# Perform Well in Hot Races: Simple, Safe Heat Acclimation Protocols | Ep 493

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 12 Jun 2024, 32 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/87890560/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-5-11%2F380365233-44100-2-a7fdfc22cf107.mp3

In this episode, hosts Coach Rob Wilby and Coach Chris Palfreyman take a deep dive into the challenge of performing in high temperatures. They explore the physiology of how our bodies react to heat during exercise, the effects of humidity, and the complex task our circulatory system performs to balance oxygen delivery and temperature regulation. In this episode, you'll hear: ☀️ Challenges of Heat: How our body generates heat during exercise, and how cooling mechanisms, particularly evaporative sweating, can be impacted by high humidity. ☀️ The Role of Blood: A discussion about how blood plays a multifaceted role, delivering oxygen to muscles, transporting heat to the skin for dissipation, and supplying the GI system for nutrient absorption. ☀️ Preparing to Race in Heat: Understanding the importance of increasing blood plasma volume to cope with heat stress and strategies to achieve this. ☀️ Heat Acclimation Training: Discussion on strategies to acclimate your body to heat through controlled exercise conditions, and why this should only involve easy workout sessions. ☀️ Sauna Protocol: Insights into the benefits of post-workout sauna sessions, the recommended duration, and crucial hydration guidelines to follow for rehydration in the hours following. ☀️ Hot Water Immersion: The benefits of hot baths post-workout, guidance on temperature, duration, and frequency, along with hydration strategies to follow for rehydration in the hours following. ☀️Assessing the Acclimation Progress: Identifying the signs that your body is acclimating to the heat, such as earlier sweat onset, increased sweat rate, a feeling of ease when exercising in heat, and mental readiness to tackle exercise in high temperatures. * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict! http://team.oxygenaddict.com - The most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Join the Team Oxygenaddict waiting list and be the first to find out when a space becomes available: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/waiting-list * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply use this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:03] Hello and welcome to the Oxygenating Podcast.
[0:05] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:08] and hydration.com. You can personalise your
[0:11] fuelling and hydration strategy so you perform your best with
[0:14] 15% off your first order of electrolytes and carbohydrate
[0:18] fuel. Decode Oxygen 24 at Precision
[0:21] Fuel and hydration.com. Welcome to the show, everybody.
[0:24] I'm your host, coach Rob Wilby, and every week we bring you an
[0:28] episode of this podcast to help motivate and inspire you for
[0:31] your triathlon goals for this season.
[0:33] Listen, a couple of quick things you could do for us before we
[0:36] jump into today's episode. If you do like this episode,
[0:39] please consider following us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
[0:44] And also if you're watching on YouTube, if you could like and
[0:46] subscribe. That would.
[0:48] Really help out the growth of the show.
[0:50] It helps the show get shown to more people by the algorithm on
[0:54] on the podcast players and on YouTube.
[0:55] So we'd really, really appreciate that.
[0:58] And secondly, if you're looking for help and advice with your
[1:00] triathlon training, please consider getting in touch with
[1:03] us. You can read all about what we
[1:05] offer at teamoxygenaddict.com and then you can e-mail us at
[1:08] help@oxygenaddict.com or there's a link in the show notes to book
[1:13] a call with me or one of the coaching team.
[1:15] We can discuss how we can best help you out with your triathlon
[1:19] goals for this season. The first thing I think to
[1:22] acknowledge is anyone who's ridden a bike on the indoor
[1:25] trainer without a fan, or been on the treadmill indoors without
[1:28] a fan, realises very quickly that our bodies are incredibly
[1:32] efficient at producing heat as we exercise.
[1:35] We usually don't feel it when we're running or riding
[1:37] outdoors, but take away that cooling evaporative air blowing
[1:41] over us and it really reveals how hot we get so quickly and we
[1:45] produce tonnes and tonnes of heat.
[1:48] And to set the scene, sweating as our body's mechanism of
[1:51] getting rid of that heat. There's two kinds of sweating.
[1:54] There's sweat that's really efficient and evaporates off,
[1:58] and there's also a sweat that's inefficient and is the stuff
[2:01] that you typically see pooling on your skin.
[2:04] The two are genetic. So some people like, for
[2:07] example, as a kid growing up, my dad would finish a run with me
[2:10] and he would literally ring his running vest out into the sink.
[2:14] He would be convinced he was really, really sweaty and
[2:17] because his sweating was really inefficient.
[2:18] And so I think I think the numbers are something like it.
