Marathon runners are training for a hotter world
Every marathon season, runners strategize about more than just how many miles a week to train. They focus on details that can make or break race day: which nutrition gels they can tolerate, which shoes work best for their feet. Climate change has become a variable they can’t ignore.
Marathon runners are preparing for a hotter world, as climate change brings increasingly high temperatures and humidity. Jen Dimascio-Donohue, a New York City Marathon trainee, recently purchased a $234 cooling headband called Omius after a 7-mile run in Massachusetts on a scorching day. She credits the band with improving her mental state during training.
Climate change has led to extreme heat waves in cities like New York, London, and Hong Kong, making training and race days more challenging. Runners are adjusting their training schedules to avoid the peak heat window, which has shifted to later in the afternoon. Coaching apps like Runna have introduced heat-adaptation features to help runners maintain their training effort in hot conditions.
Exercise scientists emphasize the importance of heat acclimatization to improve safety and performance. Training methods include using saunas, scheduling low-intensity workouts during the hottest part of the day, and training indoors. Despite thorough preparation, race day weather remains unpredictable, and heat-related issues like heat exhaustion and heatstroke are becoming more common.
The risk of heat affecting performance or safety will likely continue to rise for most marathons in the coming years due to climate change.
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- Marathon runners are training for a hotter world japantimes.co.jp
