If one afternoon this June a traveler had entered one of the houses in the Alps where the UAE was preparing for the Tour, he would perhaps have found half a dozen people dressed in painters’ overalls pedaling gently on stationary bicycles in a room in which several heaters at full power heated to 40 degrees. They were the team cyclists, with Tadej Pogacar at the front, during a heat acclimatization session. The heat school is the most fashionable cry in the permanent search for the best possible training to face the toughest race with the best weapons.
“With heat, performance decreases because when plasma volume decreases with sweating to cool the body, blood flow to the muscles is reduced and the nervous system is also affected, since the brain is startled by the exaggerated perception of effort and “It decreases its activity to safeguard its energy,” explains Pedro Valenzuela, doctor in Health Sciences and researcher at the 12 de Octubre Hospital in Madrid, who two years ago participated in a research that concluded that between 10 and 25 degrees most cyclists reach their highest performance values. “We relied on average maximum power (MMP) data from more than 70 professional cyclists over eight years in both training and competition, and observed a deterioration in performance at colder temperatures (-18% at 5º). ) and warmer (-9% at 35º). The highest values, in fact, were reached between 10º and 25º”.
The weather forecast is warning of the hottest Tour in history, even hotter than in 2003, when the French heat wave was deadly. At the start in Florence at midday, the thermometer was reading 33 degrees, and at the finish in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast, with the sun loungers on the beaches packed, six hours later it was still above 30. And if you add to the heat itself the ambient temperature of the already torrid summers due to climate change, the difference between surviving or dying lies in acclimatisation.
The best way to ensure that the heat does not influence performance is heat training. “With three weekly sessions of gentle filming at 40 degrees, interesting hematological adaptations are achieved in two weeks,” says Valenzuela. “So, when you compete in the heat you have the ability to sweat more to cool your body more without reducing blood flow much. And with greater plasma volume, in addition to more blood reaching the muscle with each heartbeat, it is also better thermoregulated. There is greater sweating with lower sodium expression.”
“It is the principle of the radiator of old cars,” explains Manuel Rodríguez, Lidl-Trek doctor. “When the engine heats up and the water evaporates, it must be refilled. Raising the plasma level is like refilling the radiator…”
Aitor Viribay, physiologist at Ineos, shares with Valenzuela, with the UAE coaches and with the leaders of most of the teams the need for protocol and strategies so that the heat does not reduce the performance of the cyclists. “I would say that the best temperature to achieve maximum performance is below 25 degrees. With 22 or 20 degrees you can activate a heat protocol because there is one thing that should not be underestimated, thermal stress depends on both the external and internal temperature. And here the main factor is intensity,” explains Viribay. “Sometimes a day of 20 degrees when you go all out can be much harder than a day of 26 at medium intensity. In a time trial at 18 degrees, which we compete at maximum intensity, we do a lot of work, but we do a lot of work, and … cooling because thermally it is equivalent to running at 28 degrees at a medium intensity.”
Although in summer it is the main objective, heat acclimatization is not, however, the only reason for the generalization of bizarre scenes in alpine mountain huts, since many cyclists use it even if they are not going to compete in a hot environment. “Now all teams also use heat training to increase hematological values, plasma volume or hemoglobin level. Blocks are made in heat to increase hemoglobin (the mother of VO2max, the ability to transport and consume oxygen, the principle that made EPO the doping par excellence at the end of the 20th century) using heat as a stimulus, not altitude, how it is done too,” explains Viribay. “It’s a fine line, a little like altitude. Heat stress can deplete you of glycogen because glucose expenditure is super high. It is about individualizing the protocols based on the internal temperature. Each one has a thermal stress limit, although it is normally understood that around 38, 38.5 degrees of the temperature of the core “Internal, a feverish state, well measured with a pill or with other devices, is the threshold, the thermal stress line where adaptations begin. Just as at altitude you seek an oxygen saturation below 92 to increase the hematocrit, in heat it is about going above 38.5 and reaching almost 40 degrees in the most aggressive protocols to induce this stress.”
The heat, curiously, whets the appetite of cyclists, already voracious in itself, as it increases expenditure and dependence on glucose, and from the ditches the auxiliaries multiply with canisters of carbohydrates, doses of up to 60 grams every 20 or so. 25 minutes. Another type of training common in recent years, which accustoms the digestive system to transfer and metabolize those immense amounts of carbohydrates efficiently and without diarrhea or gastritis, is also essential in strategies against heat, which apart from external equipment, such as vests of cold at the exits or frozen gloves or spraying water with the drums, include the conversion of the gels into slushies, sorbets and ice lollies. “All frozen products need 80 times more heat than cold water to turn into liquid. It is the most efficient measure to lower the internal temperature. Since last year we have been using frozen gels, frozen gels. There are even some brands on the market that have a slightly more slushy texture, so you freeze it and it doesn’t stay in a block, but rather a little slush-like,” explains Viribay.”
A child would dance for joy if they provided him with such a menu. A cyclist suffers, struggles up the hills. Most, stoic by force, the very young debutant Raúl García Pierna, whose heart is already beating faster in the Tour-like anguish of the Florentine start, find, like Boethius, consolation in philosophy, in the motto that sweat is the element that distinguishes the human being from the beast: the one who sweats the most to dissipate the heat that the exercise itself generates, the more resistant he will be. Only a few, Bardet, for sure, Pogacar, so acclimatized, will dance happily on the podium with the desire to shout, perhaps, more heat, it’s war.
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