2014 Chester 1/2 Marathon & the effects of poor hydration
Well that was one warm race on Sunday. Personally I like running in the warmer weather as, mentally, I feel it keeps the achilles tendons, calves and MT joints nice and warm. In the warm conditions there were several runners suffering from dehydration. Many of them were in club colours and I would have expected them to know how to hydrate better. I saw one runner stopping with cramp after only a few miles, another one at about 4 miles with the bicycle-paramedics treating him and probably the most disheartening of all: in the final uphill mile to the finish outside Chester Cathedral, a poor guy went into what I would call hyper-dehydration. He was staggering all over the road and his body was almost vibrating….. needless to say the heat had got to him and the paramedics were quickly on hand, along with other runners.
Little and often is the way to do it on a warm long 13-miler – take a bottle at every feed station, sip the water, don’t gulp it down and pour some over the head to keep what is the hottest part of the body cool.
Mankind evolved to run – we were Born to RUN – we became the dominant species due to our uncanny ability to regulate our body temperature better than any other living thing on the planet. Our temperature regulation allowed us to hunt anything from wild boar to horse and even big cats and bears. We could do this because we could regulate our temperature whilst our prey overheated…. a bit like an old Alfa Romeo or Ferrari, only more edible. Crucially though, we needed sips of water every hour to make this happen.
Day-to-day I use a great wee App called Hydo to track my own hydration – on a warm day when I am Training, my required intake is 3.2 litres…. and I am only a wee guy as they would say back home in sunny Giffnock! Right I’m off for more water (via the loo again!) why don’t you do the same? {next post on over-hydrating, and yes that can happen too}