Is heat really a poor mans altitude?

Both can kill you if there is too much.

midday kinda guy wrote:

Is there any benefit to running in the middle of the day when it is hottest as opposed to running at night when it's cooler?

Yes, though more accurately it should be called layaway altitude or payday loan altitude. In that people overpay for it due to interest and don't really enjoy the benefit of something that's become obsolete before they ever received it.

It has a lot to do with the Kenyan attitude and lifestyle, but the rest of the world is catching up now, and some Kenyans are now becoming lazy with the internet and cars and so forth. They are even becoming fat. In regards to top level athletes training in hot weather. Have you ever heard of a runner by the name of Keith Brantley? There are quite a few guys the train down there in that Florida heat. Before the 1984 Olympics Alberto Salazar would train in the middle of the day. He was often seen on the University of Florida's track doing hard track sessions in the middle of the day. Very few people know that's what led to his demise in the 1984 Olympics, basically because he was so exhausted. He couldn't handle training in the heat.

Seriously, before commenting on this thread, you should read the article below. It addresses the actual question posed by the OP, and describes evidence that there is in fact some "cross-adaptation" between heat and altitude training.

running hot wrote:

https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20792387/training-in-heat-to-prepare-for-altitude/

I still don't understand what any of this has to do with poor people.

poor people? wrote:

I still don't understand what any of this has to do with poor people.

They’re the ones who be crazy enough to train in the heat.

I read this article years ago.

It made me think we don’t really understand our bodies and how they adapt.

Stress is stress... hematocrit might just need stress of any type to go up. It doesn’t have to be a high altitude camp in some glamorous city. You might just need some mustard seed oil.

https://biology.ucsd.edu/about/news/article_041708.html

We show in this study that if you paint the skin of a mouse with this mild irritant, mustard oil, it will also trigger EPO release!

you don't need a password for this one wrote:

Seriously, before commenting on this thread, you should read the article below. It addresses the actual question posed by the OP, and describes evidence that there is in fact some "cross-adaptation" between heat and altitude training.

running hot wrote:

https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20792387/training-in-heat-to-prepare-for-altitude/

You will note in this study not only did hypoxic group improve more they also only trained at altitude. Most people are going to live at altitude also which has a larger effect. Also, the study needs to be longer. After about 10 days in heat you will stop seeing improvement, not so with altitude.

reader of a runners world post by alex wrote:

you don't need a password for this one wrote:

Seriously, before commenting on this thread, you should read the article below. It addresses the actual question posed by the OP, and describes evidence that there is in fact some "cross-adaptation" between heat and altitude training.

You will note in this study not only did hypoxic group improve more they also only trained at altitude. Most people are going to live at altitude also which has a larger effect. Also, the study needs to be longer. After about 10 days in heat you will stop seeing improvement, not so with altitude.

Moved to Hawaii from Socal and I'm gonna have to call major BS on this 10 day theory.

If heat training is so good for future performance, then why don't ANY of the top professional distance runners train in the far south where the conditions are hot and miserably humid for 5 moths out of the year. All this scientific research must have some flaws to the actual benefit, if the ideas are not being followed by any of the coaches or athletes. I understand the possible adaptations/benefits, but maybe the stress that it causes in other areas can have an overall negative effect on future performance.

Doprosknowthis wrote:

If heat training is so good for future performance, then why don't ANY of the top professional distance runners train in the far south where the conditions are hot and miserably humid for 5 moths out of the year. All this scientific research must have some flaws to the actual benefit, if the ideas are not being followed by any of the coaches or athletes. I understand the possible adaptations/benefits, but maybe the stress that it causes in other areas can have an overall negative effect on future performance.

This is also true for altitude.

Training in altitude makes can make top athletes better if they go down to lower altitude again. If you just live in high altitude you just can't develop the leg turn over needed. Unless you live in Iten and have a couple of quick training partners.

In short, I think altitude running is overrated.

Doprosknowthis wrote:

If heat training is so good for future performance, then why don't ANY of the top professional distance runners train in the far south where the conditions are hot and miserably humid for 5 moths out of the year. All this scientific research must have some flaws to the actual benefit, if the ideas are not being followed by any of the coaches or athletes. I understand the possible adaptations/benefits, but maybe the stress that it causes in other areas can have an overall negative effect on future performance.

There was another post along these lines, but I don't really think the question is whether heat training is the ideal scenario for elite (or any) runners. Clearly no one believes it is. The evidence would suggest altitude training is best. But that doesn't change the fact that a lot of nonelites run through the hot months of the summer (and Yuki). So why not look into whether heat results in adaptations that can be beneficial in cooler weather? There's a lot of evidence that suggests it does.

But, I guess, to your point, the evidence shows that running in the heat makes you better at running in the heat. However, these adaptations don't completely make up for the fact that running in the heat is really hard on the body, so although you adapt and become faster/better at running in the heat, you will still not run as fast as if it were cool. But this isn't exactly news. Everyone knows running in the heat is harder/slower. What's interesting to me, anyway, is whether training through a hot summer can results in advantageous adaptations when running in cooler weather. The evidence suggests somewhat strongly yes, but there seems to be more work to be done.

The heat is so hard on the body and makes every run very very difficult, recovery is much harder. Anecdotal, I know but I live in the South and went out West for vacation, I would get up and run in the California cool weather, I could easily get through 8M and feel fine because of the low humidity and cool temps. I would then go on and do regular vacation stuff. If I had done that at home I would have needed a long time to recover and I would have felt like garbage for most of the day.

I can easily see how if you lived there you can put in 80-100 mpw since each run doesn't tear you down so bad and kill the rest of the day. So the heat is detrimental is that it limits the amount you can train and how long it takes to get over a simply 6-8M run.

I think we can all accept that running in the heat is harder and slower and that one adapts to the heat but these adaptations don't make up for the stresses of the heat, so summer training will be harder/feel harder and therefore training times will very likely remain somewhat slower than they would in more ideal conditions.

For me, anyway, the heat isn't the limiting factor in mpw. That is, I wouldn't run more if it were cooler.

I'll run, say, 80 mpw this summer for a fall marathon. The interesting, to me, question, is this. A, I run 80 mpw in hot and humid conditions. B, I take a leave of absence and go train somewhere cooler and dry, same workout and same mileage (80 mpw). At my fall marathon, will A or B result in a better result? Or will there be no difference?

I readily acknowledge that my post is anecdotal and not empirical but there is something to be said for

real life experiences,especially when it involves an immortal like Frank Shorter.

When I was training on a regular basis with Barry Brown in Gainesville Fl. he told me that Dr. Cade

(the inventor of Gatorade) maintained that difference between Shorter winning the Gold in 1972 and the silver in 1976 was that he had trained in the heat of Fl. for the 72 marathon and then moved to and trained in Boulder in 76. Yes, we all know Cierpinski doped.

This much is shared by heat and high altitude. Oxygen density gets much lower as heat increases. The gas of the air expands to the point where it (available oxygen density) might be very similar to what you experience at altitude, only with 20 or so degrees less of Fahrenheit.

But, what are we to make of the other factors, especially the difference in heat? The difference between running at 60F and 80F is remarkable, and all the more so if that 80F is under full sun. The available oxygen density may be comparable, but the load the body is under at 80F is much greater. There is no way you can train in the same speed for any extended period of time under those conditions. In this sense, you are much better off running at altitude.

I'm not expert enough to speak to the issue of living at altitude. I can only tell you that you can do a lot more at the same oxygen density living at 6000 feet of elevation than you can living at 1500 feet of elevation with 20 more degrees of Fahrenheit hanging around. As a rule of thumb, temperature goes down by about three degrees of Fahrenheit for each 1000 feet of altitude you gain. That's not necessarily going to hold true in places as distant and different at Houston and Denver, but it gives you a little bit of an idea of how the trade-off goes.

A number of people on this thread have commented about humidity being a factor as well. Humidity is a two-edged sword. It does make some things more difficult, but a lot of people who train at high altitude/low humidity can tell you that it's actually kind of pleasant to have a run on a day where the humidity is higher or in a location where the humidity is higher. You simply don't dry out as badly. There are definitely respects in which hard breathing in moderate humidity is easier than hard breathing in low humidity.

Doprosknowthis wrote:

If heat training is so good for future performance, then why don't ANY of the top professional distance runners train in the far south where the conditions are hot and miserably humid for 5 moths out of the year. All this scientific research must have some flaws to the actual benefit, if the ideas are not being followed by any of the coaches or athletes. I understand the possible adaptations/benefits, but maybe the stress that it causes in other areas can have an overall negative effect on future performance.

Fair enough. But if heat training ISN'T good for future performance, then why do some of the Ole Miss runners I pass on the trail often (but not always) wear more than they need to, especially in the late spring when the SEC and NCAA championships are bearing down on them? This was particularly true, btw, about a decade ago when Barnabas Kirui and a handful of other Kenyans were part of the team. They'd wear full warmups and hats on days when nobody else would. My assumption was that they were trying to create heat stress as preparation for future warm-weather races.

past his prime wrote:

A number of people on this thread have commented about humidity being a factor as well. Humidity is a two-edged sword. It does make some things more difficult, but a lot of people who train at high altitude/low humidity can tell you that it's actually kind of pleasant to have a run on a day where the humidity is higher or in a location where the humidity is higher. You simply don't dry out as badly. There are definitely respects in which hard breathing in moderate humidity is easier than hard breathing in low humidity.

That said, lower humidity means more cooling during nighttime hours, meaning that morning run in low humidity is probably a significantly lower temperature than in anotherr place with higher humidity where the afternoon temperatures are comparable.

If they were training in more clothes than you'd except, that is because the SEC championships were in Arkansas, the NCAA regionals was in Florida, and the NCAA championship was in Texas. All three locations, very hot. They needed to be acclimated to the heat. I heard that Oregon did a few runs in the heat chamber spokesman they would be ready for Texas. A few runs in the heat is different than every run for months, being in those conditions.