Heat Mitigation Strategies with Julien Périard, PhD #229

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Trail and ultra runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe coop cast.
As always, I am your humblehost, coach jason coop, and this
episode of the podcast iscoming to you at a very special
time.
It is the mond Monday beforethe famous, the historic Western
States Endurance Run, and I canthink of no better topic to

(00:29):
discuss than how to race in theheat and what interventions we
should actually use when we areracing in the heat.
Regardless if you are one ofthe lucky ones that is towing
the line for this year's WesternStates 100, or if you are
training for another hot weatherrace, you are going to want to
listen up, because on thepodcast today, back for his

(00:49):
second appearance is JulianPerriard, who is a research
professor and deputy director ofthe University of Canberra
Research Institute for Sport andExercise, where he is also the
lead of their environmentalphysiology research laboratory.
Julian comes back on the podcasttoday to discuss very
specifically how and whatinterventions do we actually use

(01:12):
when there is a hot weatherenvironment in front of us,
which ones of these work, whichone of these don't work so well,
and how do they actually workdifferently?
Julian is one of the foremostexperts in this type.
On this particular subject,he's worked with the Australian
Institute for Sport,international federations such
as FIFA, world athletics andworld triathlons.

(01:34):
He also examines how regularexercise can be built as a
resilience tool against risingglobal temperatures.
He's authored over 125 researchpapers, book chapters,
including a textbook on heatstress in sport and exercise,
and the paper that we are goingto use as a framework for

(01:55):
today's discussion is a free,open access paper, the link to
which will be in the show notes.
The title of it is ExerciseUnder Heat Stress,
thermoregulation, hydration,performance Implications and
Mitigation Strategies.
It is a great one.
It's a dense one, with over1,000 cited papers in it, but if
you are interested in thistopic, go and check that out.

(02:17):
This podcast pairs very wellwith the first podcast that I
did with Julian, which I willalso link up in the show notes,
the focus of which was more howto use acclimation and
acclimatization strategies inorder to prepare for the heat.
So if you want the wholeshebang, check that podcast out
as well as this podcast, whichis very specifically focused on

(02:39):
what to do when it's hot.
Should you take an ice bath?
Where should you put ice?
Do these menthol gel works?
Should you use an ice slurry?
Should you cut holes in yourshirt?
What about these silly littleheadbands that everybody's
wearing?
We go through it all and I hopethat at the end of the day,
everybody has a great toolkitfor how to actually race and

(03:01):
perform in the heat.
And with that out of the way, Iam getting right out of the way.
Here's my conversation allabout how to race in the heat
with the incomparable JulianPerriard.
Thanks for coming back on thepodcast.
By the way, pleasure pleasure.
Yeah, I'm always reminded it'syour winter but our summer.
So I don't know whether this islike a hot quote, unquote hot

(03:22):
topic for you, because all thenorth american countries are
kind of going through the summer.
The northern hemispherecountries are starting to go
through their summer review.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's kind of the opposite that's right, it's cool
, so it's not necessarily a hottopic.
But given it's an olympic yearand the olympics are starting
very soon, it's definitely a hottopic.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Obviously, pun intended and the endurance
events at the olympics, not todeviate too far from far from
what we're going to talk about.
It has the potential toactually be kind of warm there.
I mean it's July, it's in Paris, it's in the middle of the city
.
Those are challengingenvironments for sure.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Oh, absolutely yeah.
Yeah, and, as you probably knowas well, Europe kind of
typically gets one heat wave peryear as well.
So those heat waves now aregetting more frequent, more
severe, more intense, a bitlonger.
So you know, God forbid thatthere's a heat wave during the
Olympics.
But yeah, Paris could be hot.
It's always a chance.
It's July, middle of summer, soit will be hot.
But just how hot it will be is,I guess, the question there?

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, exactly, and ironically enough, I got a
chance to actually run the Parismarathon course when I was out
there earlier in the year, andit's hard, it's a hard marathon
course.
So I think you combine, likethe invite, the potential
environment with a really hardcourse and then it creates a
really dynamic racingenvironment yeah, absolutely,
especially if it's hard.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
You know the athletes are producing a lot of heat.
It's harder they get hot.
The environment is lessconducive to losing heat.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah well, yeah, so it'll be interesting we'll see,
we'll see there's some time forthat to materialize.
But so we're gonna talk about,we're gonna talk about ultra,
yeah Well, yeah, so it'd beinteresting.
It's going to be a relativelyhot year.
It'll be probably in the low90s.
That will continue to shake outbetween when we record this and

(05:08):
when we actually post it, butthere aren't going to be a lot
of freebies, as there have beenin the past, where the
temperatures are actually quitea little bit cooler.
So we're going to talk aboutheat mitigation strategies, kind
of.
In that context, in aprototypical ultramarathon
context, what can athletes doduring the race itself?
What interventions can theyundertake to make sure that,

(05:31):
first off, they're safe butsecond off, they can maximize
performance?
Because in a lot of theseultramarathons you do have to
take it from a safety firstperspective because the
conditions can be so arduous andyou're out there for so long.
Right, it's not surelyperformance that we're talking
about?

Speaker 2 (05:46):
That's right.
Yeah, yes, I mean, you have tosurvive the course first of all,
and if it's hot then it makesit even worse.
So, yeah, definitely you haveto be prepared, and I think one
of the things as well, they comedown to the race organizers.
So how well prepared the raceorganizers are to provide the
resources to the athletesthroughout the course and at
what interval, and so forth.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Interesting.
You mentioned that I had thisgreat conversation with the race
director, craig Thornley,before the last hot year, which
I believe was 2001, not 2000,sorry, 2021.
And he had just ordered thiswas the Thursday or Wednesday
before the race another grip ofice.

(06:28):
And we did the roughcalculations there and it turned
out that he was, or that onaverage he was, ordering over 40
pounds of ice per athlete todisperse throughout all the aid
stations.
So I mean, they take itseriously and they do.
You know, I think that's areally great example where the
race directors are trying totake care of the health and
safety of the athletes.
They're not thinking about itfrom the necessarily, from the

(06:50):
perspective of all we want tomake sure that the course record
is broken or anything like that.
They're literally trying tokeep people safe and part of the
part of the strategy thatthey're deploying to try to keep
people safe is just to have asmuch ice out on the course as
possible.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
That's right, yeah, and it's an interesting one as
well, because I meanlogistically just ordering all
the ice and you need to producethat ice, you need to move it,
you need to, you know, to put itall through the course.
So if you parallel that withthe olympics, for example, where
you have multiple events goingon over several days, like can
you imagine logistically theamount of ice they need to
produce different locations?
So yeah, but in terms of yeah,it's what which also

(07:25):
demonstrates the importance ofice itself as a medium to kind
of cool people down throughoutdifferent events even.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Well, we're going to talk about ice and a lot of
different strategies.
We're going to talk aboutingesting ice.
We're going to talk aboutcarrying ice on your body where
you should use it and thingslike that.
But I would be remiss to bringyou on the podcast and not
discuss something that's kind oflike more powerful in all of
this, and I hate to talk aboutthis so close to, or have this
podcast be released so close tothe race, but we still have to

(07:53):
mention it.
Right?
We're going to talk about a lotof things that people can do
during the race itself in thetoolbox, the bigger hammer that
you should be using to getprepared for a hot weather race,
or acclimatization andacclimation types of strategies,
and I want you to paint thepicture of the magnitude of how

(08:13):
important those are in the wholething before we start to get to
the specific race stuff.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, sure, and you're right, I think
acclimation and acclimatizationare probably the most important
things to do.
So just a quick definition, Iguess.
So acclimatization is areprobably the most important
things to do.
So just a quick definition, Iguess so.
Acclimatization is adapting tothe environment, to the outdoor
environment.
So athletes that train on aregular basis in hot
environments or throughoutsummer.
So if you have a cold winterand then get into spring, you
acclimatize to summer as youtrain throughout summer, whereas

(08:41):
acclimation is more artificial.
So you go into a heat chamber,if you have access to a heat
chamber, or you jump into a hotbath after you're running
outside in cool conditions.
So it's more artificial.
But what both of them do isinduce adaptations that are a
bit more specific, I guess, or Iguess they're adaptations that
improve physiological function.
So if we think of heatacclimation relative to heat

(09:02):
mitigation strategies likecooling or hydration, those are
more acute.
They're in the moment, they'rein the race and if it's
available for you you can use it, you can cool down or you can
drink, whereas heat acclimationkind of helps you adapt to that
hot environment.
So it helps your stomachregulate better, so you start
sweating at an earlier coretemperature.
Your core temperature is lowerto start with, you might sweat

(09:25):
more.
If you reach your maximum sweatrate, your sweating sensitivity
is improved.
So for a given core temperatureyou might sweat a bit more.
So obviously sweating isimportant, especially in hot
conditions.
Well, primarily in hotconditions, because if the
conditions, so if the ambientair, for example, is hotter than
our skin temperature, then theonly avenue by which we lose
heat is by sweating.

(09:45):
Because the two main mechanismsare sweating and convection.
So if it's, if your skintemperature in celsius is 35
degrees and it's 30 degreesoutside, then you have a
negative gradient so you canlose heat by convection, with
that's the air going throughover the body and kind of
removing some of the heat.
But the opposite is true.
You can gain heat by airmovement if air temperature is

(10:07):
hotter.
So at that point, once again,sweating becomes very important.
But regardless, sweating isalways the primary mechanism.
So with heat acclimation itimproves.
That improves your blood volumeand your plasma volume, so
you're you can sweat more,improves your cardiovascular
stability, so you can maintainyour heart rate at a lower rate
for longer in the heat.
Because when we exercise in theheat obviously we send blood to

(10:30):
the periphery, to the skin, tolose heat.
We also need to keep sendingblood, obviously to the muscles,
because they need oxygen tokind of keep turning over.
So there's that competition, soto speak, for blood flow.
So with heat acclimation you getthose physiological adaptations
to be able to maintain, I guess, your cardiovascular stability,
heart rate a bit lower by doingthat as well.
Your perception of effort is abit lower.

