In research published in Comprehensive Physiology, Daniel Lieberman, the renowned Harvard evolutionary biologist and author of The Story of The Human Body suggests that our heat tolerance probably results from the fact that our ancestors evolved to hunt and forage on the African savannah at midday, when they were relatively safe from less heat-tolerant predators. Think of all those awesome Olympic performances in the summer, like the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where Portuguese distance star Maria Fernanda Moreira Ribeiro set an Olympic 10,000m record in hot, humid conditions of 27.7☌. But it's perfectly possible to run well even when temperatures do hot up. Yet when the weather hots up, runners find themselves reaching for another set of excuses.Įncouraged by doom-laden health warnings every time the mercury climbs, many of us may avoid it as best we can, by heading to the air-con gym or running at the crack of dawn. We spend the winter persuading ourselves it will make us stronger as we desperately try to motivate ourselves to get out into the sleet and grey.

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