Sweating

Thermoregulation is how your body maintains a consistent internal
temperature. When exposed to external heat, your body cools itself and maintains equilibrium via perspiration. Perspiration has a cooling effect on the body because it removes excess heat through evaporation. The rate of evaporation--and subsequently how well the body is cooled--changes depending upon humidity. When humidity is low, evaporation increases; when humidity is high, the rate of evaporation decreases and less cooling occurs.

On particularly hot days, athletes need to adjust expectations and change their attitudes. Heat affects intensity. It is really hard to find the get up and go in high heat environments. Adjusting the level of effort or intensity based on what the body is signaling is key. Something that has taken me a long time to learn. Though I've recently read that body self regulates physical activity so that core temperature will stay at a low steady number. This happens without us even consciously determining that it is too hot for high intensity workouts.

Interestingly, on hot days, the best way to perform better is to produce more sweat. There is a hypothesis that the best runners have higher sweat rates than their peers, and this would allow them to perform better at highest intensities, especially in warm temperatures.

You see more and more belts and handheld water bottles on runs these days. They continue to rise in popularity as on-the-go hydration needs are further embraced by the mainstream running crowd. There's even a palm cooling gloves, as studies have shown the mind can be tricked into perceiving itself as cooler when your palms are cooled.

Yet for all the cooling devices and bits of advice floating around out
there, trying to take advantage of the cooler times of the day and run at half intensity.


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