It's interesting looking at the world's toughest endurance athletes, and seeing what impact the weather is having on them. It's the heat that makes the Korean Ironman such a tough day, and to be fair, also the humidity. What's happening now is these races are becoming tougher and tougher, to the point of being dangerous. I should know; I did this race with a bleeding ear.
But let's look at what Raynard Tissink says in an article he wrote for RIDE magazine:
For the first time in the event's 7 year history they had to disallow the use of wetsuits because of unseasonably high water temperatures. There would be a serious risk of dehydration in the swim!
And:
...the few climbs [on the bike] were becoming increasingly difficult, not due to the severity of their slopes, but due to the exhaustion being caused by the tremendous heat searing from the road surface. I was trying to push the helmet back on my head as far as possible in a vain attempt to get some cooler air over my head, as by now the heat was causing a major headache, literally.
Even so Tissink emerges off the bike first in 4hr44, a new bike course record.
Then:
Could my body cope with the 40 degree heat coming from a cold, wet, PE winter?...after 4km of unbearable heat, it became quite obvious that there wasn't going to be much running done during this marathon, it was going to be all about survival. My goal quickly went from pushing hard, to just getting from one aid station to the next.
After 15km, even though I was suffering a thousand deaths...I took heart in the fact that everyone was dying out there. At 21km, halfway, it seemed impossible to do another 21km in these conditions.
In a half Ironman race in South Korea in 2004 I got off my bike and lay in an irrigation ditch to cool off. I finished the race, but almost passed out whilst standing in the sun, packing my towel and shoes into a bag. It was almost impossible to stand outside, in the sun, never mind run.
...the skin on my shoulders felt as though a little boy was burning me with a magnifying glass like an ant. But each 1.5km brought relief, if for only 30 seconds as they poured buckets of water over our burning bodies to keep us going.
...the relief [was] not of winning the race, but of being able to sit down in the shade beyond the finish line...
I remember in the year that I left Korea, that last summer was particularly steamy. I remember thinking: if the temperatures go up another degree or two, people are going to start dying. I remember the aircon bill going up into thousands of rands because turning it off just was no longer an option. And there was a run on air conditioners. Window panes were hot to the touch. I remember stepping out of my apartment and finding the heat immediately almost unendurable. And then I remember feeling the same way over a few summer days in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on the other side of the world. But in Bloem, you couldn't blame the humidity. It was just a case of it getting warmer...
BTW my profile picture was taken at an Irontriangle race shortly after throwing a few litres of ice cold water over me. Was 2nd off the bike, faded to about 30th in the run.
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