Island Games Seminar

Been to a seminar tonight that rather helpfully addressed 'performing in the heat'. Picked up a lot of useful information but to summarise here's the 3 main points I took from it:

1. Sweat evaporation is the only method the body can use to regulate temperature when environmental temp goes into 30s (Rhodes max temps in July can get up to 34-36 deg celcius; significantly higher than IOM's!). For body to cool, sweat must be evaporated from the skin; the rate of which is affected by humidity in air (RH for Rhodes is 60-80% which is high). Clearly the conditions in Rhodes are going to be tricky to deal with compared to IOM, this means appropriate preparation is very important.

2. Climatic adaptation takes on average 7-14 days a requires workouts of moderate intensity lasting for 60-100 minutes. Adaptation results in lower body temperatures and decreased heart rates for a given workout intensity in the new conditions. It also results in greater amounts of sweat being produced over the period of adaptation. This is siginificant given that we will be arriving 7 days prior to the event: will this be long enough to adapt?

3. Unaddressed water loss due to sweating results not only in dehydration but also a loss in bodily salts. The combined effect eventually leads to heat-related illness. To overcome this issue just drinking water will not suffice as the salts need to be replaced. This requires some kind of sports drink to be consumed. Along with monitoring fluid loss during exercise I will need to start getting used to sports drinks.

There was also information on anti-doping policies in sport, the main thing to be taken from it: athletes have sole responsibility for what goes in their body and therefore strict liabilty lies with them and no one else if a drug test is found to be positive. The message therefore is to be very aware of what goes in!

Anyway, I'm sure if you've read this you're bored, but it's all relevant and will help contribute to training objective 3: learning to cope with heat!

-AC