Hydration

The importance of hydration on these hot days of late June was brought home to me this morning as I completed by nine-mile run, which again included Big Bearpen.  But this time I climbed to the summit and back down again at the tail-end of my run when it had heated up five or ten degrees and I had become dehydrated.  Despite circling back to the water fountain at the Park several times in the first half of my run, the round-trip is four miles with no water (unless I carry it, which I do not), so by the time I staggered down Fifth Street back to the water fountain again I was feeling a little light-headed.  I was tempted to join the little kids from Rec Camp playing in the new fountain. 

And the scales when I returned home told me that I had lost three pounds.  Opinions vary just a little, but the formula for re-hydration is this:  “For every pound lost, replace it with 16 to 20 ounces of fluid."  So I've been drinking water all afternoon until it is sloshing around in my belly.  So is our little cat, returning frequently to one of the various bird-baths in the yard which I keep full for that purpose (would a bird be reckless enough to perch on one?)

And now it seems as if the very sky is becoming hydrated as the afternoon heat builds:  the growling of thunder on the horizon to the west, darker and darker clouds building.  The cloud cover and cool rain would be a welcome relief, and the garden which I have been watering almost daily would also appreciate it. 

I'm glad that I have now become an unrepentant (and prudent) morning runner!  I cannot imagine going up to Town to run in this heat and under these stormy skies. 

Benchmarks

The recovering runner listens carefully to what his body is saying.  And today it was saying, "I ran well this week.  Perhaps I am ready for something big."

My mileage since the half-marathon on April 19 has been a classic model of recovery - slow, careful progression, with a mixture of hills, speed-work, and long runs.  And today I shifted into another gear - a 30-mile week.  I know this sounds obsessive-compulsive, but after all I do record my mileage from my GPS watch and I enter it in my log every day, so it was an easy matter of displaying this good data on an Excel bar chart.  My daughter would be proud!

I could almost feel the sound of the clutch being gently pressed, the RPMs dropping down - Third Gear!  Suddenly it feels as if I am on track for a half-marathon, or perhaps even a marathon.

It was a good morning - a cool breeze blowing continuously, and a visiting runner from St. Louis running with us, a veteran of eight marathons.  It made me start thinking again of the "work of noble note" that Tennyson talked about in his poem Ulysses that I have decided to commit to memory.  What better verses to recite during the final miles of a distance race?

 "There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: 

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep 

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 

'T is not too late to seek a newer world. 

Push off, and sitting well in order smite 

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds 

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 

Of all the western stars, until I die."

 

 

Staying Cool in June

The temperature this morning was a comfortable 64 degrees, and it should be two or three degrees cooler up in Highlands.  As I was having my coffee out on the deck, enjoying a light breeze, I thought that this was perfect "Chamber of Commerce" weather - exactly what has led people to this corner of the world for the past hundred years.  Afternoon heat will inevitably build up and there is a slight chance of a thunderstorm as always this time of year, but mornings are a paradise for runners!  Tourists flock here from Atlanta and from Birmingham and from other parts of the South where it is hard to stay cool even early in the mornings, and the runners are out these weekend mornings, some of them even joining our group for a mile or two as we call out to them.

I remember complaining about the heat to one of our part-time residents from Atlanta several years ago - I think it may have been in the low 80s at the time - and he said that he had run in 98-degree misery in Atlanta the previous afternoon.  So I never complain about the heat anymore.  And I'm looking forward to our Saturday-morning run this morning.

Even when the temperature creeps up, as it is scheduled to do later this morning, into the 70s.

Big Bearpen Again

It has been three weeks since my last post, but at last I am seeing some improvement in my training.  It seems that the older I become the easier it is to have a "setback" - a check in progress, a step backward.  First I acquired some kind of vague stomach bug the week before last.  And then last week I managed to inexplicably and mysteriously pull something in my lower back.  This despite daily stretching and strengthening that has included, since May 1, a daily regimen of 66 pushups spread out over the day (three sets of 22, usually) in honor and defiance of my age this year.

But last week I had a great run up Big Bearpen, my old friend in adversity, despite a still-stiff back.  And the past two Saturdays I had great, strong, ten- and nine-mile runs.  I even ran some 400-meter intervals last week.  And today I literally stepped up again, running to the summit of Big Bearpen and back down twice, entering with satisfaction in my running log, "Bearpen X 2."  I am not the only one who is crazy about Bearpen.  Derek says he has been running it regularly and is surprised at how much easier it seems every time.  Vicki is a regular, too.  And today Jonathan accompanied me up Chestnut Street and then left me in the dust on his own ascent (my second).  The miracle of hill running is that it builds strength despite everything. 

And so we continue to climb.