very important, first, to acknowledge heat and to have realistic pacing. The second is a smart hydration plan. That hydration plan begins before you even get to race site. If you're traveling to a race, making sure that you don't get on the plane or in that big car journey dehydrated. It's a huge additional stressor hydrate in the days leading up to travel number one. And then, while we are not camels and we can't just absorb big buckets of water in our body. We can do a little pre loading. And so when we get to race site in the last 24 to 36 hours before the race, I would encourage you to hydrate well. That doesn't mean duct taping a water bottle to your wrist. Instead, it's having a bottle of fluid in the morning, a bottle of fluid before bed, and having sips of water and a little glass of water with breakfast, lunch and dinner every day leading up to the race. Last two or three days, those big bottles of water, something around 24 ounces, morning and evening, I would add, electrolytes are there, and pretty steep concentration, there probably about 1000 milligrams of sodium. For some athletes, 1500 milligrams the power of having a little bit of sweat testing, but that's really high value hydrate before and then, of course, when it comes to race day execution, I'm not going to talk about hydration and fueling in this episode, but I will say execute, and don't wait to execute. It can be catastrophic right from the start. Nailing down your hydration and your fueling already really, really important. The third is cooling strategies. What can you do? Well, firstly, make sure you choose the right equipment. There is actually racing apparel that is specifically designed for heat. It tends to be lighter in color, performance fabrics that actually are really, really good in in hot environments. Really important. I would also to perform in heat. This isn't just about your physiology. Ensure you get your lubing right. I know that you typically lube around the neck when it comes to the wetsuit, but in hot conditions, armpits, nipples, groin, even feet. Keeping the nude really, really helpful to prevent that chafing and blisters, and then when you're actually navigating,
Matt Dixon 38:23
you can call the body alrighty. It's in the rules. The body calls from the inside out. So at aid stations, the more that you can get cool fluids, the better. That might mean going through an aid station, getting water and ice, dumping ice into that cup and downing cool from the inside out. You also want to ensure that you call the thermo regulators, and so if you can get cool water on the inside of the arm, around the back and the shoulders, even sometimes people like it down the groin a little bit, but trying to keep the body cool externally, it's less effective than inside out, but it's still an important tool. And then wear cooling sleeves, wear cooling hats, making sure that you're keeping the sun off the skin as much as possible, because sun burnt skin means that you have a very low efficiency machine for dissipating heat. Since the skin is sunburnt, it doesn't do well getting rid of heat. So really, really important. And then finally, particularly for marathon runners, ultra marathon runners and triathletes, here's the key thing, smart walk breaks. And you want to do smart walk breaks before you are forced to do it. If it's a hot environment, race, these become not a point of failure, but a weapon. If you want to go as fast as you can for you, start to walk early to ensure that your thermostat isn't blowing. Don't wait for the thermostat to blow so that you're forced to walk. I haven't had an athlete at the Hawaii I met that hasn't taken war breaks for years, including athletes that have got second in the race, fourth in the race, fifth in the race, six in the race, seventh in the race, seventh in the race, eighth in the race, 10th in the race, etc. And that's at the pro level. Every athlete that I've coached at the Hawaii Ironman World Championship has integrated walk breaks so you can too. It's a source of power. It's not a source of weakness. So folks, that's it. And as I talked about, remember, heat training is going to help you get ready for races in heat, but it's also that secret weapon. It can boost your performance in core conditions too. It really is kind of an altitude like training stimulus, but do it sparingly. Alrighty. I prefer athletes to go through heat preparation in training no more than two or three times in a year. Use it to peak for big race blocks or maybe big training blocks. Try and build up that physiology, get the stimulus and go. But it's not something that more is better and load it on every single time he is a performance limiter. But it doesn't need to be a deal breaker. And so I invite you download our heat prep checklist. We've put together something special for this episode. Or, of course, if you want more custom guidance and you want to go through some of this stuff, grab a consultation with a Purple Patch coach. We'll put the link in the show notes. We do that for athletes that are non Purple Patch coach, and it can really, really help go through your fueling, your hydration, your preparation, how you integrate it into your own training recipe. It can become a really effective 30 or 60 minutes that you spend with one of our coaches. Or, of course, the Mac Daddy join us. We love our athletes to perform well in any conditions, and that includes high heat. Alrighty, folks, thank you for listening. Next week, we've got a good one on race preparation.
Matt Dixon 41:03
I'm going to have Matt scaring come back and join me. We're going to be talking about lessons from the pros. In the meantime, it really, really helps if you rate review and share this episode with any of your friends, and of course, feel free to submit questions for a future episode. If you'd like to learn more about Purple Patch, feel free to reach out info@purplepatchfundch.com but until then, stay cool. Have fun, and I hope you found it useful. Cheers. Take care, guys. Thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe, of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe, also share it with your friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community with that. I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Heat training, humidity, performance, Purple Patch, triathlon, hydration, blood volume, core temperature, sweat rate, sauna protocol, cooling strategies, race preparation, fatigue, perceived effort, walk breaks