[2:21] You lose four times more water when it pulls on your skin than
[2:25] you do when it evaporates away. So to a certain extent, can't
[2:28] change that Your body is one way or the other, but it has to get
[2:32] rid of that heat somehow. And sweating is the way it's
[2:35] going to do it. And so if you add into the mix a
[2:39] humid day when there's already a lot of water into the air or
[2:42] sweating becomes much less efficient again and it's even
[2:46] harder for our bodies to lose this heat.
[2:48] This is a long way round saying it's hard for our bodies to lose
[2:53] heat at the best of times. Put it in a heart and or humid
[2:55] day and it's even more difficult for the body to lose heat.
[2:59] Add on top of that, Rob, race intensity and race duration,
[3:04] it's very different doing a 45 minute run in the heat versus 10
[3:08] hours as the heat is increasing throughout the day.
[3:12] But also your engine essentially is getting hotter and hotter and
[3:15] hotter. And there's a point where you
[3:17] can't turn that background unless you stop.
[3:20] So you've got to, yeah, you've got to be aware of the heat
[3:23] management throughout the day, which, yeah, very, very hard to
[3:28] do. Yeah.
[3:30] And so the way that we can look, I think, at making our bodies
[3:33] more efficient is to understand that it's the blood's job to do
[3:36] three things. The blood delivers oxygen to the
[3:39] muscles. We all know that it also
[3:41] delivers blood to the skin to dissipate heat, but it also
[3:45] delivers blood to the gut so it can deliver nutrients.
[3:48] So it kind of being pulled in three directions when we're
[3:51] trying to do a triathlon in the heat, it's trying to deliver
[3:54] oxygen to the muscles, which is what we've trained it to do all
[3:56] day long. All of a sudden there's extra
[3:59] stress that more of it's getting pulled away from the muscles to
[4:02] the skin to dissipate the heat. And then you mentioned earlier,
[4:05] didn't use the GI distress, the upset tummy, the feeling that
[4:08] I'm not either absorbing fluid or absorbing any calories in my
[4:12] stomach. And that's again, because this
[4:14] blood's already being pulled in two directions.
[4:17] If that blood then gets shunted away from IGI system, it's much
[4:21] harder for it to help digest the calories in the fluid that we're
[4:24] putting in there. O It's got a big challenge on
[4:28] and we've got to help it by preparing it ahead of time so
[4:31] that we can so that we can give it its best chance of helping us
[4:36] support the the athletic endeavours we want to do on the
[4:38] day as well. And how much time do we?
[4:43] What's the timeline in terms of if an athlete cheques the
[4:47] whether they've got two weeks before their race, they see that
[4:49] it's going to be a lot hotter than they're used to.
[4:52] Is 2 weeks enough for an athlete to he adapt?
[4:56] It looks like it is from the. From the research that's out
[4:59] there, it looks like the. Two week to three-week.
[5:02] Time frame is enough for the the three things we're going to talk
[5:05] about are a combination of two of the three things that we're
[5:08] going to talk about to have some kind of material effect.
[5:13] Now, some of them are more more unpleasant than others.
[5:16] We've got to say that U front, um, but they, they can and do
[5:22] have an effect relatively quickly.
[5:24] So I think the first thing that we can talk about is heat
[5:27] acclimation training and that's essentially just training
[5:30] feeling hotter than you would usually do.
[5:33] The time to do heat acclimation training is 3 weeks out to one
[5:37] week out before you event. That's when they think it seems
[5:40] to make the biggest difference. And we have to stress when we do
[5:44] this, we're just trying to get hotter than usual.
[5:46] When we're training, it's best done on our easy effort.
[5:50] So we don't want any kind of hard efforts, hard intervals,
[5:53] none of that on these sessions and easy or steady run or ride
[5:57] of 30 to 60 minutes. But indoors in a hot room with
[6:02] no fan, and even as you get better at this, wearing clothes
[6:06] to get even hotter, but only ever do these as easy sessions.
[6:11] The changes we're going to see by doing it, we're going to get
[6:14] an earlier sweat threshold. So you're going to start
[6:16] sweating sooner. We're going to have an increased
[6:19] sweat rate. So our body's going to learn to
[6:20] sweat more and it's going to be able to dissipate more heat
[6:23] because of that. And most crucially, I think you
[6:27] feel easier in the heat. You feel more comfortable, and I
[6:30] think mentally you're more used to it.
[6:32] You just kind of feel more ready to exercise in the heat with
[6:36] sort of heat acclimation training.
