January 4, 2008 – The National Team Training Centre-Victoria will be holding its second training camp for National Team cyclists in the Olympic Pool from February 4-10, 2008. The focus of the camp is to acclimatize athletes to the heat and humidity of Beijing, which in August can reach temperatures of 35-40°C.

The heat training sessions will be conducted in the Mobile Environmental Trainer (MET) located at PacificSport Victoria and will concentrate on three strategies — heat acclimation, pre-cooling, and cold recovery. The schedule will consist of:

Day 1: Baseline measures and heat-based responses. Athletes will be required to do a standardized warm-up and exercise session to evaluate individual thermal responses.

Days 2-6: Heat acclimation sessions. Anything can be done during these sessions but once a certain core temperature has been reached, the exercise is controlled to maintain core temperature for a total of 90 minutes.

Day 7: Adaptation measures and heat-based responses. Athletes will be required to do a standardized warm-up and exercise session to evaluate individual thermal responses and acclimation changes.

Each session will require about 1.5 — 2 hours of the athlete’s time and will be conducted at the beginning of each day prior to any additional training. No exercise will be done prior to the session on days 1 and 7.

The athletes will be required to provide daily urine samples for hydration analysis, and to have a rectal examination for core temperature monitoring. Sweat analysis will also be taken on four of the days. Each athlete will be responsible for providing their own fluids during the sessions, as well as their bikes and trainers.

The seven-day camp will also feature group training rides.