(10:51):
If your core and skintemperature are lower, your
thermal perception, so yourperception of the environment is
better.
So it's obviously thoseperceptual adaptations, those
physiological adaptations thatare induced with heat
acclimation.
So if you do that and then yougo into a hot race, then you're
obviously a step ahead of thecompetition.
Then if you can use those othermitigation strategies so

(11:12):
maintain proper hydration,obviously, eating well, and then
endurance races, obviously veryimportant, but also potentially
pre and cooling during If youcan combine all those things
then you're in an ideal scenario.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
I'm really glad that you just mentioned the all of
the above piece because, not tobelabor the point too much, on
the acclimatization andacclimation strategies, but
there is a menu of things thatathletes can choose from.
There's passive strategies,there are active strategies,
there are combinations of boththe passive and the active
strategies, and coaches andathletes and physiologists have

(11:47):
always kind of gone back andforth to what is quote, unquote,
the best, you know the best wayto do it, and there really is
no one single best one.
It's all very situational,depending upon what the athlete
is actually going to experience.
One thing that I always comeaway with all of this is that I
want to kind of like finallyfinally touch on, before we go

(12:09):
to the all the duringinterventions that we're going
to talk about, is that,irrespective of how you are
actually trying to acclimate theathlete to a hot environment,
it's not your prototypicalendurance adaptation where it
takes weeks and months andsometimes years to reap a
benefit.
We have this kind of likelocked in our heads as endurance
athletes, specifically not teamsports athletes, but endurance

(12:31):
athletes.
It takes months and months andmonths to create an adaptation
from a physiological perspective.
Most of the things that arehappening when we put athletes
in these hot weatherenvironments actually happen on
the order of several or maybe adozen or 20 or so days, and that
tends to trip up a lot ofathletes when they're actually
trying to trying to prepare forthis.
And I was wondering if you hadany kind of like commentary

(12:52):
around that that you could throwinto the mix here oh,
absolutely, and that's a greatpoint.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
And I think there's two things there.
The one is the, I guess, thedifferent approaches that you
could use to heat acclimate, andthen the time frame that you
acclimate.
Based on what you know,laboratory settings are deemed
as being the optimal way.
So first of all, there'sdifferent ways, and you're
absolutely right.
So, like it's, the twoclassical ways are kind of you
jump into on a bike or on atreadmill in the lab and you do

(13:19):
the constant work rate orconstant speed approach.
So I say, okay, I do vo2 maxtest and I find out my VO2 max
is whatever and then, atrelative speed of that 65% of my
VO2 max, let's say 12K an hourI jump on a treadmill and I run
at 12K an hour for 60, 90minutes per day and I do that
for 10 to 14 days.
So that's the recommendation.
So, if you do something, 60, 90minutes a day, 10 to 14 days in

(13:42):
hot conditions Again, I keepreferring to Celsius, but
roughly 40 degrees and 40%humidity.
So just over a hundred degrees,that's hot, 40% humidity.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, it's hot, it's really hot.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's the point, right,you want to induce adaptations,
so you want to sweat a lot, youwant to increase your skin blood
flow and you want to increaseyour heart rate and your core
temperature and your skintemperature.
So if you induce kind of thoseresponses, then you will adapt
and you want to get to thatpoint and then maintain it.
So that's one approach, soexercising at a constant speed.

(14:12):
The other one is a self-pacedapproach.
You could do the same thingagain, thinking of an
environmental chamber, forexample.
You jump on there and you justdo intervals or you just run how
you feel.
Another one is just passive,right, if you don't have access
to an environmental chamber, youcan just jump into a hot bath.
That's completely passive, soyou don't even have to exercise.
If you jump into a hot bathagain, 40 degrees, 42 degrees,

(14:36):
just over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and you want to I'm not
exactly sure of the conversion,but given that our core
temperature, again in Celsius,is around at rest, you know, 37
degrees you don't want your bathto be just slightly above that.
You don't want 37 or 38 or 39.
You want to go 40, 41 if youcan tolerate it for a good 40
minutes or so to increase againyour core temp, to sweat and so

(14:59):
forth.
So that's the passive approach.
But the other one is if youdon't have access to an
environmental chamber and it'scool where you are you can just
do your run outside.
You're still going to sweat,you'll increase your core
temperature a little bit, butthen when you come home you jump
into a hot bath again 20, 30minutes, same kind of
temperature, and that'll inducesome adaptations.
Another one is by controllingyour core temperature, which is

(15:20):
a bit more logisticallychallenging because you need a
way of measuring your coretemperature and typically it's
increasing that to 38.5, againdegrees Celsius and then you
maintain that for about an hour.
And then one that's similar andless logistically challenging
is by a heart rate.
So if you go into a hot roomand you start running, obviously

(15:42):
you have to get to the heartrate you want to achieve.
But then you just maintain thatheart rate and you'll find,
let's say, you do 10 days ofacclimation at a controlled
heart rate.
You'll find that you'll have tolower your heart rate in your
first session quite a bit.
So you'll have to lower yourrunning speed to maintain a
given heart rate when you'rerunning in the heat.
But then in the last session,you'll find that, for the same

(16:03):
heart rate, you'll find that forthe same heart rate, you lower
your heart, your speed, muchlater on in the session and much
, much less.
So that's the adaptation.
So you'll get the same heartrate, actually the same core
temperature, but you'll berunning at a higher speed, which
will be associated also withprobably a higher sweat rate, so
you're losing more heat.
So there's all those differentadaptations.
And to come back to what'soptimal, well, really what's

(16:25):
optimal is what you can do,right, what you have available
to you logistically, financially, in terms of where you are, in
terms of environment, and that'swhat we try to do with elite
athletes.
Because elite athletes, let'ssay in the lab, again I would
say, while 14 days in the lab,90 minutes a day, cycling or
running at 65% of your vo2 maxor whatever the intervention is,

(16:46):
obviously athletes have quitesignificant not significant, but
quite regimented trainingprograms, right?
So if I'm going to tell anathlete, finish your 14 day
acclimations, three days out ofyour or four days out of your
race, they're going to be like,well, I don't think so.
Yeah, I've got specifictraining planned.
So for the ultra distanceathletes, athletes, as well as
for Olympic and high levelathletes well, again, the

(17:07):
training is very regimented.
So I would recommend and we'vepublished a little bit on this
kind of adapting that and doingbasically your best to integrate
heat into your training program, because one of the things you
need to remember as well is likeyes, heat acclimation is
probably the most importantintervention you can do, but if
that messes up your training,you don't get the training right

(17:27):
, then there's no point ofacclimating.
I could be the most acclimatedperson in the world, but if I'm
not running well, what's thepoint?
Right, I'm not going tocomplete 100 miles if I'm
running 20K a week, but I'msuper acclimated, right.
So get the training right andthen try to incorporate that as
best you can.
So you right, and then try toincorporate that as best you can
.
So you can even go out threemonths before or two months

(17:48):
before.
You can start doing one or twoheat sessions a day and then
maybe, in a period where youknow you have less of a focus on
intensity, you can do a fewmore sessions in the heat, so
you can kind of build it up andnot do those 14 days in a row
but do two or three a week andthen have a set, have a week
where you do a few more and dosome top-ups.
So kind of putting it here andthere where it fits and then
using the approach that fitsyour circumstances.

(18:11):
I guess is the recommendation Iwould provide to athletes,
especially if they don't haveaccess to the university lab or
something like that.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, your point about access is actually really
well taken, and then also thepoint about trying not to mess
it up right in advance of anevent because you are trying to
be relatively regimented.
I'm going to link up in theshow notes a couple of articles
that I've written on this interms of describing how we
actually do this verypractically with athletes.
And it kind of boils down totwo phase protocol, where we do

(18:41):
one phase, as you werementioning, a few months or
several weeks out from the event, and then we do the final phase
a little bit closer and maybeit's a little bit less intense
because you're trying to balanceall of the recovery and stuff
like that.
But it brings in all of thesepractical elements into the kind
of what we know about research.
So we won't belabor the pointthere.
I'll leave a like I said I'llleave some resources there, okay

(19:04):
, so it's going to be hot forWestern States.
One of the things I initiallywant to point out here is that
we know a lot about aboutcooling strategies during
endurance events.
But our primary, the primaryreason that we that we know a
lot about this goes back to whatwe're talking about earlier.
It's the Olympic cycle.
So whenever there's a hot you,a hot Olympics whether it's Rio

(19:27):
or the Atlanta Olympics orthings like that everybody gets
super interested in this and allthe teams and the national
governing bodies start to pour alot of resources into it.
And research emerges in heatmitigation strategies that are
intended for Olympic durationevents and heat mitigation

(19:49):
strategies that you might usefrom an ultra distance
perspective.
These Olympic events are, youknow, a couple hours long
traditional marathon or maybeeven a sprint triathlon or
something like that.
But then when you get intoraces that are 15, 16, 18, 20
hours long, or even the badwater ultraathon or something
like that, where you'reconstantly exposed to a hot

(20:09):
weather environment, thestrategies you use might
actually change, and thestrategies that you see deployed
in a 40 kilometer time trial orsomething like that actually
can have the potential tobackfire.
And the thing that I initiallywant to start to point out with
this is something that youmentioned earlier is there are
two types of, there are twotypes of things that you're

(20:30):
basically working on.
Right, you're working on yourperception of the thermal strain
.
Right, your thermal comfort,and there are strategies that
you can use to improve that.
And then you are actuallyworking on physiologically
controlling your coretemperature, that, and then you
are actually working onphysiologically controlling your
core temperature using thingsto just make sure that your body

(20:52):
is, like, literally notoverheating.
And there are overlaps betweenstrategies that can kind of do
both, or maybe they do a littlebit more, a little bit one or
the other, but there aredefinitely strategies that only
kind of do one or only doanother one.
And so, before we kind of jumpinto all of them, I just wanted
to get your perspective on that,on this kind of like
bifurcation of strategiesbetween things that are intended
or mainly work through ourperception of the heat and then

(21:16):
things that are truly focused oncontrolling core temperature,
and what are the pluses andminuses of both of those?

