hydration

i went to the gym to swim for a bit tonight and while in the pool, thoughts turned to yesterday's 52/6 brick. here's what i realized. usually, the day after a hard workout i'm sore. immediately following the workout, i feel like ass and i have a case of 'the stupids'. 'the stupids' is what i call that feeling like you're half drunk. you bump into things. your balance isn't too good. if i'm asked a question, it takes much greater effort to form a coherent thought. when the thought does form, speaking is even difficult. it's almost the slurred speech effect of alcohol but not quite as severe.

NONE of these happened after what was a fairly hard workout. why? i think it's because i finally had a smart workout. i started pushing fluids early. lots of accelerade and water. by the time the bike portion was over, i had consumed almost 100 oz. of fluid and 800 calories. 2600 were burned during the bike, and an additional 700 from the run means that 2500 had to come from glycogen stores. normally i'll take in 200 calories, tops. shoveling in the extra 600 probably pushed back my bonk by quite a ways.

the key to the whole thing though had to be the hydration. as i've mentioned here before, 'the stupids' are probably caused by dehydration where your brain is taking an acid bath and the neurons aren't firing very quickly (just like alcohol). the soreness was probably helped out by an increased blood volume and ability to move lactic acid out of the muscles. this helped my overall condition after the workout as my body was not busy fighting to 'catch up' by removing crap that had been slowly building for the previous 4 hours. it was already gone.

proof that i actually did work hard and not just sally my way through the workout came in my sleep pattern. i was exhausted when i hit the pillow last night and even after 8 good hours, i've been pretty tired today. when i hit the pool tonight, i had one of my worst workouts ever. i couldn't string more than 150 meters together. i was just too pooped. it will take about a week for my glycogen stores to come back up so i imagine my workouts for the next 5 days are going to suck too.

12 days to go.