okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Monday, August 05, 2002
Bjornar on running in the heat
Bjornar Valstad won a big Norwegian meet in hot weather (for Norway) yesterday. On his homepage, he wrote a few words about his strategy for dealing with the heat.
In the heat it can be risky to push the running, so I ran with the brakes on...I responded unusually well when I picked up the pace near the end of the race. I would have been able to keep a high speed for a long time today.
Bjornar's strategy was to go out slow -- to conciously "put on the brakes" in the beginning of the race.
Bjornar has apparently had stomach problems when he drinks during races (though he also carried a Camelbak with sport drink in it at the ultra-long World Cup race).
My problem with drinking during races seems to be a thing of the past. Today, I didn't drink much, but I managed to drink about 3 dl of water [about ten ounces]. I didn't dare drink any more. But, 3 dl is A LOT compared to nothing.
Now the heat in Norway isn't all that bad. It was almost 30 C (which is about 85 F). By comparison, at 6:30 a.m. in Kansas City today it was 81 F.
