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Weather Forecast For Race Day
The expected race day temps look to be in the mid to high 80's. So start looking into the heat adjusted race paces when you are making your race plan.
WSM Al T has a wiki post that helps with wrapping your brain around it.
The calculator can be downloaded as well to find your optimum pace for race day.
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Hi Steve, thanks. To me this is one of the last variables that can change at this point, knock on wood! I hear it can be variable up to the day before, but nice to start getting a read on this. For me, that will be 10 degrees cooler than what I train in and I am planning on adjusting accordingly. You mention adjusting pace, for those that have not trained or ran in higher temps that are newer, don't underestimate your increased fluid (perform) needs, easy to get behind on this, my 2 cents from the desert...make sure you adjust as needed upward on fluid and execute that, hard to catch up on that once you are low.
See you all soon,
Bill
That's about acclimating to be ready to race in high temps - an important consideration over the next 1.5 weeks.
RACING in the heat is another thing. If you generated your VDOT in a race or wko in 50-62F weather, even if you drop that VDOT by 2.5 points (a common approach for many EN racers), you'll still be running way too fast/hard if you attempt the standard EN pacing strategy. The problem is core temp + dehydration. It's like the old Fram oil commercials: "You can pay me know (buy a new oil filter), or you can pay me later (pay for a new engine)". In our case you have two choices: you can slow down from the start, to keep your core temp down and be able to absorb sufficient fluids to delay/reduce dehydration, or you can wait until you body reaches its critical internal temp, and shuts down, refusing to run, leaving you to walk it home in order to stay cool and hydrated. Either way you're gonna go slower in the IM marathon than you would at cooler temps.
How much slower? That's where the heat calculator comes in, referenced in the wiki page on race execution. This is not some theoretical spreadsheet. It is simply a reflection of what actually happened in scores of IM races in North America between 2001 and 2011. The marathon times of all finishers were correlated with race day temps and humidities. The result was a series of curves showing how much the average racer slowed down depending on the Heat Index. Now, you may think you're from Lake Woebegon, and you're above average; well, even the pros slowed down. True, the faster you are to begin with, the less you'll slow down, but you will slow down.
So how to manage your pace? The heat pace calc was designed to give you a pace to aim for, and it works well in that regard. But a couple of years ago, Coach P began assessing the use of HR to guide pacing in hilly and/or hot races. I've referenced that several times before, and you can return to those threads and wiki posts for the background, but the bottom line is, start the run at the same HR you finish the bike, which should be mid-high Zone 1. Stay there for the first half of the race, then slowly let you HR rise towards mid Zone 2, maybe allowing yourself close to high Zone 2 for the last few miles.
Finally, as confirmation of the value of the heat pace calc projections: once we had the equations, I plugged in my VDOTs and race day temps from previous races I'd done in various temps, as a cross check on the calculator. In all cases, the result was eerily close to what I actually ran - we're talking within less than a minute overall projected time, in marathons of 4:08 - 4:45. And, when I used HR last year, I was able to hold my pace thru out the marathon, while running at HRs *higher* than I ever had before. Both of those exercises shocked me a little bit, but confirmed to me the value of (a) slowing down in the heat and (b) using HR to guide pace.
First look @ the ten-day on Wunderground.com: possible rain Saturday morning with a cold front passing through; coolish and sunny, dry on Sunday, with tail wind on the return trip into town on the bike. IOW, a perfect weather forecast, so it'll probably be miserable, one way (cold, rainy) or the other (hot, muggy) when race day actually comes along