Race day temperatures are rising. Here’s what active women need to know.
As I write this, race season is underway in the Northern Hemisphere and temperatures are climbing as much as 20 degrees above average across a large swath of the U.S. As sweltering weather becomes the norm, it’s increasingly important for women to learn how to work with their physiology to keep their cool, stay safe, and perform their best in the heat.
It won’t surprise anyone reading this that women have different needs than men when it comes to training and competing in the heat. For one, research suggests that though both sexes see their core body temperature rise when they get dehydrated during exercise, women’s cores may get hotter at a lower level of dehydration because they start out with a lower volume of body water than men do; and have a more rapid rise of core temperature in the early stages of exercise.
