Getting ready for Cancun

For the past week we have been poked, prodded, beaten, and put into hell....literally. Well at least it felt like hell. For 6 days straight we were put into a modified 5th wheeler for 90 minutes at 36-38°C at 70-80% humidity to bring up our core temperature to 38.5°C and then "maintain" that for the remainder of the time. The idea was to try to get the core up as fast as possible so you are at temperature for as long as possible. So we would get in there and do some 1 min on/off till we got our temperatures up. It usually took around 20-30min for the temperatures to get up there. Then all we really had to do was spin REALLY EASY for the rest of the time. For the first couple times our core would get too high (40 degrees) with just easy pedaling so we would just have to get off and sit down till your temperature got under control. It was neat to see how well your body could adjust. By then end of the week we were able to maintain our core's to the right temperature and still be able to pedal with higher watts...our temperatures would not sky rocket out of control like the first couple days. We also noticed that we were sweating more, sooner, and our sodium levels in our sweat went down...all purposes of why we did this.

How did they get all this data? Well everyday we had to put a probe up our butts which Wendy (the databot) could connect to a little computer to get our core temperatures...they would slide out once in a while....fun to stick your hands down your soaked bike shorts and digging around to adjust the probe....hahaha....Kirsten would love to see the boys do this! Every other day we would have patches put on our arms to get our sweat for analysis. We would also get our weights pre/post to see how much liquids we lost (I would average I think about 4kg or 9lbs for the 90min) and we would keep track of how much liquid we would ingest (about 3 litres for the 90min for me). Heart Rates were also taken with core temperatures every 5 minutes.

I find it really fascinating that just a one degree celsius change in your core temperature can throw your body into a panic. You start sweating uncontrollably and you just generally feel like ass. Just one degree....it is amazing. The body is a very cool machine, fun to do these tests once in a while to see how well humans adjust to the conditions around them.

We were the first group to use this modified 5th wheeler. It is right outside the offices at Pacific Sport and other sports plan on using this too. This is just one of the many ways that we are going to get ready for Beijing. Nice to test it out now to work out the kinks and to be prepared and know what you are getting into for next time. This is A LOT more controlled then blasting the heat and humidifiers in Joels little room in Flagstaff....those were good times....NOT!

Pictures below: