Everyone knows how important it is to drink enough water everyday. Heck you're bombarded with this information from as early as 10 years old. ( according to a very unscientific poll done on my kids and their friends. age range from 9-12) The magic number we're told is 8 cups a day. And of course you should have more if you're exercising. Some articles that I have read suggest the following formula to determine hos much water you should be drinking.
body weight in pounds /3 = number of ounces of water needed.
For me that works out to approximately 4 to 5 cups of water a day. Oh yeah but I still have to add in extra for my work outs so I'm back to at least 8 cups give or take. I think I read in a Triathlon magazine that if you weigh yourself before your work out and again after, and ensure that you don't eat or drink anything or go to the bathroom you could determine how many pounds of water you've lost through sweat. I don't know but that just seems like a bit too much work for me when I know that in the end it just means. REPLACE YOUR FLUIDS DAMN IT.
Then we get to the question of electrolyte replacement. I have been notoriously stubborn around some of these issues. You see I started out with Triathlon to loose weight, why would I add extra calories to my diet if I didn't need to. Water the ultimate low calorie bev. (okay sometimes I had to flavour it with crystal lite or something cus 8 glasses gets a bit tasteless.) When I started out this was a perfectly viable option. I was only working out once a day for maybe 20 to 30 min. Well that's just simply not the case anymore. Now any seasoned triathlete is probably scoffing at my folly by now. But hey it's only taken me a year to figure it out and really it's only been the last 2 to 3 months that I've been dragging my behind through the last half of my training session.
So I committed myself to try out a few energy drinks and see whether this made a difference or not. Big surprise. Of course it did, still a bit tired from a good work out but that weary achy bone deep tired lifted. Maybe it's not much of a revelation to anyone but truly it did make a difference to my work outs. I don't know why I get so stubborn about stuff like that. I'm always very sceptical about "performance enhancing products." Some things can be so gimmicky and way over marketed but truly I'm convinced.
I had to buy a hydration belt for my running to accommodate the energy drinking. I still find them overly sweet especially on a run and I admittedly diluted them a bit. The hydration belt was the hardest thing to get used to. I hate being bogged down with too much gear or too much clothing when I run but this was a necessary nuisance. The first while when the bot
tle was full and heavy I just got so frustrated with the rhythmic jigga jigga while my feet went slap slap. I must have been quite a sight to behold the first day, pulling and adjusting and moving the belt around. I think I found the best set up now but truly after the first 20 min I barely noticed it and after 30 I had forgotten about it all together and as the bottle emptied the jigga jigga seemed to coincide nicely with the slap slap of my feet hitting the sidewalk. It was great to have liquids along with me and as I said above the electrolyte replacement really affected my workouts in a positive way. I know for a fact that when I did my long run on Monday I ran faster and a lot farther than I normally do in 90 minutes.
1 comment:
Love your pics :-) You've come a long way! Try the new Accelerade. They offered me that 30 bottle deal but I declined. I bought three bottles in the store, and I liked it. It's not sweet, and the protein really seems to help. Be forewarned it has milk in it ( for the protein, I presume ), and it leaves you with that dry milk taste in your mouth.
Have you tried the hand held bottles for running? I don't like to run with anything in my hands, but some folks swear by them!
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