[6:39] And initially they don't need to be any more complicated than
[6:41] doing some training for 30 minutes easy wearing clothes
[6:44] indoors on the trainer and and gradually progress so you do a
[6:49] little bit more each time. Never do your hard sessions,
[6:53] never do your key sessions with with the heart, with the heat.
[6:56] But that sort of little and often thing can really make a
[6:59] difference. I can't stress that enough.
[7:01] And I've seen plenty of athletes get this wrong where you have
[7:05] that stress of race day coming and you think I need to be doing
[7:08] race intensity to get the full benefit.
[7:10] See how it feels. But I think you've got to
[7:13] separate training and preparation for the actual
[7:18] conditions, and they're two very different things.
[7:19] So when? You're definitely.
[7:21] When you're doing this heat acclimation stuff, don't
[7:23] approach it as I'm looking to get fitter on looking to get
[7:26] stronger, looking to develop my aerobic capacity.
[7:29] It's nothing to do with that. You're literally teaching your
[7:32] body cellular level and increasing your, your sweat
[7:36] rate, etcetera. And that has to happen at the
[7:39] lowest intensity possible. Even zone one is absolutely
[7:42] brilliant. So don't be tempted to, you
[7:44] know, increase the watts to race intensity because that that's
[7:47] going to unravel pretty quickly. So if you've got any hard stuff
[7:51] in your training plan, any sweet spot work and the FTP work and
[7:55] any of that harder stuff, don't do that with the heat
[7:57] acclamation, but you're sure to eat pace runs, you're sure to
[8:01] aerobic rides, you recovery rides even can be done indoors
[8:05] on the train or wearing clothes. Get used to being really, really
[8:09] hot. So it isn't rocket science.
[8:12] And and in fact, if we look at the example of Anders who raced
[8:17] really well recently at Ironman Hamburg, he'd done little extra
[8:21] sessions every day he'd do 30 minutes.
[8:23] If you didn't have an easy session, he'd add 1 in just to
[8:26] ride his bike at the end of the day.
[8:28] The 30-40 minutes wrapped U in clothes.
[8:30] We saw some photos didn't we have him looking incredibly
[8:33] uncomfortable. But his comments over a 14 day
[8:37] period went from essentially, Oh my
[8:54] Now our core was up over 40 about find and hot, but I can
[8:58] deal with it. And that's the place we want an
[9:00] athlete to be, isn't it that they're they know that they're
[9:03] hot, but you can just deal with it.
[9:05] It's the same thing when you go on holiday and mental change
[9:07] happens over seven days, where if you go to the Canaries the
[9:11] first day they you just think just too hot for human life
[9:15] here. And then by the last day you can
[9:17] go for a run or a ride quite happily in it and feel really
[9:19] comfortable. Very late income, massive
[9:23] takeaways. Little and often is going to be
[9:25] far more beneficial than one weekly, you know, three hour
[9:29] indoor ride without the fan. Please don't do that.
[9:32] It's going to create a negative effect.
[9:35] You want the little and often every, you know, 24 to 48 hours.
[9:39] If you can get one of these really short sessions, even if
[9:42] it's 15 minutes, 15 minutes on a treadmill, windows closed, the
[9:47] in the heat of day is going to be far more beneficial than
[9:50] trying to do your two hour, let's say run indoors.
[9:53] That's yeah, it's you can literally fry yourself and it's
[9:57] going to have the negative effect where you can't train
[10:00] efficiently the next day, which is then going to have a negative
[10:02] effect on your overall fitness and preparation for race day.
[10:05] So really try and differentiate and separate training and heat
[10:10] acclimation as two very separate objectives and goals.
[10:14] Absolutely. So that's kind of dealt with
[10:17] with heat acclimation training or at least it's introduced the
[10:20] idea to people. There's, there's two other
[10:22] things that people can do as well in order to get their
[10:25] bodies ready. And this is really, I think the
[10:27] things that drives the main physiological adaption, which is
[10:31] an increase in blood plasma volume, which is the thing
[10:33] that's really going to help people on race day.
[10:35] The two other things we can talk about a long time listeners will
[10:39] have heard you talk about this with your, your current
[10:41] preparation. We can either do and it's either
[10:44] here either hot water immersion or I saw on a protocol after
[10:49] training. The idea of both of these is
[10:54] like that. It's not very nice, is it?
[10:55] Let's, let's be, let's be honest about it.
