(De)hydration experiments

Last Saturday I did my 18k training run for the Niagara Falls Women's Half Marathon I'm doing in June.

After the 16k run the week before, when my ears plugged and my blood pressure tanked, I decided to be a little more focused on hydration.

Usually I don't bring any water with me when I'm running 12 or 14k. Once I hit 16k, I still don't usually bring water but Doug often comes out to meet me two thirds of the way through my run and I drink then. In fact, no matter how far I'm running, I only tend to bring water with me when it's a) really hot out or b) Doug isn't meeting me en route with water and snacks.

This time I wore a water belt with a full bottle of water and a full bottle of Nuun (electrolyte mix without any sugar in it).

My watch beeps every kilometre and the plan was to take a sip of water or a sip of Nuun every time it beeped.

I stuck to the plan and, by the time Doug met me at 13k, I was completely out of Nuun and just about out of water. I refilled my water, had two edisks (electrolytes with a bit of sugar) and continued home still drinking every kilometre.

Guess what happened?

I ran 18k without my ears plugging.

My pre-run blood pressure was 112/78 and it was 104/56 when I got home.

Still a drop but much better than the 112/80 to 78/52 drop of the week before.

Also, my heart rate was much easier to keep in check. Instead of struggling to keep it under 170 like I did last week, I was able to keep it under 160 for most of it, only reaching 170 in the last 2 kilometres.

This Saturday I'm slated for 20k so I'll do the experiment again and see how it goes.