Hot weather means hydrate, hydrate, hydrate

Congratulations to the (by my quick count) 69 finishers of last weekend’s Prickly Pear 50K, put on by the San Antonio Roadrunners. The Prickly Pear 10 miler, which I thought about running but didn’t, was finished by over 300 runners.

It’s a reminder that there are plenty of distance and trail challenges right here in the San Antonio area. Also, the Spring racing season gets off to both a highly competitive and zany start with the Capital 10K this coming Sunday in Austin. I do plan to run that race, but with no fast time goal. It’ll be just for the fun of it, and an excuse to run with the huge pack of thousands. In fact, race organizers claim to be shooting for 30 thousand runners for this, the 30th running of the Capitol 10K.

I know the 10K is supposed to be sort of a benchmark for assessing your running, but since I pretty much found my “comfort” zone with longer distances it has been easy for me to write off 5K and 10K distances as too short for a slower runner such as me. Truth is, I hate doing wind sprints and other speed work, though I will do them when they come around on the workout schedule Shelly Campbell has given me ;-). No, really, I’ll do them ;-) This darned keyboard…..I can’t seem to turn the emoticon lock off ;-)

Spring arrives officially tomorrow, on the 21st, but in reality it’s been with us for about the last 4 weeks or so. This means the outdoor workouts are going to entail dealing with warmer and then hotter temperatures. With the recent rains humidity is also a growing factor which will work against us pretty much the next 6 months or more. Good hydration, always a factor, becomes even more important.

A friend in Austin just wrote: “Today I did a brick and didn't do as well as I had hoped on the run because I was too dehydrated.” The veterans say drink before you become thirsty. By the time your body lets you know, it’s already too late. And I have become more and more a proponent of hydrating with products such as Heed, from Hammer Nutrition. This is a good electrolyte replacement and is IMHO superior to water alone. There are some other manufacturers of similar products, so we are no longer limited to Gatorade or Powerade. I would encourage novice athletes to investigate these various “aids” to running, biking and other strenuous exercise.

This brings me to a thank you to Carroll Voss of Fleet Feet San Antonio, who has been generous in sharing his experience in triathlon with me, and has also given me generous samples of the Hammer products to use during my training run up to the Capital of Texas Triathlon on Memorial Day. Thanks, Carroll!

You may have noticed I didn’t list swimming with the strenuous exercise which demands proper hydration. This is because I am ignorant in this sport and would encourage my co-contributors, or any readers with knowledge on the topic, to inform us on the when and how of hydration when one is swimming. And while someone hopefully picks up this topic, I am off to the pool to swim some laps.