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah, that's a good point and that's exactly right
as well.
I mean, you know, if you jumpinto a cold bath, well, that'll
do both.
Right, you'll definitely getmuch cooler and you'll
definitely feel a lot cooler,right, and one of the things
that we've talked about as wellbefore is menthol.
Whereas menthol does not coolyou down, it gives you the
perception of feeling cool.
So there's two very distinctand different things.

(21:44):
There are differentphysiological responses
happening.
One, there's nothingphysiological that's happening
other than, obviously, neuronsfiring in the skin or, if you're
swallowing menthol, telling youthat you feel cool but you're
not cooling down whatsoever.
Whereas this, if you use eyeslurry ingestion or things like
that, or even again, cold waterimmersion, then you will get
that physiological response.
So it's probably, as youmentioned, kind of finding a way

(22:11):
that, if you have access toseveral of these things, how you
can use them in combination toget the, I guess, the ideal or
the optimal benefit from thosethings at different points in
the race.
And I think you highlight a verygood point about an ultra
distance race which lasts a lotlonger than any event in the
Olympics, even the 50K race walk, for example, where actually
they're quite good.
Actually, the race walkers atusing strategies, because

(22:32):
oftentimes it's a small loop andthey can come back and get a
slushie or get something to coolthemselves down, but, yes,
using it in different points inthe race.
And another thing we talkedabout just offline before we
started is about those ultradistance races and Western
States.
You know you start off in themorning, it's a bit cooler, so
you know, do you really need acooling strategy there and then?

(22:53):
But yeah, throughout the race,if you get a bit lower altitude
afterwards, then maybe you startneeding a bit of cooling
strategies, which also help,depending on which one you use
can help with hydration, whichis factor as well.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Right, well, and I think some of the something that
the listeners are probablythinking and I'm thinking this
as well is that with some of thestrategies like we'll just take
menthol as an example not topick on it, but it's a fairly
well studied strategy now and,as you mentioned, what you're
doing is you're essentiallytricking your body into thinking

(23:24):
that it's cooler.
Let's just call spade a spaderight, it's not actually cooler.
You're just tricking your bodyinto thinking that it's cooler
and that can be really effectivein like a 40K time trial right,
Because it's a finite amount oftime.
You can run the engine reallyhot.
You can get to a super highcore temperature for a very
short period of time, but thatis limiting.
Some people are thinking.

(23:45):
In my question specifically, isthere a risk of using those
types of strategies in a longerdistance event because you are
going to potentially overridethis mechanism that you should
have in place of overheating?
Is that a real risk that peopleneed to start to think about
when they're designing theirstrategies?

Speaker 2 (24:07):
That's a good point, and I think you see that quite
often in the literature.
But I then there may be someliterature, but I've never seen
anything that suggests that ifyou put menthol on and you feel
cooler, that you're going tohave a dramatic increase in core
temperature.
Because one of the things weneed to remember as well is that
even that menthol doesn'tactually do anything
physiologically, there are somephysiological limits to

(24:29):
performance, right?
So if you're doing a time trialand you're on the limit and you
put menthol on, you might feelcooler and you might increase
your work rate a little bit, butif you're on that limit, you're
not going to increase it forvery long, right?
Or else your heart rate isgoing to start going through the
roof and at some point you'regoing to have to slow down.
So there's that.
And then the other one is howlong those effects last.
So if you do have, if you takementhol, either you put on your

(24:51):
skin, you have it as a gel orwhatever the case may be, and
you feel cooler and you do havethat little surge in running
speed or power output on thebike again, how long does it
last?
And then do you have tocompensate for that afterwards.
You know, if you're on the, ifyou're redlining and you kind of
go in a bit I mean, obviouslyyou would be redlining an ultra
distance race, but in like a 40ktime trial, for the example he
provided if you're running, go abit too fast, then you might

(25:12):
have to compensate and go a bitslower, then kind of catch back
up, and how long does thateffect last?
So there's all those things Ithink that still need to kind of
be investigated, and the thingwith many or most cooling
strategies, as well as thelength of the effect.
Right, and we did ameta-analysis just recently and
I can send you a link if you'reinterested and we looked at
there's two types of exerciseyou can do in the lab, right,

(25:33):
like the constant load stuff andthe self-paced stuff.
So I say, okay, exercise at aconstant work rate, so run for
15 at 15k an hour and then we'llsee what your react, what your
responses are.
Or I say, complete a 30k tontrial or a 15k ton trial running
.
Then we see that there's moreof an effect on the constant
load trials than the self-pacedtrials, primarily, well, because

(25:55):
of two reasons.
One, they're mostly shorter.
So the shorter the event, themore the effect, right.
So if you're cooler, given thatyou know we're going to run or
cycle for 30 minutes, then thateffect obviously will be more
powerful.
But if you're doing 60, 90minutes, then obviously that
effect relative to the distanceis not as important.
There's also probably theeffect of work rate.
So if I say, go at a constantspeed, well, your work rate is

(26:17):
fixed, your heat production isfixed.
But if I say, do a time trial,you're probably going to start
at a much higher work rate andthen you'll decrease.
But given that you're producinga lot of heat from the
beginning, then that effect ofthe cooling allows that.
But then you also heat up morequickly.
So there's all those kind ofcaveats.
So if you're doing like a12-hour race, well, obviously it
doesn't really matter if thefirst 30 minutes you feel a bit

(26:38):
cooler because you still have togo quite longer.
So that's where I guess thepoint comes in about using those
different strategies throughoutthe race, if it does get a bit
hotter.
So in terms of to come back tocircle back to your point about
health and safety there may bethat effect of and it's been
highlighted that, yes, if youfeel cooler you might push
harder and get more hyperthermic, but I've never seen evidence

(26:59):
of that.
Because I just think that theresponse is so transient and, if
anything, your physiologicalresponses will be like actually,
well time, well time out,you're going to do quick here.
You can't hold that pace, let'sslow down, kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah, it's interesting because I recognize
the transient nature of the veryquick, you know nature of those
types of interventions.
I just think about it almostfrom a performance standpoint
where if you have all of theselike inputs that are lasting for
a short period of time, usuallythe disruption in that steady
state activity that you'rehaving, those small disruptions,

(27:31):
end up being a net negative tothis constant what.
What ends up?
Even though it's a self-pacedactivity, it's a pretty constant
workload because you can onlygo so hard for these long
periods of time, and that's whatyou want as well.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Right when you're, you want to maintain it steady,
yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah, and so sometimes I think that these
very specific, uh, narrowlyfocused, transient types of
interventions end up doingathletes a disservice because
they cause this undulation andoutput.
That's an I think statementthat we just raised my hand
there, but it makes sense to mewhen I'm trying to piece all of

(28:06):
this together from a practicalstandpoint.
Trying to advise athletes onwhat to do is I'll always
default to what creates the moreconsistent, stable situation.
What are the interventions thatkeep homeostasis in place as
much as possible, versus causing, you know, rapid disruptions
unless you need the rapiddisruption, and we might talk
about that almost from anabortive standpoint right, yeah,

(28:29):
if you see the finish line andyou're not doing well, pop some
menthol and you can sprint.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
There you go, different scenario, okay.
So let's start out with some ofthe nutrition ones.
So the things that you caningest right versus put on you.
We already talked about mentholingesting.
Either a cold beverage or andor.

(28:54):
You can do both.
It's not none of none of it,it's not, they're not mutually
exclusive and an ice slurrybeverage, and it's been really
interesting to me, and I'm suremore interesting to you, to see
how this is actually like playedout in the theater of sport, in
terms of how, how much thesedifferent interventions have
actually been used, of how muchthese different interventions
have actually been used.

(29:14):
And at Western States we'll seethe range.
We will see people that go tothe gas station that's right
around the corner from thecourse and grab a slushy right,
grab a high fructose corn syrupSlurpee from the gas station and
bring it out to their runners.
And then we will seedeliberately designed,
commercially available sportsnutrition products that are

(29:36):
intended to be consumed in atype of slushy format.
You'll see that whole range ofsophistication, for lack of a
better word, and so I waswondering.
So, out of these cold drinksand then ice slurry types of
beverages, let's set the table alittle bit on how they can
actually work and then whichones might be a better choice
for athletes in this type ofrace.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah, well, I guess both are from a certain
perspective, or both are prettyuseful because one they have the
potential to to cool you down,I guess, depending on the the
temperature of the beverage, orat least cool you down or
potentially attenuate the riseor record temperature and
maintain it there.
So some of them might not coolyou down if it's not too cold.
And the flip side of that is itprovides hydration, right, and

(30:16):
it's a medium to stay hydratedand potentially have some
electrolytes in there if youhave sodium, for example, or
even glucose and carbohydratesif you need them.
So it's kind of a good bang forbuck if it can cool you down,
provide you some nutrition atthe same time.
But there's different, I guess,potential for cooling or
different cooling power between,obviously ingesting cold water

(30:37):
and ingesting a slurry.
So cold water would besomething to the effect of 10
degrees to 24 degrees, whereas aslurry is zero degrees, right,
so it's cool.
So the effect of the slurry isa lot more potent in terms of
cooling you down or attenuatingyour rise in core temperature,
because you have to convert,you're not just heating up fluid

(30:58):
or water, but you have toconvert ice into water and then
you're kind of heating that up.
So I guess the conversion ofice to water is three times more
powerful in terms of coolingthan just warming up water.
So that's why those slurriesare much more effective at kind
of cooling you down.
And there's different ways ofusing that.
You can use it in terms ofpre-cooling and then you can use

(31:20):
it in terms of per cooling ormid cooling or cooling during a
race.
So you can use that.
And again, we use cooling interms of a description of it but
doesn't necessarily cool youdown right.
If you're gonna go, if you'redoing a race and you take a
slurry, you'd have to ingestquite a bit for it to kind of
cool you down.
But what it might do is itmight maintain your core
temperature stable or prevent itfrom rising.

