A white-walled, cupboard-sized room at Silverstone may not be the most obvious place to experience the potentially stifling conditions players will face in Qatar.
But a sky-high heart rate and a stream of sweat that drips onto a treadmill at Porsche’s Human Performance Lab after 45 minutes of work suggests otherwise.
Mirror Football has been invited to the racetrack to get a sense of just how taxing the climate could be in the Gulf state – despite promises of a new air conditioning system at all eight stadiums.
Temperatures in Qatar at this time of year will typically peak in the low 30s, some way off the mid-40s that would have made a summer World Cup unwatchable and downright dangerous. Humidity is also higher during the winter months.
And while the stadiums have had coolant devices installed, training facilities will be exposed to the heat and for those who struggle in high temperatures the lack of an acclimatisation period owing to such a punishing schedule face an additional obstacle.
So the Silverstone chamber has been set up to mirror the average conditions and give us an idea of what it will feel like for the players. The test set by the physiologists is simple: 45 minutes on the treadmill with heart rate monitored constantly and core body temperature being checked at five-minute intervals.
Except the application turns out to be anything but easy and by the end it feels like the red line coaches so often talk about is close to being crossed.
To begin with I strip down to just shorts to undergo a body composition test - essentially the leaner you are, the easier it should be to cope with the weather conditions - and once a comprehensive breakdown of my weight is recorded I get a 500ml water bottle to take into the room.
Stepping into the chamber is not too dissimilar to when you stand under a supermarket entrance on a bitingly cold day when they have the air conditioning on full blast.
The pace set to a conservative 12kmh, it feels controlled for the first ten minutes. It is hard to detect an additional strain on the legs, the only challenge at this stage being the monotony of treadmill running.
It would be foolish to get cocky, mind, and predictably from about halfway, with the pace marginally bumped up to 12.5kmh, the perceived rate of exertion from the waist up skyrockets.
By the final ten minutes, it is a case of clinging on and counting down the seconds. Nearing the end I sweat so much that the chest strap monitoring my heart rate slips off and my eyes are stinging from beads rolling down my forehead.
To put things into perspective, my core temperature at the beginning is 36.2c and by the end it is 39.2c. Typically, the lab’s lead physiologist Jack Wilson says, athletes are pulled from the test if they reach 39.5c because of safety concerns.
My heart rate at the finish is in the mid-180s. Running outside at that pace, it would ordinarily be in the 140s. To reach 185 outside in normal conditions, I would typically be running faster than 17kmh per hour.
Stepping off, there is a curious split between the bottom half of my body feeling perfectly fine and the upper half being, well, a bit of a mess.
Once my heart rate drops back I hop back on the scales to see how much weight was lost in the 45 minutes. Jack takes the numbers down on a laptop to form part of a detailed report that lists everything from body fat (9%) to whether my left or right limbs contain more muscle mass (the legs are identical; my right arm has a little more muscle mass).
When, during an explanation of the data half an hour later, he says my performance is not far off what they expect from a runner about to take on Marathon des Sables, the six-day ultramarathon that goes through the Sahara, my eyebrow is raised.
But, more importantly, is continuous running for 45 minutes really comparable with 90 minutes of football? The treadmill shows a little more than 9km covered. Box-to-box midfielders and attacking full backs, typically the most active positions, will seldom cover more than 12km in double the length of time.
Andy Blow, the founder of Precision Fuel and Hydration, says the conditions will be even more taxing on players because high-intensity sprints and constant changes of direction will produce more strain on their bodies.
Precision, who work closely with Wolves among many others, have equipped the entire Wales squad with individualised hydration plans for the tournament. That means every player will know how much to drink and when throughout their stay in the Gulf.
They have all had sweat tests to determine the amount of electrolyte supplementation required to ensure they are neither dehydrated nor over-hydrated.
“The danger with the tournament isn’t that things can go catastrophically wrong in one game,” he says. “It’s about a depletion over a number of days because they will play regular games while training in between. It comes down to understanding the squad, some players will need a proactive approach.”
The test involves having a small, painless device attached to the inside of your forearm which basically sucks the sweat out. After a few minutes a member of their team takes a narrow plastic tube filled with sweat out with a syringe and puts it in a machine that analyses the sodium level.
My result shows I lose 778mg of sodium per litre. The lowest Precision have seen is 204mg; the highest 2,314mg. There is little that can be done to change the composition; it is predominantly based on genetics rather than diet or lifestyle, though some changes can occur year-on-year.
One of the big concerns from a performance perspective is the lack of time players in western Europe will have to acclimatise. England will be in Qatar less than a week when they face Iran in their opening group match, while most of their opponents’ squad have been practising in similar conditions for months.
“Preparation should start before they go, they should be undergoing acclimatisation before going. That can be as simple as sitting in a hot bath or a sauna to elevate their temperature and drive adaptations,” Blow adds. “They will need to drink more and some, if not all, will need more electrolytes for that.”
