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| Just Your Average Houston Summer! |
As you can see from the temperatures above it has been a blast furnace here in South East Texas. Add in the ridiculous humidity levels and when you walk outside it feels as if you are draped in a hot wet blanket! Lovely, huh?
I hear the term Heat Acclimation tossed around all over the message boards, Twitter, and other blogs. With the weather here I even toss around the Heat Acclimation phrase quite often and over the last couple of smoking hot runs this term got me thinking:
Am I getting the most out of my training by doing it in these ridiculously hot conditions?
Now this mostly applies to running as I already spend a fair amount of time on the indoor bike trainer.
Here is a list of Pros and Cons I have come up with in regards to training in the extreme heat:
Pros:
- It builds mental toughness and teaches you how to suffer.
- It teaches your body its needs and limits in terms of hydration and dehydration.
- Forces you to go slower and thus builds aerobic capacity.
- It does seem to help improve performance when you enter/race cooler environments.
Cons:
- It wears you down thus your body needs more time to recover.
- Due to increased fatigue from the heat your form may breakdown and then you are just practicing bad form.
- You go slower so you do not cover as much distance so you might not be maximizing your time that is committed to training.
- You can hurt yourself. In these temps a point is reached where the sweat output far exceeds the water input.
Over the last year I have ran well over 1000mi and only about 8 of those miles have been on a treadmill. The current consideration is to up the indoor miles. With the extreme heat I have REALLY been suffering on my runs. On Wednesday I ran 4mi and finished at 7:30pm. My pace was around 8:30/mi and I was exhausted and lightheaded after. I was so exhausted that I was unable to get out of bed at 4am the next day for Masters Swim. This wasn't the first time the heat has zapped me of energy just the most recent and it is concerning because it was such a short run.
Here are the questions I need help with from you guys: Should I move my runs indoors? Or is it better to just suck it up and keep running outdoors as it will help me in the long run? Can you think of anymore pros v cons? Am I just being a baby?
Thanks for Reading,
Jeff