[10:57] It is a really physically challenging, mentally physically
[11:02] unpleasant thing to put yourself through in order to be able to
[11:05] get the last few percent of chance reduced that you'll melt
[11:09] down on race day. So let's go through both of
[11:12] these things and talk through obviously I think so on a
[11:15] protocol is dependent on either a, you're doing your workout at
[11:19] the gym and you've got a sauna there.
[11:20] I think very few people have got access to a sauna really in
[11:23] their own house, certainly in the UK.
[11:26] And then the hot water immersion we can talk through as well.
[11:29] So sauna protocol first, what we're looking at doing here and
[11:33] its basic form is getting into a sauna straight after a workout
[11:37] for initially 10 to 15 minutes and building up to 30 minutes.
[11:42] No hydration while you're in the sauna, no hydration for the last
[11:46] 15 minutes of your workout. And essentially sitting in there
[11:51] for that period of time, being uncomfortably hot already from
[11:54] your workout and enduring as hot as you can endure for the the 10
[12:00] to 15 to 30 minutes. They saved them.
[12:05] I've just got flashbacks of some horrible moment and.
[12:08] Now, I've never done this and I know you have, so talk us
[12:10] through your experience. It's really unpleasant and it's
[12:13] really easy to get wrong. And in the early stages, I
[12:16] actually got it wrong where I was pushing myself too hard, not
[12:21] in training, but in the sauna. And I was thinking an extra 5
[12:24] minutes, an extra 5 minutes. And I'd just sit there to the
[12:27] point of, you know, nearly shaking and feeling dizzy.
[12:30] And if you get any of those symptoms, you you're overcooking
[12:34] it. Just get out, cool down, and
[12:37] it's better to kind of break up that session of even 5 minutes
[12:41] in and then 30 seconds out just to rehydrate if you have to and
[12:46] then put yourself back in. You want to avoid that.
[12:49] You know, I don't know how else to explain it apart from you
[12:52] just feel cooked literally as if you're in an oven.
[12:55] And the, so the way that I used to do it was, um, I do really
[12:59] easy jog to the sauna, which for me was 30 to 40 minutes easy
[13:05] running. And I'd make sure that I'd kept
[13:07] that really easy. It was very tempting to run home
[13:09] because I was really fit fine, but actually just doing an easy
[13:13] jog. And the point there is just to
[13:17] build up that core temperature. You don't need to be working on
[13:20] fitness or any of those other elements.
[13:23] And then I started with around 7 minutes and so, and I'm not very
[13:26] good with heat. So I feel very kind of stressy
[13:29] and uncomfortable in the heat. And initially I had in my plan
[13:32] that was going to do 15 minutes on the first session.
[13:36] But after 7 minutes I was feeling dizzy, very stressed,
[13:39] very uncomfortable and I was hating it and felt as if my head
[13:43] was going to implode. But if you're getting those
[13:46] feelings, just be careful and maybe you feel as if you can do
[13:50] a little bit longer, but you've got to look at this as a as a
[13:53] long term picture. You've got to feel OK in a few
[13:56] hours. You've got to feel OK the next
[13:57] morning because you've got a hard swim or a hard run.
[13:59] So look at the long term picture and little and often is going to
[14:04] be the way forward. So I built it up as 7 minutes
[14:07] and then I added three minutes every session if that felt OK
[14:12] and luckily enough it did. But after the first session, to
[14:15] be honest, the next day impacted me and I've had to miss a
[14:20] session, a training session. And so that's that fine balance
[14:24] of you want to be heat adapted, but you also want to be really
[14:28] fit on the start line. So you're going to have to
[14:31] balance those cards really, really delicately.
[14:34] So for me, it was 7 minutes in and then I did an extra 3
[14:38] minutes every other day. And I did that for two to three
[14:42] weeks. And by the time I actually got
[14:45] off the plane in Hawaii, a lot of the people around me were,
[14:49] you know, instantly off the plane.
[14:51] You get hit with that oven heat and there or thereabouts, you
[14:56] basically know if you're going to be OK.
[14:57] A lot of people are saying this is unbearable.
[14:59] I'm hating life already. Yeah.
[15:01] Whereas for me, it was like, this is uncomfortable, but I'm
[15:05] comfortable with that. It's OK because I've been
[15:07] uncomfortable for the last two or three weeks.
[15:10] So it's a very, very fine line. And so for those thinking that
[15:15] they're the kind of athlete who would benefit from a bit of each
[15:19] acclimation, then I'd start with the little and often, if in
[15:23] doubt, keep it on the lower end of how long you want to stay in
[15:27] that sauna. Don't look to be a hero in those
[15:30] first two sessions. Don't.
