I'm fortunate to live close to the Harrogate Turkish Baths which have three rooms with three different temperatures (45C, 55C, 70C) which are also a dry rather than humid heat, so ideal for getting used to some desert-like conditions.
Today was my last day in these and I've had 12 days of one hour sessions. I started straight into the 70C room and felt a little unwell after 45 minutes but managed to stick with it. I really noticed the taste of salt in the sweat pouring down my face (which started after about 3 minutes).
For the last couple of days I've sat for an hour in the 55C room. Over the last week or so I've really noticed a significantly reduced salty taste in my sweat (part of the body's heat acclimatisation process is apparently reabsorbing a significant percentage of the body's salts rather than excreting it: see Mike Stroud's book Survival of the Fittest) and it's taken an increasingly longer time before I'm dripping buckets.
Initially too my heart rate monitor (yes, I wore it!) showed a higher than normal heart rate as it sought to cope with the stress of 70C, getting up to 110-120 beats per minute just from very gentle leg stretching. During a spa weekend away last week I sat in a room which was at 85C: very uncomfortable and I didn't last more than 15 minutes before a 5 minute break (then back in for another 10!).
But today's last session felt fine and gave me some confidence I'll be a little more comfortable when I arrive in the Sahara on Friday.
As the highest temperature I'm likely to experience on the MdS shouldn't be more than 50-55C (though some of last year competitors recorded 56C) I sat in the 55C room yesterday and today. This felt far easier than the 70C room and it took a lot longer before I was dripping. My heart rate also didn't exceed 95 beats per minute during some stretches.
I'll be fascinated to see whether this heat acclimatisation exercise will have achieved anything once I'm in the desert on Friday!
