history data section of weatherunderground. com to find historical data for the race day to get an idea of what the athletes need to be prepared for. Once you know the high temperatures


to expect, you need to try and replicate those situations for your athletes in training. My own approach grew out of experience with an athlete who owned a watch which recorded temperature. in training, this athlete would wear an extra layer of clothing and use his watch to see if the microclimate he was experiencing under his long-sleeved shirt was close to what he could expect on race day. You can find watches and heat sensors (at hardware stores) to monitor an athlete’s skin temperature under his shirt during a workout to make sure he is within a couple of degrees of the temps he might experience on race day. One of the major ways people lose heat is


the transfer of heat from their bodies to the air around them — convection. Since this is the case, skin temperature will approach the


air temperature when exercising. So on race day if the air is 90 degrees, an athlete’s skin temperature is more than likely going to be close to that. that is the rationale for using skin temperature and shooting for the race day air temperature as your target. Overdressing is the most obvious way


and shouldn’t need a lot of explanation. the one thing to note is that for some fabrics the insulating properties change drastically when wet. the best tool for getting an athlete’s


temperatures up is probably already in his basement or garage — the trainer. Once at a triathlon club meeting, our guest speaker was the legend Ken glah; he was telling us about racing in other countries and the issue of training for the heat for races in South america in January and april came up. His comment at the time pointed out that if you are on your trainer for long rides in Maryland in November without a fan, you are already doing heat training. Riding indoors with no fan and a shirt on can quickly raise skin


temperatures. A treadmill is also good although fewer


people own them, so athletes may be dependent on the situation at the local health club. even so, a treadmill run over 30 minutes with a long sleeve shirt can get skin temperatures where they need to be for the examples given. When To Start Heat Training Once the specific preparation for a given race starts, then heat acclimation should be part of the program. Common heat acclimation protocols previously studied daily exposure to high heat that lasts from 4-13 days and recommendations for maintaining the acclimation is for one day of heat exposure for every two to five days without it1


. However, we don’t live in a lab


environment and so setting aside seven solid days for heat acclimation training may be a lot to ask. Our implementation is to do two days per week of workouts dedicated to heat acclimation. Usually that would be one mid-week workout and one of the longer


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