Turkish slippers & Saunas
A leisurely morning with a few household chores completed and my preferred breakfast of local Tablehurst farm natural yoghurt, nutty granola, extra seeds, goji berries, blueberries, bee pollen(!) and a drizzle of brown rice syrup and a large coffee. Headed out to Tonbridge School Sports Centre for my run followed by a sauna session. One of more to come this week.
I have to mention my new Nike trainers. The Nike Zoom X Vaporfly Next % (what a mouthful!) They are radical looking and I was very unsure about spending so much on a pair of running shoes but I am not disappointed at all. They feel so light and cushioned in all the right places and make me ’feel’ fast. And they are bright green 😀
Last week I managed to do 3 sauna sessions post training, one after a turbo at home after which I jumped straight into the car, drove to Tonbridge and was in the sauna within the suggested 30 minutes post session. The other two sessions were post pool and post a treadmill run.
Sauna training is an excellent weapon for heat acclimatisation. The advice I’ve read is that one shouldn’t rehydrate before getting in the sauna post training session and it’s better to not drink whilst in there either. One can slowly rehydrate over the course of several hours. For optimum results 20 mins and take a warm shower afterwards. It’s hard and I look like a beetroot afterwards 😫
Sauna sessions are similar to hard exercise in terms of one’s cardio system and the hormones involved in controlling one’s blood and body fluid volumes. The hot environment signals the blood to come to the skin for thermoregulation hence decreased blood flow and oxygen to other organs. It resets your thermoregulation thresholds so hot temps feel less severe.
I felt it benefitted me when I did this for my first Ironman at Lanzarote which was nearly 30 degrees during the run but I’m conscious Hawaii will be hotter and humid so hopefully this sauna training will help.
It certainly took about half an hour for my body temperature to calm down. I carried on sweating for sometime after my warm shower!
Home for a lunch of whatever I could conjure up from my fridge...
Protein & fat yum!
and an afternoon of testing out the new bike box (it fits!) and more chores and chatting to my children at their schools.
5 days till ✈️...