Saturday, 7 June 2014


This is a topic I have written about in the past, but is something that all runners should have a good understanding of.  With temperatures starting to rise, so do the questions of if it is beneficial to train in the heat, or if it should be avoided.
Some runners argue that any challenge is a beneficial challenge, so training in the heat is a positive stimulus.  Other runners argue that the heat takes away from their ability to push themselves, increases the risk of dehydration, and as a result has a detrimental impact on training.  Both of these points of view intuitively make sense, so we’ll have to go to the science behind heat training for our answer.
While this answer is complicated, what researchers DO know is that training in the heat has a unique impact on your physiology and makes you faster in a way that training at colder temperatures cannot.