HOW TO SURVIVE THE HEAT: RACING FOCO FONDO ON THE TOSCANO
Photo by Machmer Media.
Titanium doesn't mind the heat, but your body does.
Last weekend, I raced the 118-mile Foco Fondo gravel race in Fort Collins, Colorado. It takes place in the middle of the summer, and this year, it was unbelievably hot. Temperatures were forecast to peak at 97° F (36.1° C). On a tough course notorious for a lack of shade and tree cover, many riders suffered and saw their goals melt away in the heat.
This isn’t unique to Foco Fondo. Every summer, riders succumb to the brutality of heat. Heat ends more rides than mechanicals ever will, and this year, the whole world is experiencing unprecedented heat waves. I barely finished Foco Fondo this year. I had to use a few tricks to survive. Here's how to keep the engine running when the mercury climbs.
Prioritize Pre-Hydration
Hydration should be obvious. But let’s dig into a couple of key details and get some advice from the hydration experts at Skratch Labs.
I begin consciously drinking more water and electrolytes the day before a hot ride. This sort of “pre-hydration” is something I generally do before any major race (I focused on pre-hydrating for two days before UNBOUND Gravel this year!). We are often in a state of dehydration when we wake up, and with the early start times of most gravel races, it isn’t possible to catch up before you’re on the bike and riding. That’s why getting ahead of your hydration needs is always a safe move. Even if I have to get up and pee more at night, it’s worth it to wake up and start in a more hydrated state.
According to the experts at Skratch Labs, this “pre-hydration” should often continue up to and past the start of the race:
“One tip that Allen [Lim] taught me that I see constantly is that almost everybody is drinking an entire bottle either at the start line or, in the case of a race like the Tour de France, in the neutral section,” says Ian MacGregor, an ex-pro rider and Skratch Labs’ CEO. “Most races don’t have a neutral start, but in the Tour, you’ve got sometimes like 10 kilometers where you’re parading through town, and people will drink a whole bottle there.”
Foco Fondo had a 3-mile neutral start where the peloton rolled through town at a leisurely pace. I took this opportunity to take regular sips from my hydration pack, filled with electrolyte mix, just to set me up a bit better. I knew it’d be a lot harder to drink once the action kicked off.
Drink Early, Drink Often
As for hydrating during an event or long ride, our perception of thirst is a finely-tuned hydration sensor. According to the experts at Skratch, you generally don’t need to overcomplicate things. Your body is really good at telling you when it is time to drink, and if you follow that, you’ll hydrate correctly for most activities. But when it comes to doing more extreme efforts in more extreme heat, waiting till you’re thirsty might mean falling behind on your hydration.
In extreme conditions, you often have to override your natural thirst and drink before you’re actually thirsty. During Foco Fondo, I tried to take a drink every 15 minutes. Aim for regular sips throughout the ride rather than large gulps at long intervals. Your body absorbs small, frequent amounts far better.
How do you know you’re actually drinking enough? Well, it comes through practice. When riding in hot conditions, try weighing yourself before and after your ride or race. If you’re losing more than three percent of your body weight, you’re not drinking enough. If that’s the case, increase your hydration a little bit more. Maybe add a little more salt/electrolyte to drive more thirst.
Weighing myself before and after training during a recent heat wave, I figured out that I need to drink at least a 550ml bottle of water or electrolyte mix every hour to keep up with my sweat loss.
“A bottle an hour is a good starting point,” says Mark Siebert of Skratch Lab. “We always tell people you’re kind of your own experiment. Start with a baseline, see how you feel in your effort, try something different the next time, and play with it a little bit. If you’re losing less than 3% or not losing anything, you’re drinking enough.”
You Need Electrolytes, but Sometimes Plain Water Too
Heat means sweat, and sweat means sodium, potassium, and magnesium leaving your system fast. Plain water alone can sometimes make things worse by diluting what's left.
“Our strongest advice is that you can’t hydrate with just water for long workouts,” says Elliot Freeman, Skratch’s VP. “The way it works is that you need to keep your blood sodium levels in balance. One of the things that drives that balance is your thirst. When the blood sodium concentration goes up, we get thirsty. If we only drank water, over a long period of time, our thirst mechanism would keep us from replacing all the water we lost to maintain sodium balance, causing us to dehydrate and potentially hurting our performance. Still, the alternative of over-drinking beyond thirst and diluting our blood sodium is even worse and can lead to some serious problems. Skratch was built on the philosophy that you need to replace what you lose, and that includes both water and electrolytes; when you do that, thirst becomes a great regulator of both sodium balance and water balance.
“Sugar is also important. We don’t put the sugar in our hydration mixes just to make it taste better. It actually helps with the absorption of water into the bloodstream. You don’t just absorb water through osmosis; the absorption of water can also be facilitated through the active transport of sodium and glucose across the gut. Basically, when the sugar and sodium in our sports drink mix is transported across the gut, that action also helps pull in a lot of water.”
If your gut is sensitive, it can be worth carrying your own electrolyte mix rather than counting on aid stations to have exactly what you need. This is a hard lesson plenty of riders have learned.
