Sunday, the entire mid-south was still under an “excessive heat warning” from the National Weather Service. I had 6 hours of riding on my schedule, and the temp would probably be over 100 by noon. If I wanted to avoid heat issues like the previous weekend, I needed a plan of attack for this one.

The strategy?

I have a 2hr loop to Arlington from my house. As boring as it sounds, I decided I’d fill the fridge with water bottles and make 3 laps of the same route with a stop at the house between laps. In doing this, I could have cold water and air conditioning- both very helpful in keeping body temperature down.

Lap 1 was easy. My pit stop at the house was short since all I needed to do was drink some ice water and swap out bottles.

Lap 2 was a little tougher. It contained the first of 2 ten-minute Z4 intervals. The challenge was to budget my energy and fueling properly during the entire ride so that my heart rate could actually come back down following the intervals. The powermeter & heart rate monitor are an integral part of pacing, and lots of experience and experimentation have gone into knowing what keeps me going on a ride like this.

My fueling strategy includes 3 bottles on each lap- 2 with blueberry pomegranate Gu Brew and 1 water. I also had a gel flask full of a mix of EFS gel and Gu Roctane gel (the EFS is very thin and contains a lot of electrolytes, so I like to mix it in to make the other gel flow easier and to get some extra salt). As I discussed in a couple of previous posts, the EFS drink mix doesn’t agree with me, so I’m not using it anymore. With the Gu Brew/gel, I can easily put down (per hour) a 24oz bottle containing 140 calories, ~150 calories of gel, and 100-200 calories of powerbar without getting a heavy feeling in my stomach.

Back at the house before lap 3, things were starting to heat up. I took a longer break and downed some ice water, an electrolyte pill (I like the Elete brand), and a Hanson’s cherry vanilla soda (made with real cane sugar!). That, along with the 15 or so minutes in the air conditioning was successful in bringing my body temperature down some before the final lap.

The final lap was very hot. I had to do one more interval, and just after it, I finished off of my fluids except for a few ounces of water. I still had about 30 minutes before I’d get home, so I decided to watch for a place to refill a bottle. Luckily, part of my route takes me through an RV/Trailer park. There was a guy filling his cooler with ice outside his RV, and I stopped to ask if I could steal some from him. He was happy to oblige, and I was on my way. The hot water inside the bottle melted the ice just enough that I had a good quantity of ice water that kept me going all the way back.

I finished in six hours, two minutes with 110 miles on the Garmin. Tired, but not absolutely dead like the last attempt. Epic layaround and meals followed… complete with lots of TV watching and a trip to Yogurt Mountain (the feather in the cap of any long-ass training week).