Is heat really a poor mans altitude?

Doing it in cool weather is better. You conditions your legs and muscles, tendons etc to the higher pace that you will run in let's say a 10k pace. In hot conditions, you do the same repeats at your HM pace, which means not enough turnover, leg lift, in other words - you don't use the mechanics required to run very fast.

The aerobic benefit is the same - but the aerobic system is likely not the biggest limiter, it's your legs. Otherwise you could just cross-train like crazy like Armstrong or Phelps and be a world-class runner. The heart doesn't know if you are cycling or running, but your legs do. So you want to run to optimize the development of your legs and not just the heart.

So ideally you run in 40-60 all year round. The only exception would be if you like to race in hot conditions. Then doing training sessions in hotter weather will be significantly better.

Perfect, yeah, this is what I was trying to get at. I think the answer to this thread is no, heat is not like altitude training. You're really training through it but not making the same gains you'd make in ideal conditions. I would think you'd be at a disadvantage for a fall marathon if you're running one on the earlier side.

If you are training in the heat and very high humidity for long periods of time, it can be very draining and much harder to recover from. Yeah, once it’s cooler and less humid, you’ll run faster, but not because you’re better trained from the oppressive conditions you were training in for months, it’s just you’re finally running in favorable weather. It’s hard to put in solid weeks of training when it takes much longer to recover from workouts. I do agree that if your key race is in the heat and humidity, then you need to acclimate to it. There’s a reason why many of the top sprinters train in The south, but the distance runners train in the cooler states.

Very true what you said. But about the sprinters, it's actually proven that sprinters run faster in warmer conditions than in cooler. 100&200m sprinters actually prefer temperatures to be in 68-85F range (with low to average humidity), whereas distance runners would like to see them around 50F.

Many sprinters and even 400 and 800m runners even wear heavy clothing on days with like 60F instead of singlet and shorts like distance runners, to make them feel warmer.

OK this is not based on any science just my own thinking and opinions and many years of experience.

Altitude and heat are not the same thing but both are "stress". One of the limiting factors in distance running is overheating. So if you can start to adapt to heat then the body in turn shouldn't overheat as much and thus you should be stronger in races. That and there is a certain amount of mental strength you can gain from training in heat. I am not suggesting that you should be training in heat all day every day.

Yes. You are absolutely right about the reason sprinters train in the south. Plus, more of an injury risk for the sprinter, when running in cooler weather.

I train in the South Eastern part of the US. Training wise, it is a lot harder in the summer. In the winter time, I can go all day at a 7-8 minute pace without breaking a sweat. Now just getting 60 minutes easy is hard. In February I did a 10 miler, went through 10k in 36 minutes and finished in 58 minutes. Recently did a 10k, finished in 38 minutes. There is this one hilly route I run quite often. In the winter time I'll finish 10 miles easy in 70-75 minutes. Now in the summer time, the same route, I'm lucky to finish under 80 minutes. So yeah, it really sucks. Though as soon as it cools down, my easy 8:00-8:30 minute miles magic get faster by a minute or more. Just a matter of putting my head down and grinding it out and reminding myself I haven't lost fitness. It's just hot and humid. Also, training with the Sun down helps a lot. I see why Mark Nenow ran at night.

I live in Phoenix. Training in the summer definitely reduces my quality speed work. I can't hit the paces I need to on long hard marathon specific workouts. I agree with Yuki on this one. I'm sure there are some benefits. But the muscuookekeletal fitness definitely is harder to get because of environmental limitations.

Hardloper wrote:

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?

No, other than some mental benefit which is maxed out after a couple workouts. Train in the morning or evening when it's cooler. The benefits from altitude come from living there 24/7, not specifically training in tough conditions.

While there may be no benefit, in order for a stimulus to have a mental benefit it would take months, if not years to program the brain to accept the new normal.

And at least in response to the trendy Central Governor Theory of performance, training the brain isnot something to take lightly.

different stimuli wrote:

The sources of cardiovascular stress are different. When you run at altitude, the partial pressure of oxygen is low, forcing your body to adapt to become better at transporting oxygen, primarily by increasing the production of red blood cells. This adaptation makes you better at running.

When you run in the heat, blood is being circulated to the surface of your skin for thermoregulation. Basically, your circulatory system works like a radiator, carrying heat from your muscles out to the surface where it can dissipate. Your heart has to work harder to move more blood so that this can happen, but as far as I know there is no stimulus actually forcing your body to become significantly better at carrying oxygen.

I agree: different sources of stress. But I believe that humidity, combined with heat, serves as the "stimulus actually forcing your body to become significantly better at carrying oxygen."

We all know that the difference between, say, 82 degrees and dry, on the one hand, and 82 and muggy, on the other, is huge. The stress difference on the body is huge. Why is that?

My hunch is that the humidity, water vapor dissolved in the warm air you're breathing, displaces a certain amount of oxygen. It lowers the effective oxygen level in the air.

The humidity in cool, humid air doesn't place a stress on your heart--or at least I've never noticed that stress. But warm humid air clearly IS worse.

The other possibility, of course, is that the stress-effect created by humidity in warm temperatures has nothing to do with oxygen displacement and everything to do with the way in which that humidity makes is harder for sweat to evaporate, creating a cooling (i.e., overheating) problem, not a lack-of-full-oxygen problem.

Here are some older threads on the effect of heat on training:

https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-8687477133452597%3Ay2r7jtxdt15&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=summer+heat&sa=

Is it really expensive to live at altitude?

Here's a thread from three years ago in which I speculated on the deadly triad: heat, humidity, and radiant sun:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7508291

KudzuRunner wrote:

Here's a thread from three years ago in which I speculated on the deadly triad: heat, humidity, and radiant sun:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7508291

Reminds me of when I lived in Texas.

Yes, that is why all the runners from Florida dominate Pikes Peak. Miami is better known as Everest base camp 2.

Heat shock protein!!!!!!

Purely anecdotal, but I feel like I’ve outperformed my peers in fall marathons after having trained all summer in Central Florida. The race day bump is just huge. I’ve also outperformed then at Boston when it was hot on race day, but that’s just being better adapted to heat, not necessarily the benefit of increased blood plasma from training in Florida.

The flip side is that it does beat the heck out of you to train in combined temps and dew points that exceed 160 on basically a daily basis for months. But it’s kind of like collegiate kids who end up at high mileage programs: the ones that don’t crack seem to excel.

deer commenters, is letsrun hivemind update? thinking about whether the phrase jumped the shark has jumped the shark and more generally about whether any letsrun commenters have done any reading or even any thinking about the thing theyre commenting on may well be a zero sum game.

for the OP, and guys like smoove, HRE, and Kudzu, who seem to enjoy using their brains,

heres a decent overview of some of the ways in which heat training may be quite a bit like altitude training, and some of the ways it probably isn't:

https://www.outsideonline.com/2337621/heat-therapy-performance-research

consider the following excerpt:

"Last year, three elite steeplechasers visited Minson’s lab three or four times a week to soak in a 105-degree hot tub for roughly 40 minutes, hoping the heat would help sustain the elevated red-blood-cell levels they’d developed during altitude training in Flagstaff, Arizona. Blood tests suggested the approach worked."

id say yes its similar to altitude.

on a hot day at sea level, the air will be more flocculent, or less dense causing less oxygen intake

its like flying a small piston powered airplane... performance decreases on a hot day, causing the takeoff distance to increase, climb performance to decrease etc. this is caused by a less dense charge of air being able to enter the cylinder for combustion.