[15:32] Just because we're talking about 15 to 30 minutes doesn't mean 29
[15:37] minutes is better than 14 minutes.
[15:39] Stick to 14 or 15 minutes to start with and build up.
[15:43] It's a, you know, it's the kind of endurance training rule of
[15:48] the 10% increase in the first few sessions should be very easy
[15:52] and you should bounce back from alley that to to heat as well.
[15:57] I think it's like you said, you've got to be super aware of
[15:59] how you react to it. I know exactly what you mean.
[16:02] If you get into the sauna when your heart, 5 minutes can feel
[16:04] like an eternity. And if that's the case, 5
[16:07] minutes and you're done for the day.
[16:08] And if the next time you can make six or seven, then great.
[16:12] But even those 5 minutes are going to make a really big
[16:14] difference if people can do this consistently every day for a 10
[16:17] day period. And that's what the research has
[16:20] shown is that this, this combination of heat acclimation
[16:23] training with sauna protocol or with hot water immersion over a
[16:29] a sort of a two week period leading up to race day, stopping
[16:33] three days before race day can be really, really effective.
[16:37] And even if it is only 5 minutes in the store, next really going
[16:40] to be helping. But the thing you said there is
[16:42] key. There's other stuff going on as
[16:45] well as trying to do so on a protocol here.
[16:46] It's not just about how long can you last in this one.
[16:49] You have to be able to do your training during your taper as
[16:52] well. And you have to not feel altered
[16:54] afterwards. I think that's a really good
[16:55] sign. If you come out and your head's
[16:57] spinning and you don't feel right, then you've overdone it.
[17:00] And it's like with anything, it's much better to stay just
[17:03] this side of the threshold than to go even very slightly over
[17:07] that side of the threshold. At this stage and you're
[17:09] training, you're gonna be stressing your body an enormous
[17:11] amount. So it's not just about the
[17:14] preparation in terms of the management, but also respect the
[17:19] process that your body is going through in terms of recovering
[17:21] from that session you did either that day, the day before or the
[17:24] day before that. So you don't want to compromise
[17:26] recovery where you're shocking your body to the point where
[17:29] it's kind of in shutdown mode. You just want to be feeding it a
[17:33] little bit of heat so it can adapt to that heat and then go
[17:37] again, maybe a little bit longer, 72 hours, let's say
[17:40] later. But don't look to be a hero in
[17:44] these first few sessions. And I've seen plenty of athletes
[17:46] do that. And suddenly they're they're
[17:49] training is totally derailed. They can't, they can't hit any
[17:51] of the numbers that they were doing, you know, even a week
[17:54] before that. And that's because they're not
[17:56] getting the sufficient recovery, the sufficient hydration.
[18:00] And so it's it's a very, very fine line.
[18:04] And you can get it very wrong, though.
[18:06] Yeah, please, please be careful. And if you're not sure and if
[18:09] you need a bit of advice and guidance on how you're going to
[18:12] do that, please get in touch. We'd hate to think that athletes
[18:14] are going away from this podcast, you know, essentially
[18:18] cooking themselves and doing the opposite of.
[18:21] Be careful. Yeah.
[18:22] And I think that the next most important thing here is we're
[18:26] trying to drive an increase in blood plasma volume.
[18:28] So we're making our bodies very hot.
[18:30] We've then got to make sure we rehydrate with water and
[18:33] electrolytes as soon as we get out of that sauna.
[18:36] So we've said no hydration while you're in there, no hydration
[18:39] for the last 10 or 15 minutes before you go in there.
[18:41] But as soon as you're out, we need you to replace about 1 1/2
[18:45] times the amount of water and electrolytes that you've lost
[18:48] when you're in there. So an interesting thing to do is
[18:51] to weigh yourself before and after, work out how much you
[18:54] have sweated out. It's almost like a like a super
[18:57] compensation thing. If we can get more water and
[18:59] electrolytes into your body here after it being hot, the theory
[19:03] is your body essentially sucks them all up.
[19:06] And we can end up with this increased blood plasma volume
[19:09] because we've got a little bit more fluid into you.
[19:12] So that's the same for the sauna protocol.
[19:14] And for the hot water immersion protocol we'll talk about, it's
[19:17] about focusing on rehydrating as soon as you're out of the sauna
[19:22] or the hot water as well. So let's go on to the hot water
[19:25] immersion protocol. I think this one is something
[19:27] that is possibly a little bit more accessible to athletes
[19:31] because most people have got a bath in the house.