One thing I’ll say on this note is that I’ve found not having any plain water on the bike can lead to gut issues. If you’re experiencing any gut distress or palate fatigue during a hot race, plain water is often the best remedy. Like figuring out how much to drink, finding how much plain water you need can take experimentation. During races, I always carry at least one bottle of plain water, and I’ve figured out that one bottle is just about enough for me. It lets me wash out my mouth and settle my stomach when needed, and most importantly, it leaves enough to spray myself when it gets super hot…
Pour Water On Yourself
Not every bottle needs to go down your throat. A major reason I carry a dedicated bottle of plain water on hot days is just for dousing myself while riding. This can make a HUGE difference. Spray down your neck, your back, your jersey, your hands, and your thighs. Take showers liberally throughout the ride.
Evaporative cooling works fast, and sometimes, your own sweat just can’t keep up when temperatures get extreme. A splash down the spine can drop your perceived effort almost instantly on a brutal climb. It's a simple trick, but it's one every experienced hot-weather rider swears by, and it costs you nothing but a little extra water.
Dress for Success
When it comes to choosing my kit for a super hot race or ride, there are two basic rules I follow:
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Keep it light
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Keep it tight
Light refers to the fabric itself and the color. Jerseys specifically designed for heat are often made from ultralight fabrics that keep you cooler. My favorites use meshy fabric to help increase airflow and wick away moisture. These ultralight jerseys tend to be a bit see-through, especially in lighter colors. I’m shameless enough to not mind, but it’s something to keep in mind.
On that note, jersey color does have some effect on how cool you feel.
A few years ago, I worked with David Schultz on a story about how kit color keeps you cool. He used a thermal camera to compare how hot different colors get, and as expected, darker colors get hotter. But he also found that the difference between light and dark colors gets smaller once air moves over the fabric and it gets wet from your sweat. Looking at our results, I wouldn’t stress too much about jersey color. If you like black, wear black. If you want to leave no stone unturned, though, wear a lighter color.
As for tightness, I like wearing the smallest jersey I can squeeze into. (If it zips, it fits! In my case, that’s usually a size large.) There are a couple of reasons. A tighter jersey will have fewer wrinkles and flappy bits hanging in the wind, so it’s more aero, which will save you valuable watts. But more importantly, a tighter jersey actually keeps you cooler too.
Bare skin is generally the best at cooling, especially when combined with the evaporative cooling you get from sweat. But most of us are not going to ride shirtless. To maximize a cycling jersey’s ability to keep you cool, it needs to be tight to reduce the distance your sweat needs to travel to evaporate. There are actually scientific studies where researchers have found that the more fabric you have in contact with your skin, the better its wicking and cooling properties are. So, the more form-fitting a jersey is, the closer it gets to the performance of bare skin.
If you don’t want to wear a jersey that looks like it’s painted on, then wearing a skintight hot-weather base layer under a looser jersey could be a good strategy, but that’s something you’ll have to test out. I’m personally not a fan of wearing MORE clothes in the summer.
Ultimately, a well-ventilated jersey (and helmet) will do real work in the heat. So will sunscreen. Wear your sunscreen! And reapply it if you can. A sunburn adds insult to dehydration, and neither helps you finish strong.
Know the Warning Signs
Heat exhaustion usually announces itself first: heavy sweating, cool or clammy skin, dizziness, headache, nausea, and a racing pulse. Catch it here, and the fix is simple: STOP! Get to shade, sip water or an electrolyte drink, and let your core temperature come back down before you even think about continuing.
Ignore those signs and the situation can escalate into heat stroke, which is a medical emergency. Watch for a sudden stop in sweating, hot and dry (or flushed) skin, confusion or slurred speech, throbbing headache, or loss of coordination. If you or anyone you’re riding with starts showing these signs, DON’T keep pushing. Stop the ride, get out of direct sun, cool the body with water immediately, and call for medical help. Heat stroke can escalate within minutes and cause lasting damage if it isn't treated fast.
This year, at Foco Fondo, my friend Torey experienced this. According to her, she experienced ataxia and near-syncope just trying to walk her bike toward some shade. As you might be able to tell from the jargon, she’s studying to become a doctor, so she knew exactly what was happening and what she needed to do. She called me for a ride, and we were able to get her cooled down quickly. She was super bummed with a DNF, but her health is far more important.
Reset Your Goals and Expectations
This might be one of the most important changes you’ll need to make when things get super hot. Heat slows you down, weakens you, and can even end your race early. That’s just part of the game. You need to be ready for that.
That could mean changing your goals. I wanted a sub-7 hour finish at Foco Fondo this year, but I knew that would be very unlikely with the heat. As a result, I wasn’t too broken up when I fell short.
Likely, heat will force you to change your strategy or pacing plan. You may need to reduce your expected effort or power targets. You may need to be more conservative and stop at more aid stations (I made two more stops than I did in past years!) or go easier on climbs.
Hot-weather riding rewards preparation over toughness. Hydrate early, fuel with electrolytes, dress smart, and be safe. Handle the heat right, and you can conquer it. Or at the very least, it won’t conquer you.
