Becoming One: How to Survive Summer IRONMAN Training
This is the fourth edition of my 8-part column for IRONMAN about my journey training for IRONMAN Florida.
Before you sign up for your first (or next) IRONMAN, you might want to look at when the event falls on the calendar. The timing of a race is a crucial consideration in race selection, namely because it will determine when you’ll be doing the bulk of your training.
My first full-distance race will be IRONMAN Florida in November. This means that the bulk of my long miles will take place in the summer months. In Florida. For those of you who don’t understand the subtext, this means I’ll be training in temperatures up to, and at times exceeding, 100 degrees Fahrenheit (~37 Celsius).
For my fourth installment of this column, I wanted to focus on strategies for surviving IRONMAN training during the summer. I turned to Marni Sumbal of Trimarni Coaching, who also happens to be a Board-Certified Sports Dietician, 20-time IRONMAN finisher, and multiple Kona finisher, to lend her guidance and expertise.
How do heat and humidity affect pace and heart rate?
Almost every triathlete has faced the same internal struggle. Should I work out in the morning when the temperature is lower, but the humidity is high? Or, should I wait until the afternoon when the humidity has gone down, but the temperature is through the roof?