[19:35] It's arguably even more brutal feeling than sitting in a sauna.
[19:39] I think I've, I've tried this one myself and I found it very,
[19:42] very challenging. Again, it's a similar sort of
[19:45] lead in here. You do it post workout.
[19:48] We're going to look to work up to 30 minutes in the hot water,
[19:51] but we've got to be careful working up to that.
[19:53] And if you're only in for 5 minutes the first time, that's
[19:56] fine. The bath of hot water has got to
[19:58] be up to your neck. It's got to be as hot as you can
[20:01] stand it and ideally up to 40°C, which is, which is really,
[20:06] really, I mean, that's as hot as it feels boiling when it's
[20:09] coming out of the at the top. It's really, really hard.
[20:12] And ideally here again, we're looking for 10 sessions over 10
[20:15] consecutive days, starting 14 days out before race day,
[20:19] finishing three or four days before race day.
[20:22] The benefits of this clinically were shown to last up to two
[20:25] weeks after the protocol finishes, but they drop off over
[20:30] that sort of. Five to seven day period, so
[20:33] you're good over race weekend if you finish three or four days
[20:36] before race day with this one. And again, as soon as you're out
[20:41] of the water, it's rehydrating with electrolytes and fluids,
[20:45] but 1 1/2 times the fluid loss. And I think again, this is
[20:48] easier for the weighing because often people have got scales in
[20:50] the bathroom. They can weigh themselves as
[20:52] they get into the water, weigh themselves afterwards.
[20:55] People will be surprised how much weight they lose in 30
[20:59] minutes in a very hot bath postal workout.
[21:03] Again, the challenge here is to not drink while you're in the
[21:06] hot water, to not drink for the 15 minutes of exercise leading
[21:09] up to it, because it feels incredibly hard and unpleasant
[21:13] and challenging, doesn't it? I think you've got a do your
[21:17] best again in that medics state and not be too concerned about
[21:25] the thing you've got to separate again, what we talked about
[21:27] earlier from from training and heat prep.
[21:29] And if you really approach this is just heat prep.
[21:34] It's basically a lot of the game is the mental game.
[21:37] So if you can find that really calm narrative in your mind and
[21:41] kind of let everything go, let the pain go.
[21:44] Just be careful that you don't, you know, stay in there longer
[21:47] than you want. But apart from that, you can
[21:49] kind of get in that meditative state where you can detach
[21:53] yourself from that very real pain that you're going through.
[21:56] And that's kind of what you're going to be going through on
[21:58] race that your body is going to be saying stop, stop, stop.
[22:01] Your brain's going to be saying stop, stop, stop.
[22:02] But you need to find that really quiet space in your mind that
[22:08] actually encourages you to carry on for whatever reason.
[22:11] And so I, you know, this is exactly what I was doing in the
[22:14] sauna. Everything was telling me to
[22:16] stop even after three minute. But if you can find that white
[22:19] space, you can kind of get over the hump of everything screaming
[22:23] stop, and then your body and mind come into that state where
[22:28] it understands that you're in control and you're going to be
[22:31] staying in there a little bit longer.
[22:34] And that's exactly what happens on race day.
[22:36] No one gets to that half marathon point in an Iron Man
[22:41] and feels excited, feels fresh. You know, that's just not the
[22:45] reality of the sport you're in. They use this as a little bit of
[22:48] an opportunity to and of explore your, your mental strength, your
[22:54] mental ability to endure the uncomfortable reality of, of
[23:00] what you'll be you'll be going through.
[23:01] So embrace it. If you can embrace that that's
[23:04] suffering. When you're in the comfort of
[23:06] your own home, the likelihood is you're going to be able to
[23:08] translate that into something quite special on race day.
[23:12] Hmm. I really like that Chris.
[23:14] I think, I think it's such an underrated and under spoken
[23:18] about aspect of racing. The fact that Chris McCormack
[23:22] used to say didn't either. Anybody can win Hawaii.
[23:25] When you're watching the TV and it's now a long show and there's
[23:29] music playing, but the reality of what running through the lava
[23:32] fields actually feels like and there is no music playing and
[23:35] there is no air conditioning on. It's a very different thing to
[23:39] be able to mentally endure what you're going through.
[23:42] And I think that's, that's the big disconnect with a lot of
[23:44] people's race day experiences in training.
[23:47] They've they've done a ride and the first three hours feel
[23:50] fantastic and they're really motivated to do an Ironman.
