Amature Night Mistake . . . again.
I’ve had the feeling all week that I was building up for a dehydration problem. Sure, I’ve been taking about 3/4 of a litre of my funky rehydration mix with me on every ride . . . and finishing it. But with the weather getting a little warmer, and the workouts a little longer (and more frequent - several two-a-day sessions in the last two weeks), it’s been catching up with me.
The first clue was on Wednesday night. I had A beer. I mean one. A single bottle. But on Thursday morning, I woke up with a headache that felt just like the kind of low grade hangover I spend most of my time at university with.
Today I went out for a longer ride, picking up my friend The Irishman for the middle section. I took the usual 3/4 litre of fluids plus two of last night’s batch of home made protein bars (funny - he didn’t want his, so I had it. Oink, Oink). Now this was a fairly easy ride - 12 miles at a reasonable pace to his house, a 10 mile circuit at a really leisurely pace, and then an 11 mile dash home.
By the time I got home, I was starting to feel really tired, and even though by lunch I’d had another pint of water, I just had to lay down and have a snooze for an hour while it percolated through into my blood. I’ve had another since waking up, and still feel kinda thirsty.
Look away now if bodily functions offend . . .
. . . the final obvious clue that I’ve got myself dehydrated came at 4 pm. I’d been up since 6:30, have only just had to pee for the second time since falling out of bed. That’s not good - I remember reading in Joe Friel’s Triathlete’s Training Bible that if you’ve not had to ‘go’ by about an hour or so on the bike, you’re not getting enough fluids down your neck.
Obviously today was not part of an IronMan race by any stretch of the imagination . . . but the point still stands. I need to make more of an effort on, and think more about hydration. Nuun is looking attractive, and probably a lot tastier than the medical-grade rehydration / electrolyte powder that my friend Dr Seth had to resort to on last year’s trip across the Pennines.
