Patrick Ehrenthaler Takes 1st at Grossglockner 57km Ultra-Trail After Heat Training with CORE

The following was written by Patrick Ehrenthaler after taking 1st at Grossglockner 57km Ultra-Trail on July 27th, 2024.

I started trail running ambitiously in 2021 and since then I have been training according to a structured plan and constantly trying to improve. At the start of the new season, I wanted to try something new and came across heat training while researching. Altitude training for the poor man. As I have some deficits in terms of time and location, I thought it would be a good way to give my body a new stimulus and increase my performance.

For my victory in the 57K on the Grossglockner, I carried out a structured heat training programme, brought my heat level to its peak and maintained it well through individual sessions up to the race. It was over 30°C on race day, so I assume that the heat training paid off.

At the beginning of my heat training, I completed a pure heat block, which means I completed around 11 heat training sessions spread over two weeks, each lasting between 75 and 90 minutes. I completed each session indoors on the roller. The sessions were mostly the same, a warm-up at the beginning (approx. 15-20 minutes) and then 50-80 minutes of heat training. Especially at the beginning, I did the sessions very hard or very hot.

After my first block I had a pretty good heat adaptation, which I had maintained well through 1-3 sessions up to my race week. As the temperatures had risen to 30°C in the meantime, I no longer only trained indoors. For example, I put on several layers of clothing directly after an interval training session and ran for 50-60 minutes. The hard training brought my core temperature to over 38.5° and I was able to maintain this temperature during a relaxed long run without any problems.

The day before the race I had an optimal heat adaptation (95%), which certainly give me advantages for the race. At the start of the race we had to complete a 1300 meter climb. As you can see from my data, both my heart rate and core temperature rose sharply. From km 19 onwards I overtook the runner in second place and continuously increased my lead over him. When we reached km 38 there was a flat section of around 12 km in front of us, which was mostly in the blazing sun without any large areas of shade.

Nevertheless, I used every cow trough and every stream to cool down my temperature a little. At km 39 I was 6 minutes and 10 seconds behind. When I reached the next VP at km 50 I had not only overtaken the runner in first place but also built up a lead of over a minute.

On the last climb in particular, the participants were exposed to extreme heat stress, which resulted in a serious drop in performance for most of them. My vertical speed also deteriorated, but I was still able to maintain my performance relatively well and run a good 8 minutes ahead of the finish. The heat training gave me a big advantage over my opponents here and contributed a lot to my victory at the Grossglockner K57.