[23:53] And then the short start rubbing and the legs start hurting.
[23:56] And the next three hours of the bike ride every 5 minutes feels
[24:00] like another three hours because it's difficult and challenging.
[24:04] And if we haven't put ourselves in that place in training
[24:07] regularly enough, where we overcome the the brains decide
[24:11] to tell us to stop doing these things very, very hard on race
[24:14] day, then to suddenly click into a space where you can deal with
[24:18] the heat if you've never had to deal with the heat, where you
[24:20] can deal with discomfort if you've never had to deal with
[24:22] discomfort. It's all about training our
[24:24] brains at the end of the day. It's a very, very uncomfortable
[24:27] sport and you know, that's why a lot of people sign up to it.
[24:31] But you know, in the past 10 days, I've had a lot of the
[24:35] athletes that I'm working with who have either done a race
[24:38] simulation weekend or a two to three hour run, which is stung
[24:42] to get pretty significant. And they're doing this in the
[24:44] middle of a training block. So there are elements of fatigue
[24:47] lingering there. And a lot of the comments,
[24:49] especially in the three hour run are felt fine for two hours,
[24:53] felt great, but then don't know what happened.
[24:55] My legs were screaming, my posture was going, my mind was
[25:00] going. And as the coach, I'm seeing
[25:03] that I'm thinking, this is absolutely brilliant.
[25:05] I want you to go through those experiences.
[25:08] It's it's very uncomfortable and I'm sorry that athletes have to
[25:11] go through that, but we all have to go through that, especially
[25:14] if you're looking at middle distance and long distance.
[25:16] The reality is that they're going to be multiple hours of
[25:21] real difficulty. And when you add heat on top of
[25:23] that, things can be extremely uncomfortable.
[25:27] So you have to be ready with that.
[25:29] And this podcast is about getting you physically ready for
[25:33] that by doing different heat protocols.
[25:36] But don't forget the mental element that you need to be
[25:40] willing and open to that level of being uncomfortable for hours
[25:45] on end. So these, you know, hot water
[25:48] motion and all the protocols and sitting on the turbo sweating a
[25:53] huge amount is exactly what this is all about.
[25:57] Yeah, each in your body, but you also need to teach your mind how
[26:01] to how to cope with it. 100% right.
[26:05] Let's wrap this up then. Let's give her a quick overview
[26:07] of what we've talked about here then.
[26:09] So in order to get yourself ready to race in the heat, we
[26:11] need to be looking at the the two weeks, the 14 days or so
[26:15] before race day. And we're combining 2 of heat
[26:19] acclimation training with either hot water immersion or the sauna
[26:22] protocol. We're looking at doing your easy
[26:25] rides and runs. Hot and uncomfortably hot
[26:28] indoors, treadmill or trainer wearing clothes?
[26:32] No fun on being very hot and uncomfortable.
[26:36] And then as soon as you're done with that, doing either the hot
[26:40] water immersion or the sauna protocol, we've got to be really
[26:44] clear that we only want the heat acclimation training sessions to
[26:47] be done in our easy sessions, not in our very hard or our very
[26:51] long sessions. And then we're going to
[26:53] gradually build up our tolerance of either the sauna or the hot
[26:56] water and expect it to feel really difficult and challenging
[27:01] the first few times you do it. But you will see small but
[27:04] measurable progress along the way.
[27:06] And as long as you are doing that, you are going to be
[27:09] helping your body to increase blood plasma volume and
[27:12] ultimately you're going to be more successful come race day.
[27:16] My final comment, which I think would be easy one for the
[27:19] athlete, is you have to be open minded to adapting your race
[27:26] intensity. So your what?
[27:27] So your pace when you're either training or racing in the heat
[27:32] and a good starting point is 10 to 15%.
[27:34] So lower your watts by 10 to 15% at least for the first hour
[27:39] during whether it's training or racing, because the likelihood
[27:42] is that your core temperature is just going to be steadily
[27:46] increasing throughout the day. And once it gets to a point,
[27:50] it's very hard to reverse unless you really knock it back to
[27:54] either crawling or walking. So be very aware that when you
[27:58] are racing in the heat, you're gonna have to look at numbers
[28:01] that are a lot lower than what you're used to in training.
[28:05] And that's not representation that you're not as still not
[28:08] strong. It's just that you have to raise
[28:10] the conditions that are ahead of you.
[28:13] A lot of people are confused why the top athletes in the world
[28:16] end up walking in the horse races in the world.
[28:19] You know, look at Kona as a great example.