(31:42):
We've done an interventionbefore where we used it for
pre-cooling.
So we used I can't remember howmuch ice we provided.
It was like 8 to 12 grams perkilogram of body mass and you
ingested that within half anhour.
12 grams per kilogram of bodymass and you ingested that
within half an hour.
So let's say you're 60, 60kilos, um, and it's 10.
So you'd have to ingest 600grams of ice in 30 minutes and

(32:02):
we were like rotating coldtowels on the shoulders and the
legs for half an hour and it'snot super fun, right, because I
mean yeah and then they havethat on it and it cooled core
temp by 0.2 or 0.3, which is nota ton.
It's not a big yes, it's not abig decrease.
But then if you go outafterwards and you do your
warm-up, well then you're backto your normal core temp.
You might be a bit lower thanyou would be normally if you had

(32:24):
done a normal warm-up, but it'snot a massive reduction in core
temperature.
But still, if it makes you feela bit cooler and your event is
shorter and you have to producea lot of heat or produce a lot
of speed at the beginning, wellthen that might be helpful.
But there's definitely two waysor two kind of pathways of
doing that before, during ortogether.
Really.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Some people have heard that the ice slurry
solution interferes with yoursweat mechanism, somehow blunts
your sweat response somehow, andI wanted you to enlighten the
audience of, first off, thecontext of that, like the
research context of that,because you know, you know that
very well but then also bring itinto a practical perspective

(33:06):
where an athlete is actuallycompeting in a real event,
outside a lab.
Is that you know where I'mgoing with this, and is that
something that we need amaterial.
This is something that we needto materially take into
consideration that's right.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
So we have.
We have receptors, obviously,in our mouth and in our guts, in
our gut, I guess.
So if you drink really coldbeverages, it's the same thing
as those as the, to a certaindegree as the menthol, right.
So the menthol triggers thosecold receptors, as does cold
fluid or ice slurry.
So when you ingest that, oneparticular study showed that,
yes, it can kind of cool youdown or at least attenuate the

(33:39):
rise in core temperature.
But in hot and dry conditionsit kind of lowered sweat rate to
a certain degree or sweatoutput, so attenuated, I guess,
evaporative heat loss to acertain degree.
But I guess what you to comeback to your point about
practicality what you have tobalance then is how transient
that reduction or that smallreduction in sweat rate might be
relative to the benefit ofattenuating your rise in core

(34:03):
temperature and also consumingfluids again.
So, to come back to my pointbefore, you're still consuming
fluids to a certain degree, butthat will hydrate you.
So it's kind of balancing thatout, because one important side
note as well is with dehydration, severe dehydration.
So if you lose, you know, inexcess of five, six, seven
percent of your body mass, thatwill have a significant impact

(34:24):
on your ability to sweat.
So you're conserving a bit morefluid, you're sweating less in
blood flow is less.
So the more you dehydrate, themore you can compound or
exacerbate the environmentalconditions in terms of
increasing your core temperature, because you're sweating less.
So again, you kind of have tobalance those things out.
So if you're consuming a lot ofslurries, yeah, it might affect

(34:45):
your sweat, your sweating, butit could also, you know, cool
you down.
So you have to balance those.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
I guess that relationship Well then, the
other thing I was thinking aboutfrom a practical standpoint and
this is very specific to thisrace, but I don't think it's
indifferent from a lot of otherendurance activities the sweat
that you are actually producingis not the only liquid on your
skin that you can use to coolyou down.
You can also use water from aidstations and water from your

(35:14):
hydration pack and things likethat.
So this potential negative evenif we try to take it to the nth
degree of how impactful thatreduction in sweat rate actually
is I kind of come back to thepractical aspect of it is does
it really actually make adifference because you've got
all this other water on yourbody from other places?

Speaker 2 (35:34):
that's exactly right that's a very good point as well
.
So, and I guess, just to goback to sweating, like those
beads of sweat or those beads ofwater that are on your skin,
they obviously need to evaporatefrom the skin to cool you down.
So they cool the skin and thenobviously the blood in your skin
kind of goes back to thecentral circulation and cools
you down or at least againattenuates the rise in core temp
.
But you're right, if it'sreally dry, if it's very humid,

(35:56):
we'll be probably saturated withsweat anyway.
So a lot of it will be drippingso we'll get dehydrated.
But in hot, dry conditions youmight find that you might think
I'm not sweating.
What's going on?
That's just because the sweat'sevaporated very readily and
very well.
So you're absolutely right.
In those cases you can dumpsome water on your head, on your
skin and so forth.
And those beads of water, ifthey evaporate, that's the same
thing as sweat.

(36:16):
Essentially they will cool youdown.
So you're right to put it inthe context of that ice slurry
situation.
If you have a transientreduction in evaporative heat
loss capacity because you'resweating less and you're
producing less beads, well thenif it's dry, just putting water
on your skin, then you kind ofcompensate for it that way dry,
just putting water on your skin.
Then you kind of compensate forit that way there might be a
reduction in skin blood flow,but as long as skin temperature

(36:37):
is still elevated, uh, you willevaporate those beads of sweat.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
So menthol ice slurries for everybody.
That's what we should beserving at aid stations these
out.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Of it is that.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
What is that what you're saying?
Is that what we're going toendorse?

Speaker 2 (36:48):
yeah, well, the other thing too is obviously and I'm
sure you know, any listenersknow, that you wouldn't try
something for?
the first time, so we're notrecommending someone, just
pounds the ice, slowies backnext weekend and just smashes
the menthol because there couldbe gut issues.
Right, I mean because poundinga lot of slurries back might
slow down your digestion youmight have too much water than
running around, obviously, withtoo much water.

(37:09):
I'm sure many people haveexperienced that.
It's not a pleasant experience.
Cycling is not too bad becauseyou don't have that kind of
bouncing up and down.
So it comes back to being wellprepared for the race, having
mitigation strategies in placethat you've trialed, that you
know you can tolerate.
Menthol is another one.
You know you don't want topound back a bunch of menthol in
and have some gi disruptionbecause then the race is over
right well, and to bring it backto a more serious point, that

(37:32):
that is something that youactually do see in the ice
slurry.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
Research is some sort of commentary around the
athletes who, for whateverreason, they just don't tolerate
it as well.
They get a brain freeze, theyget a headache, they get
disruptions within theirdigestive tract, whether it's in
their esophagus or in theirstomach.
I guess it's because of the,maybe the absolute temperature,
maybe the difference oftemperature between the warm air

(37:57):
and what they're actuallytaking in.
It's not something unless youjust really unless you just
absolutely really need it, thatyou should be specifically
deploying on race day.
You should have some degree offamiliarity with it that's
exactly right.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, yeah, just trying it on a long run
beforehand.
I mean, the ideal scenarioobviously is that you try these
things in kind of a similarcondition for a good length.
Obviously not maybe a hundred,a hundred miles, but you know
something similar.
So, because you know the waythat your gut responds six,
seven, eight hours into a racemight be different than the
first two, three hours.

(38:29):
So if ideally you canexperience that something as
well that people might want totry, Okay.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
So we went through the ice slurry thing, the ice
slurry gate, ice slurry debate.
We went through menthol alittle bit.
Let's talk about things thatpeople can put on their body Ice
water, ice packs.
There's all different types ofcommercial like delivery systems
and before we get into them,like specifically, just an

(38:55):
overview of what they're tryingto accomplish.
I mean, it seems like, yeah,it's trying to make you cooler.
Right, we're trying to improve,like either evaporative cooling
or we're bringing somethingcold onto the surface of the
skin to, to, to give a biggertemperature gradient to work
with.
But can you just describegenerally what all of these
things are trying to do to keeppeople cool?

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Yeah, well, that's exactly right.
I mean, it's just, theidealistic is to keep people
cool other than mental, whichagain is the sensation.
But the idea there is,depending on the cooling power
of the medium that you're using,you want to either lower core
temperature, lower skintemperature.
You don't really want to lowermuscle temperature, which is, I
guess, the caveat with ice baths.
If you stay in there too much,then you lower muscle

(39:35):
temperature and it might not beat the ideal temperature for
performance.
I guess from an ultra distanceperspective it doesn't matter
too much because you're notgoing to start off sprinting.
So that's, I guess, the caveatwith that.
But that's the idea.
So either you cool internallyor you cool externally.
So if you put something on yourskin, what you're trying to do
there, I think it's cool, coolthe skin.
And by cooling the skin you'regoing to bring that cooler blood

(39:58):
back to the central circulation, which again might lower your
core temperature or prevent itfrom increasing too quickly.
But I guess the important thingwith a lot of these is the
surface area that you'reactually cooling.
So you want a large surfacearea, you want a cooling power
that's strong and you want toapply it for a certain amount of
time.
You know a lot of the thingsthat you can apply other than

(40:20):
water, that you can apply onyour skin.
You want them on there for agood 20 minutes and, as you
mentioned, you could have icevests.
You could have face changematerial.
So if you could have somethingthat kind of goes on your skin
like a vest, that kind of wickssweat even more or, based on it,
if you put it in cold air andcold in a cooler, for example,
you put it on, like the time itchanges its phases, kind of

(40:41):
keeps you cool, that's probablya bit more quicker and less
potent.
An ice vest, which obviously,if you put directly on your skin
then might last longer as well.
With those things as well, youhave to be careful with
balancing how long you put it onyour skin and then at which
point it no longer provides abenefit and becomes a barrier
for evaporative heat loss, andhow heavy it is.

