930. Heat Training and Ultras 101

What is the best way to acclimate to the heat for ultramarathons? 

The heat is no joke. 

It scares people, including me. 

The heat makes you go crazy – every minute feels like an hour. Usually, if the pain becomes too overwhelming, we can stop and rest. In hot ultra events, there’s no place to go and you feel like you start to lose your mind.  

There are races like Badwater, a 135-mile “jaunt” through death valley – in July. Temp’s get to around 125 degrees… 

Maybe we don’t ever want to run Badwater, but what about if our race is in the middle of the summer where it’s hot and humid?

There’s this thing called heat acclimation, and it’s our ability to deal with the heat. 

Our body adapts and we can operate more efficiently. 

Someone who lives in Alaska vs someone who lives in Ecuador – their bodies are going to be operating differently due to the different environments they live in. 

We’re going to cover:

• Training 
• Emergency 
• Prevention 
• Fluids 
• Salts 

8 Training Tips 

• Train smart, be careful, and start small.
• Overdress to stimulate hot environments – think tracksuit, trash bag, winter jackets, hats, gloves, pants, whatever you gotta do. This creates a microclimate that feels similar to what you will be racing in and helps the body adapt. Add clothes as we become more efficient.
• Train when it’s hottest out 

• Recover hard between training sessions. Take in extra fluids and electrolytes, especially sodium. Avoid dehydration like the plague. 
• Use little or no salt during training sessions and replenish salt between training sessions. 
• The heat slows us down. Monitor the heart rate. If you can run a 10-minute pace when it’s cool out with your heart rate at 140 Beats Per Minute, maybe in the heat, we can run a 12:00-minute pace with our heart rate at that same 140 BPM. The body is working just as hard. 
• Heat acclimation could take 2 weeks or months depending on how crazy you want to get with it. 
• Do what you’ve been doing and learn for yourself. There’s never a better teacher than life(:

Emergency Gameplan

Dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heat strokes are real. Always have a game plan. Maybe it looks like this: 

1. Call 911
2. Get out of direct sunlight
3. Strip down
4. Wet the body 
5. Ice the neck, wrist, head, groins, and feet

The best game plan of all? Not to push it too hard and always be prepared. That comes back to planning and things we can control. 

After all, we’re not trying to kill ourselves, just push our boundaries. 

4 Prevention Tips 

And of course, there are things outside of our control when it comes to the heat – the environment is muggy, gear breaks, we missed our crew, etc, but there are many things that we can do to help prevent getting into a pickle. 

Have a plan. 

Plan what you’ll be wearing, and your fluids, and make sure you acclimate to the heat ahead of time. 

• Clothing. This has a direct relationship with how efficiently our bodies can cool themselves down. Imagine wearing a ski suit in the dead of summer? Ideal for cold but not for the heat. For heat, we want air circulation, which helps our sweat evaporate, and that’s helping our bodies cool down. Long sleeve sun shirts & pants, hats, sun gloves, or sunscreen (even for our lips). I prefer clothing over sunblock. 
• Caffeine and alcohol are diuretics and cause our bodies to lose water. Remember we want to avoid dehydration like the plague. Avoid using it in the days leading up to the race. Better yet, drink water and electrolytes in the days before the race, during the race, and after the race. 
• Most people drink less fluids than they should. Dehydration during a long race in the heat is most likely going to happen. Why? Because the amount of fluid we lose via sweat is more than the amount of fluids our body can process. The alternative? Stay on top of our fluid intake. Sipping our drink throughout the run – about 250 ml every 15 minutes or so. Most people try to chug a liter per hour, which usually leads to stomach (and dehydration) issues.
• Heat acclimatization is a process by which the body makes adjustments to promote better cooling. The most common adaptations are: Sweat becomes more dilute, and we start sweating sooner and more. So train in the heat before you need to and start to get acclimatized!

Know your body 

Between sweat rate, fluid intake, how often we piss, what we are drinking, how much fat we have, or sleep we’ve gotten and so much more – there isn’t a one size fits all approach. (of course) 

How do you find out which fluid to drink and how often? Or how much sleep to get? The best way to determine this is to test it, and see what works for you. 

Often we spend a lot of money and time on equipment and don’t even think about what we actually need

What works for us? What doesn’t? What am I going to do differently? 

Keep a training log. Change only one variable at a time and keep developing a plan that works – for you.

Here’s a per-hour intake I like to follow that works for me: 

• 400 calories 
• 1000 mg of sodium 
• L of fluids

Why is Salt important?

Salt contains sodium, and failing to replace salt during the race can cause us to feel sick, and even pass out in extreme cases. Sodium prevents us from cramping up too.

It’s common practice to take around 1,000 mgs of sodium per hour for hot races. For cooler races that number drops down to around 500 mg.

Taking salt before a race helps top of our electrolyte stores, and the same for taking salts after.

What Fluids? 

For shorter runs that only last an hour or two, we could drink really whatever. 

The longer runs are where we really need to dial in our fluids. There are so many different sports drinks and powders out there, with different ingredients/amounts. The most important features are taste, carbohydrate, and sodium content.

• Taste is important because we have to like what we are drinking, or we won’t drink it. 
• Carbs are important because that’s what is giving us the energy to keep going. 
• Sodium is important because it is replacing our electrolytes and helping us not cramp. 

During races, I use Tailwind as my main source. It tastes good, has 25 grams of carbs, 310 mg of salt, and 100 calories per scoop. I usually do 3 or 4 scoops. (plus it’s dairy free, gluten free, and vegan) 

I appreciate your attention! 

Would you run a summer ultra? Have you? 

LMK how that race went and what you think about this article! 

Go get your miles, peace!!!