How to Hack The Heat During A Triathlon

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And you know, when you're racing a race like Ironman Hawaii in Kona, you need to keep your body as cool as possible if you want to go as fast as you possibly can. So what I'm going to show you in this video today are some of the devices that you can use to hack the heat and keep your body cool for as long as possible. So, so what you're about to see are all items that I will personally be taking to Ironman Hawaii. The first is an Arctic heat cooling vest. This vest will keep you cool for about 60 to 90 minutes. Now what you do is you freeze it and then you place it in something like this, a portable cooler. And you can keep this in your transition bag along with some of the other cooling devices that I'm going to show you in this video. The second thing that you can use is this Bex Palm cooling device. And what you can do with this device is actually hold it in your hand as you're running about the first 90 minutes or so of something like a marathon. And that will also help to cool blood as it comes through your hand. The next thing that you'll see here is actually a supplement. This supplement in particular is made by a company by Mount Cap called Mount Capra. It's actually Colostrum. Specifically, what Colostrum does is it reduces the gastric permeability in your intestines when you're out exercising in the heat. So you get a lot less gastric distress from heat related indigestion. Next, we've got something that's fairly common and that's simply an insulated water bottle. And this will be one of the water bottles that will be on my bicycle coming out of the first transition. And it will be full of very cold water because that helps to cool your core. And there will be another bottle just like that full of ice that I can chew on for the first few miles of the run. And that will go into that portable cooler as well. Now the next thing that you're going to see are these arm coolers. And these are something that can actually be worn on both the bike and the run. And every time they get wet, they drop by about 10 to 15 degrees because they're filled with xylitol. And so this can actually not only shield you from the sun a little bit, but keep you quite cool. So what you do is you roll them up and you put them on your bicycle and then you put them on while you're riding or you put them on in transition from the swim to the bike. And then the final thing here is an actual cooling hat that also acts as a shield. And this hat will again decrease in temperature significantly once water hits it. So you can dump water and ice on your head to stay cool while you're wearing that hat. So between the body cooling vest, the palm cooling device, the thermal water bottle, the colostrum, the cooling hat, and the cooling sleeves, there's lots of tools right there that you can use to hack the heat in your hot triathlon.