(41:03):
Like.
If it's something with cold,with ice that melts and then
rips down, well, yes, you mightbe wet, but then you might be
less heavy.
But if it's just an extra fivepounds of ice that cools you
initially and then eventuallycoal turns into water, then
you're running around with fiveextra pounds of water that
you're just running around with.
That's providing nothing and,with the best, preventing you

(41:23):
from cooling down.
So it's kind of finding thosehappy mediums with all of these
cooling strategies and againcoming back to the surface area
cooling power and length thatit's applied, I guess, to to the
skin, to the body, I guess Iwant to go into each one of
those, but I'm going to startwith the cooling power piece,
kind of the one in the middle.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
A lot of people are going to think about this in
terms of I'm going to, I'm goingto rephrase it a little bit and
then let you clarify, being theexpert here in terms of the
temperature gradient, so thetemperature difference between
the surface of the skin and thething that you are putting on it
, whether it's ice or water orcooling pack or whatever.
But what do you mean by coolingpower?

(42:03):
Is it that plus something else,or is it something more
sophisticated?

Speaker 2 (42:07):
well, it's that and the time right.
So you might have somethingthat has a big gradient, because
obviously the bigger thegradient, the more heat you'll
lose to that medium.
So this works via conduction,right?
So we talked initially aboutthe evaporation of sweat and
convection, which is airflowgoing across your body, but this
is conduction, which is thewhen you things are in contact
and heat is transferred across.

(42:29):
So if you put something incontact to your skin and your
skin is hotter, then you'll loseheat to that medium that you're
in contact with.
So the greater your skin ishotter, then you'll lose heat to
that medium that you're incontact with.
So the greater that thegradient between that, the
greater potential is for losingheat.
So I guess the power is boththat the difference in
temperature, but also the length, right?
Because you could havesomething that has a gradient of
five degrees and something thathas a gradient of 20 degrees.

(42:49):
But if something stays at thatfive degree gradient and you put
it on that skin for 20 minutes,obviously it's going to have
more cooling power thansomething that has a greater
gradient, but for two minutes,for example, right?
So it's a combination of thosetwo things.
So how much of a difference isthere between the skin and the
medium that you're using and howlong you put it on your skin,
and not that I want to come backto the other one, but also how

(43:11):
much surface area.
Surface area you have right.
So if I'm cooling down thismuch area, or my entire back,
obviously the back, the entireback's going to provide more
cooling power.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
So it's kind of all of them together really okay, so
we can talk about surface areanow too as well, and and that to
most people is, are good.
It's going to be fairlyself-explanatory the more skin
that you can cover, the moreheat that you're going to be
able to dissipate.
But is there, are theretargeted areas within our skin
that have the potential todissipate or to transfer more

(43:42):
heat, either due to theproximity of blood vessels, or
they're just hotter in general?
Can you kind of like paint thatpicture as well, because we do
see selectively certain areas ofthe body that people just
preferentially like to cool?
You know, I was going over thiswith one of my athletes earlier
today.
If we're going to remove it froma sport context, just to make
it really simple, when you're,when you've got covid and you've

(44:05):
got a fever, you put a coldpack on your forehead because it
feels really good.
Right, it just, it just feelsgood.
The very hot area of your body,it feels really good.
But you're not putting it onlike you know, your forearm or
your bicep or anything like that.
You put it on your.
You put it on your forehead fora reason and so in you, so,
using that as a little bit oflogic, are there, within this

(44:28):
whole proposition of trying tocover or trying to get as much
surface area as possible, arethere strategic areas that
athletes can kind of look at?

Speaker 2 (44:36):
to apply more of this cooling power to that would
result in a bigger advantagewell, we can maybe kind of
parallel this with people thathave exertional heat stroke,
right?
So you want to cool them downvery quickly.
So the idea there just a bit ofa side note is you know, we
want to cool them down veryquickly and then transport them
to the hospital and ideally youput them in a hot sorry hot bath

(44:58):
, not a hot bath, a cold bathand cool them down.
If not, if you have ice packsand things like that you're
right in what you mentionedinitially you might want to put
it in areas that are closer, inproximity to arteries and things
like that, or highlyvascularized areas, so you might
put that, you know, under anarmpit or in the legs, just in

(45:19):
the groin area and things likethat, which obviously when
you're racing, those areas arenot really easy to access, and
try and cool down.
So people do the back of theneck or the forehead, as you
said, but if you think of howmuch surface area relative to
your whole body this provides,or the back of your neck
provides, it's not much right.
So in terms of cooling powerit's little to nothing right.
You'll feel better, but it'snot going to cool you down and

(45:43):
not really going to attenuateyour rise in core temperature.
And again, I have to be carefulwhen I say this, because
cooling you down you need a lotof cooling power and attending
the right attenuating the risein core temperature.
That's more so when you startexercising, cycling or running
if you have a lot of coolingpower.
That attenuating the rise incore temperature, that's more so
when you start exercising,cycling or running.
If you have a lot of coolingpower, then you might not
increase as much.
But if you're doing a long race, your core temperature is
probably going to go up and thenstabilize.

(46:04):
So if anything, that might notchange or might change a little
bit, but it just might reduceyour heart rate a little bit.
So if you put something on yourskin, you might reduce skin
temperature and then that mightreduce skin blood flow and then
you're allowing to have a bitmore blood in central
circulation.
So your heart rate might godown a little bit but you might
not notice that your coretemperatures go down.

(46:25):
It's going down.
But if you were to measure skintemperature, maybe your skin
temperature is going down, butthat's a bit harder to to
measure, especially in a race.
Yeah, so there is that balance.
And again, if you go back tothose more targeted
interventions or more targetedareas, they don't provide a ton
of cooling power.
One of the things you didn'tmention, though, is like

(46:45):
forearms and hands, so maybethat's one thing, that it's a
lot larger surface area.
It's well vascularized.
So in the military and I thinkin firefighting as well, they do
do that, so they have, like,these tubs of water and ice, and
if you get to like, for example, in running, if you get to an,
a station, there is that youcould plunge, you know, your,
your forearms into that, for youknow five minutes or something

(47:06):
like that, and that would helpwith cooling um, a little bit
more so than something in yourforehead and your back of your
neck, for sure the hands as well.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
I mean, this is a trick I'm using trick and air
quotes here that only theyoutube people can kind of see.
But a lot of ultra marathonerseven before we had a lot of
really good heat research wouldlike you use this strategy,
because they would just carryice in their hands out of an aid
station and once again, they'reusing their experience of this.
Feels good, it cools me down tohave ice in my hands in a

(47:37):
really hot day.
They're not consuming it.
The hands aren't that big of asurface area, right, even for
people with really big hands,let's be honest, like that's not
that big of a surface area, ofcourse, but people would do that
.
But what you're saying is theremight be something that, just
because of the vascularizationin those areas specifically,
yeah that.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
And if you dump the forearms obviously you get more
than the ham.
Right you get the forearm andabove the the elbow and because,
depending on how much obviouslybody fat you have you can, it's
an area you can cool downrelatively quickly and then once
you start running again pumpingthe arms, that kind of cooler
blood goes back to the centralcirculation and might cool that,
cool you down slightly or againkind of make you feel cooler,

(48:12):
at least cool the skin so thatyour your heart rate might be
lower to improve your cardiacoutput.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah, whenever all these different strategies like
start to emerge, I always goback to I'm the environments
where we're trying to coolathletes down that you can
control the most, and theprototypical example that
everybody's going to see in theOlympics and everybody's going
to see in the next Olympics it'sreally hot or however it
actually works out are thecooling vests, where all of the

(48:40):
cold is right up against yourtorso, right up against your
stomach, and sure, the vest isclunky and it's not practical to
kind of use out in the field,but what that's telling you is
you're taking advantage of one,the big thermal difference
between the ice packs or the icethat's in the vest and your
skin, and also, simultaneously,the large area of your torso and
your stomach and your back, towhere you can get a really

(49:03):
reasonable thermal power orcooling power with that type of
intervention that's's exactlyright and I think, well, even in
a few weeks, the Tour de Francewill start.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Then, when they do time trials, what they do is
they go in the shade, they put afan in front of the riders
because they're warming up on atrainer and they put their vests
on which, again, if youparallel to running, it's a lot
easier to do that in cyclingbecause we're not moving, but
with running, what you mightfind is that you might find that
athletes are warming up as theydo normally, but then after the
warm-up, in the waiting area,they put that ice vest and, as

(49:31):
you said, because the ice that,depending on where the ice packs
are positioned in the ice vestand in the back, then yeah, you
can have a lot of cooling power.
There's obviously different icevests and different I guess
grades of how well they providethat cooling power, depending on
what the I guess the thegarment is made of and how close
and how cool that ice pack,depending on what the I guess
the the garment is made of andhow close and how cool that ice

(49:51):
pack can actually cool the skin.
Because if you have a superthick garment, that obviously
the cooling power is not goingto be very strong.
But if you go right against theskin or at least a thin jersey
because they don't take offtheir jerseys and cycling and
even running, you probably keepa singlet on.
But yeah, if you can cool a lotof the torso and in the back,
as you said, it's a biggersurface area and does provide
that cooling power I'm glad.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
So I'm glad that you mentioned textiles.
This wasn't on our outline, butwe're going to talk about it
anyway.
There's any number of opinionson the right fabric to.
I'm going to set out theprototype here, just so that
we're not going to like mixmetaphors or anything like that.
You're going to get wet at anaid station and you're going to
set out the prototype here, justso that we're not going to like
mix metaphors or anything likethat.
You're going to get wet at anaid station and you're going to

(50:31):
run out of that aid stationdripping wet and then that water
is going to be kind of whatcools you down.
So there's any different numberof opinions on what the fabric
should be or what fabric youshould wear.
Should you wear something thatis highly wicking, like super,
you know, like super technology?
We're going to put the mostwicking fabric in the world
there, even something with holes.
People will cut holes out oftheir shirt, you know, to get

(50:52):
like more airflow and thingslike that.
And then, honestly, you willsee the exact opposite side of
that camp, like the exactopposite of it, of where you
want a garment that retains themoisture as much as possible
cotton, right, you want it toretain the moisture as much as
possible.
Cotton, right.
You want it to retain themoisture as much as possible in
order to keep the athlete wet.
And it's always and it kind ofis just to let you in on the

(51:14):
inside of some of this ultramarathon nonsense that you know
we get to see every every junein olympic valley.
It is a very polarizing debate,like to the point where people
get mad at each other for likeone opinion, one opinion or the
other.
And so here we go.
We can opine on this garment,technology doesn't even matter.
And then what are the?
Certainly, we can notice thedifferences, but what would be

(51:35):
the situational differences?
On what one, when one garmentwould outperform another one in
terms of its cooling power?

