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Impact of Heat on Marathon Performance

1,125 bytes added, 20:47, 7 March 2013

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It’s It's harder to run in hotter weatherthe heat, something that is easy to forget when toeing the line at a marathon. If you’ve you've set goals based on cool weather training or performance without taking the heat into account, you will go out too fast and your overall time will suffer. But how much does your performance change with temperature? I found You can't run as fast in the heat as the cool, but if you have a better idea what pace to set, you may be able to avoid a catastrophic result. There is good scientific evidence that [[Running in the Heat]] will slow you down, and there is a study<ref name="study"/> that gives some answersquantifies the slowdown.

==The Answer, Part 1==

The study showed how finish time changes with temperature, and the results are shown in the following graph.

[[File:818611486 iAHcm-O.jpg]]

==Perception of temperature==

As noted in [[Running in the Heat]], exercising in mild conditions of 60f/15c significantly impacts performance, but the perception is one of fatigue rather than overheating. When pacing marathons, I have consistently found that runners in mild conditions between 50f/10c and 70f/20c seem to be generally unaware of the heat stress and instead feel fatigued. It can be hard to convince these runners to shed excess clothing, but once they cool off, they can often partly recover. Running marathon+ distance training runs on a frequent basis, I have found a similar phenomenon if I don't shed clothing fast enough to compensate for rising temperatures. My perception is of being a comfortable temperature, but feeling fatigued, often to the point of being sleepy. Shedding clothing so that I feel slightly cool greatly reduces the sense of fatigue, and my pace picks up even though my perceived effort remains the same.

==Your Mileage May Vary==

There are a lot of flaws in this approach, which you should be aware of.

==Projected Performance==

Use the 'heat index' or 'feels like' temperatures rather than raw thermometer readings in the table below. (The [[Perceived Temperature For Runners]] is quite different and should not be used here!) You can also get temperature adjustment via the [[VDOT Calculator]].

{| {{table}}class="wikitable"

| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''40f'''

| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''50f'''

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