Well, it’s early in the evening. Maybe I can still get around to doing a load of laundry or two.
Earlier today, after my run I was kind of dictating to myself that for once I would stay awake on a Sunday afternoon just so I could be a little bit useful. Eh, well after church and lunch I just ended up deciding to take a short “nap” that lengthened out to 4 hours. Oops.
It’s kind of a habit of mine. Whenever I go out for my Sunday long runs, inevitably the afternoon after is kind of a bust. I’ll end up sleeping away useful daylight hours. I’m sure my body uses that sleep as a really big recovery period, but I still feel like I should be doing something better, know what I mean?
So, the obvious suggestion would be: don’t take naps in the afternoon! Duh. The thing is, I’m usually in a state where napping is probably the best thing for me. How is that true? Well, I find that about an hour or two after my run I develop a throbbing headache. It’s the kind where my head feels like it’s in a clamp that’s being tightened. No, it doesn’t sound pleasant at all, does it? I wonder what that’s about. If I look back, it really looks like it happens much more frequently in the summer months. Looking back on this post in February seems to back that observation.
(Heh, also in that post, it looks like I took that long nap anyway.)
So, given all of that evidence I wonder if I’m running out of…something. I feel fine directly after my runs, but the act of not running doesn’t mean that my body completely just stops processing things in “run mode” and goes into a normal state. No, the effects tend to linger long after. Today, when I got home I took a shower. When I got out and got dressed I found that I was still sweating. Given that, I might be running out of carb stores, or water, or even salts. I sweat a lot, and that reduces the level of salts in my body. I wonder if the headache is due to me bottoming out somehow. Gosh, after two years of running you’d think I’d have a better handle on this. Apparently not.
The store has some salt/electrolyte tablets. I think I want to purchase a tube and see if it helps to chew on some during my run. I can add sports drink powder to my water as well, but I find that doing so in summer is kind of gross. In the heat, the drink just gets warm and has a thicker sugary mouth-feel. Toward the end of the run I feel like I’d much rather have clean, although warm, water.
I have a side story re: water and the water bottle. I noticed today that the water I put in my bottle was tasting a little off. I just couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong. However, I really didn’t have any choice, I just had to keep drinking it. Toward the end of the run I started noticing that my translucent plastic bottle was kind of dirty. I figured that it somehow got dirty from something. I didn’t have time though to stop and examine. When I got back to the store I wiped the bottom of the bottle to get the dirt off, except that it wasn’t coming off. I opened the top and looked in. That’s when I realized that the black was actually a little bit of water mould at the bottom of the bottle. Lesson learned: wash your bottles well! UGH.
Anyway, I’ll have to spend some time figuring out what the best approach is. Hot weather running is a different beast than cold weather running. Each has different things to worry about. There are these sweet spot windows of fantastic running weather during spring and autumn. Unfortunately, I think the spring window is now over.
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