Speaker 2 (51:43):
Well, I need to preface this by saying that I am
not a garment expert by anymeans.
So this is just a little bit ofmy knowledge and opinion kind of
together.
But we did do a study a fewyears ago and this was some
colleagues in Greece and welooked at different kind of
garments like one was like acooling garment, a wicking one
and a cotton, and there wasn'tmuch difference in that study.
And I think what's important aswell is using the garment in

(52:05):
the proper context.
So those wicking garments arevery good, but at some point if
you're running for a hot, for along time in a hot environment,
then the garment becomessaturated with sweat anyways.
So I guess it's wickingproperties.
At that point Do they evenmatter?
You know, cause it's all wetand sticking to you and so forth
.
So I think a cotton shirt willbe, this would be the same thing
.
So I think at some point itprobably doesn't matter all that

(52:26):
much, to be honest, right,because the properties of the
garments and how they may behelpful are kind of nullified
just by the fact that they'recompletely wet and sticking to
you.
I think a garment that's wet atsome point will become the same
temperature depending on theenvironment of your skin.
So there's not going to be muchof a gradient.
And then if you keep puttingwater on it.
I don't know if it'll help muchwith evaporation of sweat

(52:49):
anyways, because it's going tobe fully saturated.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
So I think at some point when those garments are
fully saturated with water, Idon't know how much more helpful
it becomes, but again, that'swater your sweat, a combination
of everything, a sports drinkthat you accidentally poured
over your head like becausethat's what creates the

(53:11):
temperature gradient is theevaporation of those water
droplets interface with you andthe environment, not your skin.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
So there is that to consider.
But yes, you want it to be toevaporate, unless you have very
cold water and you have theopportunity to kind of put cold
water on yourself and on yourgarment periodically that it
stays cooler than your skin andyou can provide that cooling
power.
But I can't imagine that wouldbe the case in an ultra
endurance rate.
You would have, you know, eightstations every kilometer or
something yeah we will.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
I don't think we're gonna.
I don't think we're gonna solvethis here, but, needless to say
, there are people that aregoing to be listening that are
like, ah, they have the perfectsolution.
Like the holes in the garmentshould be exactly here and
exactly there and it should bethis, you know, perfect fabric
and things like that, and I kindof I'm of the opinion of it
probably doesn't matter all thatmuch yeah, well.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
Well, I mean, if they're interested in having the
funding, then just let me know.
We can definitely test it in alot All right, there we go.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
We'll strive for that , okay, so.
So, speaking of speaking oftechnology, there's there've
been a number of products thathave kind of come out on the
marketplace, and the triathleteshave made this famous.
Now, they're always firstadopters, they're first at the
table If anything new.
That's why we love them.
The one that that that peopleare going to be the most
familiar with are these funkylooking headbands that have
these squares on them, andthere's a few different

(54:34):
manufacturers that actually makethem now, and the claim of
these manufacturers is that itincreases the effective surface
area of the forehead.
What's going on here with thesedifferent devices?
Because, first off, they're notcheap.
They're a couple hundred bucksfor a headband, right, a
sweatband.
I'm always thinking of the oldschool basketball players that
had you know the head, thesweatbands and things like that,

(54:55):
god bless.
Bill Walton, who just passedaway, was really famous for
rocking those.
But what's going on here withthese $200 headbands?
Is there something here thatathletes need to pay attention
to?

Speaker 2 (55:06):
And's the right context for it well, I want to
say there's probably not muchgoing on because, again, if you
come back to what we were sayingbefore about cooling power,
surface area and so forth, theforehead is not a massive area,
I should say.
I mean, if it, if you buy one,you wear it, makes you feel cool
and you feel you perform better, well then that's fine if you
perform, perform better.

(55:27):
I haven't had a chance to do adeep dive into this, but I guess
the first thing I would do isthat I would look on the website
to see if there's actualresearch that's been done around
that.
I'm not sure if you've had achance to do that, but
oftentimes you see a lot ofproducts with big claims Some of
them actually have a researchlink and say, hey, no, we
commissioned some research andthey found this, which is the

(55:49):
products that I would probablytrust the most.
I would read the researchcarefully beforehand to see.
But if there's no researchbehind it and it's just claims
and they haven't objectivelybeen looked at in the lab, then
I would be a bit careful aboutsome of the claims and how
accurate those claims are.
And again, I haven't looked atthis product so I can't comment,
but just from a purely coolingperspective and again, as we
talked about before, the coolingpower of that surface area, how

(56:11):
cold it is, how long it stayscold, it's unlikely to kind of
cool you down per se.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
But still it could potentially have an impact on
your sensation, your thermalsensation, right, or it could
improve your thermal sensationas opposed to just dumping water
on your head, because there'ssomething to do with the device
itself or the garment itself.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Exactly and it comes back to what we were saying
before and you summarized about.
You know there's aphysiological and then there's a
perceptual right.
So physiologically, maybe notmuch is going on, but
perceptually, if it improvesyour thermal comfort, your
thermal sensation, lowers yourrating of perceived exertion
despite your heart rate notchanging, well then maybe you

(56:53):
can perform a little bit better.
Will that catch up to you, aswe were talking about before, if
you accelerated it too much?
Potentially, but it is aperceptual thing, potentially a
bit more than a cooling thing.
Menthol I would suggest butagain, I haven't done a deep
dive into this product, but itwould have to.
I mean, it would have to coolyou down a lot and in that area,
yeah, that might be veryuncomfortable, it would cool you
down quite a lot.
Okay, so we're going to.

(57:14):
Are you aware on the website ifthere's any research?

Speaker 1 (57:16):
they do have some.
Certain manufacturers do havesome research on there and I
have gone into it and it kind ofjust points out what you were
just saying is that the the areaisn't the area from a
functional perspective isn'treally increased all that much
to be a big thermal sink.
But it could be.
There could be some perceptualchanges that if that's what you
need for a race once again.

(57:37):
This is why the context matters.
Right, exactly if you arelooking to improve your
sensation of temperature somehow, to use that ergogenically fair
, fair game like absolutely ifyou need to, actually, if you
need to reduce your coretemperature probably not fair
game that's right.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
Yeah, yeah, and again in.
In an ultra distance race, aswe were talking about before,
the race profile changes quite alot, so maybe it's just using
it strategically.
Yeah, maybe not necessarily tospeed up, but even just to
maintain the particular pace,just because you want to feel
cooler.
Well then maybe.
Yeah, by all means, if you wantto help, then yeah, go for it,
I'll take it.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
I'll take it.
Just a quick break here beforewe go on to the last topic,
since we are bringing up Westernstates in advance of the race.
There actually is a reallygreat weather profile that I
believe the race actuallyproduces it and puts it out of,
where they will give thetemperature estimations per in
like time blocks for each of theaid stations and once the

(58:37):
temperature starts tomaterialize which this is going
to come out on the Monday beforethe race, and usually that's
Tuesday or Wednesday and oncethe those temperature profiles
start to actually be real andnot just, you know, wild guesses
, which is where we're at rightnow Once they become real, I
absolutely advise athletes tolook at that and to look at them
individually, because thetemperature differences are so

(58:58):
big.
You're going to use a wholehost of different interventions,
different hydration strategies,different amounts of fluid that
you need to take in, dependingupon those wild temperature
fluctuations.
And one of the things thattrips athletes up the most in
Western states is the fact thatthey have to just simply change
their hydration requirementsfrom the beginning of the race

(59:21):
to the middle of the race, tothe end of the race, so wildly.
It's not a constant 500milliliters per hour.
Sometimes it's three or four Xfrom where you actually from
where he actually started with.
So, for all you athletes outthere that are training in hot
weather races, look at the racesection by section, because
you're probably going to want todo something, in some cases
drastically differently oncertain sections of the courses

(59:42):
compared to others.
Okay, so we talked about smallsurface areas.
Let's go to the biggest surfaceareas, kind of like the final
topic here, and this is full icewater immersion.
And I'll give a little bit of akind of an anecdotal story to
lead this off the incomparableScott Jurek, who won Western
States seven times and he alsowon Badwater, I believe, twice.

(01:00:03):
He was very famous during theBadwater ultra marathon for
having one cooler in his crewvehicle that was specifically
dedicated to an ice dunk.
It was a gigantic cooler.
I think it was like 120 litersor something like that.
He's a big guy, six foot fourtall guy, so it's a big long

(01:00:24):
torso, right, not a standardcooler.
He's going to fit his wholebody in and he used to get in
the thing like a coffin.
He would cross his arms and hewould get his whole upper body
immersed, all the way down tohis shorts in this ice water
slurry and he'd stay in therefor kind of as long as tolerable
and then get out and then godown the bad water course again.

