Heat Cheat

In his How Or Why series, coach SEAN TAIT, founder and Running technique coach at Off the Mark, digs deeper into specific issues troubling TRAIL readers.

- Sean Tait

This is a common challenge among runners residing in warmer climates. It only takes two or three bad experiences to turn ourselves off running on hot days, and developing the idea that you can’t run in the heat.

The good news is that although we can’t necessarily change where we live, and most certainly can’t control the weather, we can do a lot of things to make our lives easier on those hot runs and help our body adapt to running in heat.

There are two parts to this response: when you should try to avoid the heat, and how you should look to acclimatise to it!

Get out of the kitchen

Bear with me here... We all know that overcoming a fear or weakness doesn’t happen by avoiding it. But for run training, we need to reach a moderate level of aerobic conditioning under low environmental stress before we impose additional stress on the body.

Going straight out into heat and beating your body up might seem productive, as you are exposing your body to the exact stress that you are trying to adapt to, but these sessions will take us a much longer time to recover from. This will actually delay our progress with improving our condition.

It’s the same as going and doing a run that is too long for what your body is ready for. Sure, you’ve banked a big session today, but when are you going to be able to run again, and how much quality training are you going to be able to do the next week without risking burnout or injury?