[28:21] Everyone's really confused why, whether it's the top age
[28:24] groupers or the top pros, everyone's walking.
[28:26] Is it to do with the conditions? Yeah, to a degree.
[28:29] But the reality is that a lot of us or a lot of them are racing
[28:34] at the intensities that they used to, racing around the
[28:37] world, which aren't the same as Hawaii, but you have to raise
[28:41] the conditions there. So protect yourself.
[28:43] Protect the back end of your marathon as always and kind of
[28:47] have that foresight that your core temperatures going to be
[28:50] higher and higher and higher. So protect it as much as you can
[28:54] on race day as well. Yeah.
[28:56] And I think just to add to that, Chris, it's worth athletes
[29:00] remembering that we all recognise that Ironman
[29:02] especially is an energy limited event more than it is a fitness
[29:07] limited event. It's about how many calories you
[29:09] can process while you're out there.
[29:11] And if your body all of a sudden has got to shift loads of its
[29:15] blood to the skin to get rid of the heat and there's less
[29:18] available in the gut to digest food, you're not going to be
[29:21] able to digest as many calories as you could.
[29:23] So if you don't slow down, eventually your body is going to
[29:27] make you slow down because those calories are just going to be
[29:30] sitting in your guts, are not going to be digested.
[29:32] And I think often athletes who have really bad coloured GI
[29:36] distress on hot days, it's not necessarily down to doing
[29:40] anything wrong other than not slowing down from the numbers
[29:44] that they would usually go at, which just means the body is not
[29:46] able to absorb what they would usually absorb.
[29:49] Yeah, a lot of athletes fall into the kind of trap of the
[29:52] narrative being for some reason the gels that were taking on the
[29:56] day weren't the right ones. So they'll start testing with
[29:59] other gels. But actually, I think they're
[30:02] looking under the wrong stone. You need to be looking at how
[30:04] you adapted your race strategy in terms of pacing.
[30:08] And a lot of the time people aren't they're they're stuck in,
[30:11] I race at 200 watts, whether it's hilly, whether it's flat,
[30:15] whether it's raining or whether it's in Kona.
[30:17] And that is just not the reality of how how the body adapts to
[30:23] these elements. So yeah, be very cautious in the
[30:26] heat. I think, you know, we've all
[30:28] seen it with top level athletes get it wrong and we're no
[30:31] different. So yeah, be very cautious and if
[30:34] anything build into the as you should anyway, but even more so,
[30:38] and start at a lower threshold and try and manage it through
[30:41] that that way. Yeah, brilliant, right.
[30:45] Good. I think we've, I think we've
[30:46] covered all of that stuff there. Hopefully that's helped loads of
[30:48] people out and again, any questions, please feel free to
[30:52] fire them through to help add oxygenating.com.
[30:55] OK then. That brings us to the end of
[30:57] this week's episode, so here are some discount codes and deals
[31:00] for you over at. Precision Fuel and hydration.com
[31:03] Use the code OXYGEN 24 for 15% off your first electrolyte
[31:07] order. And over at
[31:09] teamoxygenaddict.com, I think we've got the most comprehensive
[31:12] triathlon coaching programme. For busy age groupers, if you've
[31:16] enjoyed what you've heard today and the.
[31:17] Advice has helped you out. Well, great stuff.
[31:20] I hope that's helped put some of your fears at rest and I know
[31:22] from some of the calls we've had, it's helping raise the
[31:26] right questions in the minds of people as to whether their
[31:29] current coaching relationship is working for them If you're
[31:33] looking for a change or if you're looking for high quality,
[31:35] proven coaching for Iron Man or 73 Triathlon this year.
[31:39] You can just. Check out the details of our
[31:40] coaching packages on our website at teamoxygenaddict.com and then
[31:45] if you're interested, there's a link in the show notes below.
[31:48] You can join our waiting list and you'll be notified if the
[31:51] slot becomes available. And at that point, you'll have a
[31:54] chance to book a call with us and see if you'd be a good fit.
[31:57] For joining the team so although.
[31:58] We don't have slots available at the moment.
[32:00] We'll make those call appointments available to people
[32:04] as and when we do have athletes who and their coaching packages
[32:08] during the season if and when that happens.
[32:10] So remember. There's links in the show notes
[32:12] so you don't have to remember them till next week.
[32:15] Have a great safe training and racing week.
[32:17] I'm Coach Rob. Wilby and you've been listening.
[32:19] To the oxygen added. Podcast.
[32:21] See ya.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.