Joshua Gordon, PhD
When I think about training in Texas, I think about heat before anything else.
Not the number on a weather app. Not the temperature measured in the shade. I think about concrete and asphalt radiating ten to twenty degrees hotter than advertised. Heat that feels like a warm blanket thrown over me, pressing down while my body tries to claw its way out. There is occasional relief. A bit of wind. Water on the face. But from June to September, there is no such thing as cold air outside of air conditioning. It is unrelenting.
Even the best window of the day is fragile. Early morning, before the sun fully asserts itself. Humidity burns off just enough to make it barely tolerable. Then the first direct rays hit your skin and misery switches on instantly. The conditions do not ramp. They arrive.
That reality creates stress before training even begins. Having not been raised here, it brings dread and a sense of lost control. A quiet countdown starts the night before. I know I have to rise before the sun or I will not be able to execute the way I want. That knowledge worsens sleep and makes it harder to relax. The environment dictates the schedule.
At the same time, the heat forces honesty. Afternoon sessions are usually easy for me, and knowing it will be miserable lowers expectations in a healthy way. I allow myself to go easy and stop chasing perfection. The hard part is separating the sessions where quality truly matters from the ones where simply existing in the heat still provides value.
The suffering itself is different on the run versus the bike. Most runs under about twenty five kilometers are tolerable. I am soaked, sweat rate is high, but it will end. It is uncomfortable, not dangerous.
The bike is existential. Even starting at four in the morning, I am exposed for hours. The caloric, hydration, and electrolyte demands required to perform into hours three, four, and five are staggering. Sometimes thirst cannot be satisfied. Heart rate decouples from effort. Pace slips. The body protests clearly.
At that point there is no escape. The only way out is to finish. The only way through is forward.
The moment I realize how much this environment has changed me never happens in Texas. It happens when I leave.
When I travel somewhere with better summer conditions, I feel incredible. At the same perceived effort, pace improves by fifteen to twenty seconds per mile. Fluid demand drops to the point where drinking becomes an afterthought. Over years, the pattern is obvious. Texas is not just hot. It is humid, windy, rolling, and abrasive. Bad roads and social friction compound the stress.
Long days are hard everywhere. Long days in Texas are extremely hard.
Every August I spend time at altitude. Five hour rides in Colorado’s dry air, even when warm, feel easier mentally and physically. Altitude stress is clean. I would take cold, thin air over sweltering heat every time.
This is why Texas conditions have made my late race game extremely strong.
Surviving hundred mile rides and twenty mile runs here has raised my floor. In a normal Ironman, I almost never feel as bad late in the race as I do at the start of a long session in Texas while completely fresh. Writing that down makes me laugh, because it is absurd and completely true.
When things get hard late in races elsewhere, Texas does not need to show up explicitly in my mind. My body already recognizes the situation. I have been through worse. Not minutes, but hours, days, weeks, and months. I have given full effort only to be knocked flat simply by existing here.
The conditions are oppressive, and it is healthy to want to scream against them. Training through that does not make the suffering noble in the moment. It makes you harder to break later.
The season changes. Locations change. Eventually you arrive somewhere that suits your physiology, and when that happens, the gains are obvious.
I did not escape these conditions.
I absorbed them.
They show up when it counts.