(01:00:44):
And there's all kinds of goodresearch on this whole water
immersion piece of it andthere's also practical elements
of it.
So, this being kind of like thebiggest intervention that you
can throw out during, let's kindof discuss like how powerful
can this actually be, and thenalso how transient it actually
might be during the race, sinceyou might be deploying it at one
specific point or another.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Yeah, no, that's interesting, it's.
It's, as you said, the mostpowerful cooling intervention.
I'd be interested to know.
Do you know roughly how long hestayed in there?
I'm just out of curiosity.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
So I remember it was.
I mean, it was not more than acouple of minutes, but he would
get in, he'd hold his breath,he'd hold his nose for air, so
only so basically his from hisshoulders or his neckline to his
waist was submerged, or maybelike mid thigh.

(01:01:35):
And then I remember him stayingin there scout, I'm sorry if
you're listening to this, I'mtotally butchering it but I
remember him staying in therefor for a couple of minutes,
essentially on, yeah, wheneverhe would deploy it, which would
be several times during the raceyeah, well, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
that's interesting because I mean, you know I
talked about initially, aboutcold water immersion and being
careful not to cool muscletemperature too much, but again,
in this context it doesn'tmatter too much because you're
not again sprinting, you don'tneed to have that higher muscle
temperature, because highermuscle temperatures you need to
produce more power, more speed,but no one's coming out of the
gate sprinting in an ultradistance race.
So, and the fact that he didn'tput his legs in there as well,

(01:02:09):
probably not a bad idea, right,because you cool the torso and
so forth and you cool down, butyeah, it does provide a
tremendous amount of coolingpower.
Just a bit of an anecdote aswell uh, during my master's, 25
years ago now, we were lookingat cooling power of water and I
would run I think it was fourtrials we did and I would run in
an environmental chamber until,um, my rectal temperature got

(01:02:31):
to 40 degrees.
I had an esophageal probe in,but I'll probe in probe in my
ear for companion temperatureand, as you may know, rectal
temperature responds more slowlythan esophageal temperature.
So, anyways, when I got to 40degrees, I jumped into baths of
different temperatures and, if Iremember correctly because it
was a while ago, I think it waslike 18, 12, maybe 8 and 4, and

(01:02:52):
I remember in four degrees therewas ice blocks floating around
and from 40 and I think it was38, 5 we needed to get down to.
It took about five, sevenminutes.
So, oh wow, that's just how,how quickly, I remember
correctly, but that's how we,how quickly it occurs.
So there's obviously the cold ofthe water, the more the cooling
power, so you definitely canget very cold.
So in something like a racelike this it's probably not a

(01:03:15):
bad idea to jump in.
You probably don't have to havefour degree water, but anything
under 15 degrees or somethinglike Celsius will cool you down.
Again, if you want to put yourlegs in there or not is
something that you might want totry, because I guess if the
water temperature is a bithigher, it doesn't matter too
much if your legs are in there.
But if not just kind of sitback, as an example you were

(01:03:36):
providing up to the torso, Idon't think you need to put your
head in there, but up to the Iguess you know shoulder height
and cover up to your thighs thatthat will provide some cooling
power.
Then you come out of there, youstart running again, you'll
feel cooler and if you can dothat periodically, yeah, that
might be helpful, especially ifyou're down in the valley and it
gets a lot hotter, for example,different races.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
But part of the reason it's so powerful is
because it's a big mass of.
It's just a big mass of waterthat you're submerging yourself
in, which has the capacity totake to transfer a lot of the
heat.
Am I understanding?

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
that correctly Like that's one of the big to absorb
the heat right.
Yeah, that's right.
So because it's well.
Again, going back to power, tocooling power, it's a large
surface area.
I mean you're cooling frombasically down to your thigh and
then water obviously conductsheat very well, so you absorb a
lot of the heat.
So you're not gaining cool,you're losing heat to the water.

(01:04:27):
And the best thing to do aswell if they kind of circulate
or move the water a little bit,because if the water stays still
then you might have kind of athin layer of warmer water
around your skin, that then youlose heat a bit less.
If you're moving the water,it's kind of that convective
flow, same thing with air andwater.
So if you move that then you'lllose even even a bit more heat.
So yeah, it's the temperaturegradient, the surface area and

(01:04:47):
the cooling power of moving thatcold water.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
So a lot of people are thinking about the magnitude
of the event, of theintervention, versus the amount
of benefit that they actuallyget from it, and I think there's
two performance contexts thatwe can think about here.
Yes, the first.
The first one is like abortive.
So you are trying to get anathlete from being in a

(01:05:12):
hyperthermic state back to anormal temperature so just they
can function and get down thetrail, right, that's where
you're just throwing everything.
Every solution that we justtalked about, especially the
ones that create big temperaturegradients, have big cooling
power.
We're going to throw it at it.
But on the performance side,this is actually where it gets
kind of kind of interesting,because there's the math, is all

(01:05:33):
is really fuzzy.
Right, we can do everything.
We can do things in a lab andsay, okay, so for every you know
, one 10th of one degree Celsiuscore body temperature increase,
it affects performance by thismuch.
But then when you overlay theintervention and then what the
intervention costs, you'resitting in an ice coffin for
three minutes, right, like itkind of becomes a.

(01:05:53):
It just becomes really cloudyin terms of what you're actually
getting out of it.
So I would turn that over toyou from a practical standpoint
in terms of like, whether thebest interventions bang for buck
, that both will improveperformance as well as don't
cost a lot of time, energy andeffort into the whole thing like

(01:06:16):
?
What do you have to say aboutthat if you're actually advising
athletes out on the course toto get the most out of it?

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
oh, that's a tough one.
That's why we're ending with it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
I'm ending with the tough one here julian, because I
think you'd have.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
You'd have to put the context of what the environment
like, the ambient condition,the prevailing conditions the
athlete is in and what theirphysiological strain.
So how hot are they?
What's their heart rate?
Because that kind of provides,I guess, the reserve or the
understanding of how much fasterthey can run or how can they

(01:06:50):
maintain their pace, right.
So let's put this in the worstcase scenario it's very hot, the
athlete is struggling tomaintain their pace.
Then, yes, it's probably worthjumping in three or five minutes
in a cold bath, as we weresaying, to kind of lower your
core temperature to make youfeel better.
Maybe get some nutrition in.
That's easier to get whenyou're not necessarily on the
run.
That might provide some benefitin that.

(01:07:12):
For how long afterwards?
Again, that's a bit debatable.
The pick is dependent on howhard they start running
afterwards, how hot theenvironment is.
But then that trade-off becomesokay.
Well, at what point, as you weresaying before, what point do I
stop and do this and lose three,five minutes relative to if I
slow down slightly but I'm stillrunning, because three, four

(01:07:34):
minutes, three or five minutescould be a kilometer, not three,
but three or five minutes couldbe a kilometer.
So you're a kilometer down theroad but you're going slower.
So how long, how much time doesit take you?
But for an ultra distance racemaybe you can catch up, but by
the time you catch up the effectof the cooling might have worn
off anyway.
So it's kind of a it is a verygood question.
So I think it's weighing up allthose situational factors and

(01:07:56):
that reminds me of kind ofquantifying the thermal
environment which an individualis, so that thermal environment
is basically the ambientconditions and that's provided
by ambient temperature, globetemperature, so the effect of
radiative heat and sun, airflowfrom wind and relative humidity.
And when you look attemperature so you talked a bit
about the Western statesproviding an indication of

(01:08:20):
weather conditions coming up.
So one thing to think about iswhen you look at ambient
temperature, that's alwaysmeasured in the shade.
So if you look at ambienttemperature, let's say it's
going to be again in Celsius 35degrees, which is hot, that's
hot, but it's measured in theshade.
And when you measure globetemperature, that's like a
temperature measured inside aglobe which takes into account
radiative heat, and oftentimesin Celsius again, I apologize

(01:08:41):
for that it could always easilybe 10, 12, maybe even 15 degrees
hotter Big difference, bigdifference.
Exactly.
So there's that perspective,but then the other perspective
is the metabolic heat productionthat the individual is
producing.
So the faster you run, the moreheat you produce.
And then the other factor, sothe other personal factor, other
than the four environmentalones, the two personal ones, so

(01:09:02):
the heat you're producing andthe clothing that you're wearing
.
So all of those things,together with the, you know,
will hopefully help you make adecision about whether you
should slow down and run sloweror jump into a hot bath and all
those things, or help you decideanyways, because I think it's
yeah, it's a difficult one it'stricky because I mean, here's

(01:09:22):
what I'm going to just verbalizethis as I'm thinking about it,
and you can provide commentaryon the top of it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
So, obviously, the the hotter the environment,
whether we're measuring it inambient temperature or globe
temperature the hotter theenvironment, the the more you're
going to want to useinterventions that potentially
cost you time, because it'sworth it.
Where those lines ofdemarcation are, that's it.
That's why coaches you knowkind of make their money,

(01:09:48):
because we make these educatedguesses based on kind of what we
know and what the research isactually telling us.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
But then the second part yeah, and maybe a side note
to that.
So just a side note to that aswell is pacing?

