Hello Heat Acclimation...

For of you who didn't notice, the temps got into the mid-90's in Dallas yesterday. It's April. And it was 95 degrees. That's hot.

I totally prefer the heat to the cold - if it's a choice between 40 degrees and 100 degrees, I will take 100 degrees any time. Don't get me wrong, I love a happy medium, but when push comes to shove, I'm a summer-time person. Tank tops, shorts, flip-flops, sunshine, these are definitely my preferences. However, I've been training in cold weather for the last 6 months or so (minus my brief but amazing week at the Hawaii camp in Kona), and my body is not operating at 100% in the heat just yet.

Conveniently enough, I presented a lecture on heat acclimation at the Iron Texas Camp two weeks ago, so I have a pretty thorough understanding now of what it entails. Which is basically - train in the heat until your body acclimates. Ok, I joke, it is more specific than that, but at its most basic, that pretty much sums it up. So heat acclimation training started with yesterday's post-work run by the lake with Ken. I was already not at 100% because of doing King Tut the day before, and when the 90 degree air hit my face, I suddenly was slightly less excited about running than before we left the apartment. I quickly noticed that even though I was incredibly hot, I was barely sweating at all - not necessarily a good thing, since sweat is our body's cooling mechanism, and a lot of the time if our body isn't sweating in hot weather, it's because its use of that mechanism has become slightly rusty from disuse (to put it in the least scientific way possible).

Even though we were only running for 30 minutes, I felt completely dehydrated by the time we got home. I chugged a Powerade and took a cool bath as soon as I got inside. It's amazing the things that heat can do to your body... I've definitely got some work to do in that area before Beijing. Hopefully, though, the warm temps will stick around now and I'll be a hot weather racing machine by mid-summer.

I hope everyone is enjoying the warmth, despite the negative effects on performance! Stay cool and train safe!