Hydrate or Die!

We say this a lot at our house, mostly because I have a bad habit of undertaking insane athletic events (anyone up for a 375-mile bike ride?  Sure–I’m game), and not drinking enough.  That should be obvious to everyone, right?  If you go out in 98-degree heat and work hard, dripping sweat for, oh, 24 hours, you’ll probably need to drink a whole lot to replace all that sweat.

But I’m not doing ultra-anything at the moment, just living my normal, boring suburban-mom life.

Which makes yesterday’s minor little dehydration experience all the more surprising, and instructive.

We woke up to a humid, rainy Monday.  I needed to run, so, ever-nervous in the rain since my October ankle sprain, I decided to do some intervals on our treadmill.  Intervals, for those who don’t know the term, are a form of training (applicable to cycling and swimming, as well as running) in which you alternate bursts of faster-than-comfortable with “recovery” (ie, slow) intervals.   I know from experience that if I do hard intervals once a week, my “easy” runs will be faster.  This is a good thing.

Aside–I prefer to do my interval training on an outside track.  I love to be outside, for starters, but I have also learned the hard way that it’s a bad idea to spit and blow my nose (a very handy little trick known as the “snot rocket”) on a carpeted floor.  Especially in my own house.

Anyway, I hopped on the treadmill and started running.  I was planning a total of 8 “efforts,” with a couple minutes of walking/jogging after each (plus the obligatory warm-up and cool-down, of course).  The first one went fine, the second was tolerable, and things went downhill (pardon the pun) from there.  I didn’t quite eke out the full distance on the 4th repeat.  What the heck?  I’ve been doing intervals for at least the last month; this should be hard, but not impossible.

I realized I was powerfully thirsty.  Mouth hanging open, panting, parched tongue and all.  Being the sensible soul that I am, I hopped off the treadmill and got some cold water–better late than never, right?

As it turns out, that is right.  I bounced back as soon as I started drinking, and managed to finish the whole workout.

Lessons learned:  I can get dehydrated just from living my normal life, if I don’t drink enough.  Even mild dehydration affects my ability to work out.  As summer heats up here in the south, it’s important even for everyone to get enough to drink, not just crazy athletic types.