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say, because
pacing is obviously yeah, okay,well, you can go ahead.
No, no, go ahead, because we'rethinking the same thing there.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Yeah, because I mean that's the important bit, right?
Because, well, anotherimportant aspect, just about
learning to pace and beingpatient in races so if it is hot
, well, maybe you slow down, andthen, when it gets to a point
where you can, okay, pick up thepace because it's cooling down
or whatever the case may be, uhthen that's quite important
because, again, part of thatwhole similar environment is

(01:10:26):
pacing, which is associated withmetabolic heat, heat production
.
So if you slow down, you'reproducing less heat, you might
not necessarily have to cooldown as much.
So combining all of thosethings, obviously with nutrition
being an important one for allthe distance races, I think the
combination of all those thingsis quite important.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
So Rob Krier he's won the Western States 100 twice.
He was very famous for having apacing strategy and maybe this
is a little bit too granular,but he won the race.
So how are you going tocriticize him where he would
speed up when it was shaded andslow down when he was in the sun
, which sometimes can happen on,like you know, every 10 or 20

(01:11:04):
meters or something like that.
You go through 10 meters ofshade and then 10 meters of sun
and then 10 meters shade, and hewould micro, micro, he would
micro pace his effort out sothat it was just a little bit
harder during the shade part, alittle bit easier during the sun
, during the sunny part.
But to your point, you canactually take an advantage.
You can take advantage of that.
This dovetails into my otherthought is that the elite

(01:11:26):
athletes who are running therace in a shorter duration right
, the lead athletes will finishin 15 hours and the cutoff is 30
hours right, so they can do itat a higher intensity than much
higher intensity, because theyare better and that the duration
of the event is is shorter aswell.
They are actually bettercandidates, or maybe even
earlier stage candidates, forlike the advanced stage

(01:11:48):
interventions, because they areproducing more heat, because
they have the opportunity to runharder, yet they are the ones
that are going to also want totake the most risk because they
don't want the downtime.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
So it's this interesting like conundrum that
they're in terms of what toactually take on board and what
to just like roll the dice withthat's's a very good point,
cause I was reading somethingrecently and, uh, if you kind of
compare marathons and ultramarathons, you know the hotter
it gets in a marathon, the morethat affects the slower runners

(01:12:22):
because they're out in thoseconditions for longer.
But in contrast, the hotter itis in an ultra marathon, the
more it affects the eliteathletes because they're
spending more time in the heat,whereas the slower runners might
spend more time in the eveningand so forth and overnight.
So they said to your point,yeah, it's an interesting one,
because they're more affected bythe heat.
So, you know, do they gambleand not do any cooling or do

(01:12:44):
they gamble and do some coolingto slow down, to potentially
benefit?
Um, and again, it just dependson that whole situation of how
hot is it, how hard am I going?
I mean, the heart rate's alwaysa good indicator.
You know heart rate and rpe.
So you know, if you're findingthat, oh man, it's fine because
they probably have a pace thatthey know they can hold or they
may go by heart rate.
But you know, if you're goingto compare, okay, my pace

(01:13:04):
relative to heart rates, well,I'm going to a proper heart rate
but my pace is slower, or I'mgoing the proper pace and my
heart rate's higher, maybe Ineed to cool down, maybe I need
to slow down.
So it's kind of in the contextin the race, kind of making
those decisions on the fly.
And maybe you know before youwere highlighting about having
different things at differenthydration points within the race

(01:13:25):
.
Well, maybe you have differentstrategies for the same
hydration um place in the raceor the same kind of a hydration
place but the um, the aidstation in the race, depending
on how you're going and how theenvironment is.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
Yeah, I mean a hundred percent.
I think you can tune at thatand I do think the elite field
is getting sophisticated enoughto where they are finally tuning
that based on all of thosedifferent parameters and I was
going over this with one of myathletes just this morning who's
in the elite field it eveninfluences the equipment choices
.
So do I want to take a packthat is potentially going to

(01:14:00):
insulate me more but I have morefluid carrying capacity?
Or do I want to use handbottles, because it kind of
frees up everything and I candump stuff over my head?
It's just a really interestingkind of decision decision matrix
here.
All right, we're going to letyou go, man, If we ended up on
the hard question there.
I always like to do that withguests, just throw the grenade
in right at the end.
I can't tell you.

(01:14:21):
I can't tell you how much.
Just for me to you.
I really appreciate your work.
I've referenced it countlesstimes.
The review paper that we usedis a little bit of an outline
I'm going to make it's freelyavailable.
I'm going to put a link to itin the show notes.
I do encourage everybody tocheck it out.
It's a heavy one.
It's not a light one.
There's a lot of references arein this thing.

(01:14:43):
I'm just going to find thatthat's always a good choice or a
good oh my.
God, a thousand 67 references.
Holy cow, we'll just call it aneven thousand, even thousand,
julia.
But to just to kind of just tobring my point up again, man, I
just really appreciate howthorough you are in these areas
and also how we can distill itdown to something that people
who are racing literally racingthis weekend I hope they got

(01:15:04):
something, but not something towhere they're going to
drastically change their plans.
It's kind of a love book, kindof a love, hate, love hate.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
Be careful with that one.
I mean as always.
I mean, this is our second timehaving a chat.
It's always a pleasure, sothank you for inviting me and I
hope, yeah, people get somebenefit from our discussion.
It's always a pleasure and goodluck to everyone racing as well
.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
Of course, where can people find more about you and
your work?
And then what's coming up?
If they want to volunteer forsome of the studies that we
teased out a little bit ongarments or whatever.
Where can people find you, man?

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
We're in Australia, so if you want to be a
participant, you're free to comedown and be a participant.
So I'm at the University ofCanberra, I'm at the Research
Institute for Sport and Exercise, so feel free to jump that,
jump on the website, jump online, I should say, and have a look.
I run the EnvironmentalPhysiology Lab, so we have a
climate chamber where we do alot of our work, and some of the
stuff that will come out verysoon is stuff on heat

(01:15:56):
acclimation.
So, looking at the differencebetween dry and human heat
acclimation, is it specific,does it?
Or, you know, if you acclimate,is it fine?
And we're finding that there'snot many major differences,
which is probably not a surprisegiven that we can't put people

(01:16:16):
in there for super long periodsfor acclimation.
We're doing some work as wellnow with the Australian Sport
Institute, which comes back to,I guess, the discussion we had
initially about acclimation andacclimatization and modifying
the, I guess, traditionaloptimal recommendations for
elite athletes and how do theyput that in their regimented
training program.
So we're doing that uh for uh,women for men, for paralympic
athletes, uh, as well.
I'm interested to find out howthat works.

(01:16:38):
And we're also looking at a bitof a comparison between sexes
as well, because that's an areaof contention at the moment
between men and women about howthey acclimatize, or acclimate
is it as quick for men as it isfor women, and so forth.
So we're doing quite a bigstudy.
They're looking atneuromuscular function, cardiac
function and so forth.
So, yeah, lots of stuff to lookat down the line.
So, yeah, if you're interested,fire off an email as well the

(01:16:59):
email's in the paper.
So I'm happy to chat aboutstuff like this, obviously with
people.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
Awesome, man.
Well, we'll have to bring youor one of your colleagues back
on as these things start todribble out, because already I'm
like oh yeah, I kind of want toknow if this intervention
versus that intervention worksbetter or worse, or is it
different for men or women?
And the practical piece of itthat you guys are working on
with AIS is what, as a coach, weare always the most supremely

(01:17:24):
interested in is how do we takeall this stuff and actually do
it with an athlete who'sactually training and got all
these other things going on?
In a quote unquote, I'll useoptimal in air quotes, quote
unquote optimal setting.
Those are the zillion dollarquestions that we always kind of
want answers to.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
Well, you might hear from us, because one of the
things we want to do is a surveyas well and end up to the
coaches that are working withathletes to see how they
implement those things.
So, yeah, stay tuned.
You might get an email.
All right, I'm happy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
I'm happy to distribute that man.
Once again, man, thank you foryour work, man, it's really
impactful Pleasure.
I hope the people over atWestern States and Badwater
folks and Wasatch and all theseother hot weather ultra marathon
they'd take note to this andreference the earlier podcast
that we did together as a coupleof years ago now on acclimation
and acclimatization methods.
That's a.
These two things kind ofcombined really give you a

(01:18:08):
really great resource on how tonavigate these land, this
landscape.

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):
Yeah, yeah Again.
Thank you, it's been a pleasureand good luck to everyone All
right, folks, there you have it,there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
Much thanks to Julian for coming back on the podcast
as a repeat offender and, moreimportantly, thanks to him for
all the work that he has done inthe area.
If you want almost everythingyou need to know about heat
acclimation and heatacclimatization I'm having a
really hard time with that wordtoday check out the links that I
have dropped in the show notes.

(01:18:38):
It will take you a few hours tomove through them all, but you
will certainly be armored up forthe heat, regardless of if you
have time to prepare for it, oryou're just racing this weekend
or next weekend, or you're goinginto a race next year where you
have plenty of time to prepare.
I view this as one of theperformance showstoppers where,
if you do it right, you haveeverything in your corner, and

(01:19:01):
if you don't do it right, youcan screw it up royally.
So take some time, get someknowledge in your corner, make
sure you've got these methodsand techniques and interventions
correct and you know which onesto use, and have confidence in
the ones that you can use aswell.
Appreciate the heck out of allthe listeners out there If you
are running in this year'sedition of the Western States

(01:19:21):
100,.
Good luck, have fun out there.
Use all the ice that all thevolunteers have out there for
you.
It does look like it's going tobe a relatively warm year, or a
year that's on the warmer side,but have fun out there, it's
going to be a good one.
Come by and say hi.
We will be there with a batteryof coaches supporting our 21
athletes that are running in therace, from the front of the
pack to the middle of the packand the back of the pack and

(01:19:43):
everywhere in between.
We're going to be out at nearlyall of the aid stations with
our tents.
So come by and say hi, goodluck to everybody out there and
if you happen to be racinganother hot weather race in the
summer, good luck to you as well.
I hope you gain some knowledgefrom this podcast.
All right, folks.
That is it for today and, asalways, we will see you out on

(01:20:03):
the trails.

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