The new recommendation for hydration, spearheaded by Dr. Noakes, is to drink to thirst.
Therefore, when trying to stay cool, water on you is better than water in you. Dumping cool water over your head or body will help decrease the temperature of the skin and evaporate heat, thus allowing your body to cool itself more efficiently.
More: What Is Proper Hydration and How It Affects Performance
Get Creative With Your Workouts
When performing hard workouts in the heat, the longer you sustain an effort, the more likely you are to overheat. Moreover, continuous workouts offer less opportunity to cool off with water or a cold towel.
When scheduling tempo or threshold workouts in the summer, consider breaking up your efforts into tempo intervals, such as 2 x 3 miles at 10-mile race pace with four minutes rest instead of a 6-mile tempo at half-marathon pace. Or, try threshold intervals like 5 x 1 mile at 15K race pace with 60 seconds rest instead of a 5-mile tempo run. These workouts still improve your lactate threshold, but the rest period, even if it's brief, provides an opportunity for you to cool down or get some water on you.
More: 4 Tempo Run Workouts
You can also get creative. One trick I share with my athletes is to take some towels, get them wet, and then freeze them overnight. Take the frozen towels with you in a cooler to the track for your workout and drape yourself in the towels before and during your workout. This will lower your core body temperature, and facilitate a better workout. You can also try eating a Gatorade slushy before every hard run.
More: The New Rules of Marathon Nutrition: Sports Drinks
Schedule Extra Recovery
Getting in enough recovery during the summer months is also a huge challenge for many runners, and often results in poor performance and overtraining.
More: 7 Ways Runners Can Avoid Overtraining
During the summer, it's very difficult to catch up on missed sleep like you can in the winter. If you're not out the door early, you'll be running in very hot weather. As a result, the lack of sleep builds and creates a feeling of overall fatigue.
Moreover, recovery is slowed when training in hot weather. The body recovers by delivering oxygen and nutrients to the muscles through the circulatory system—via blood. In the heat, the body cools itself by sending blood to the skin to be cooled by the air. As a result, there is less blood available to repair the muscles. This process also uses energy that would otherwise be available for recovery. So, even when you're not running, the body is spending energy to keep you cool as opposed to promoting recovery.
More: 3 Reasons to Include Recovery Runs in Your Training
My advice is to schedule the occasional down week, or build in an additional recovery day during your weekly training during the summer. This will go a long way towards avoiding overtraining and getting frustrated with what appears to be a lack of progress.
Keep these strategies in mind this summer and remember that, when training in the heat, you won't feel like you're making progress. However, the hot weather is simply masking your progress and once the weather cools, you'll be fit and crushing your workouts and races.
More: Runners' Ultimate Guide to Hydration
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