Hydration, or lack of.

Excited again by the warmer weather, I couldn't wait to get out. The honey oat bread and peanut butter worked well for me on Tuesday, so I slammed another serving down and bolted out the door. Uncharacteristically, my Magellan watch took a long time to find a signal. Since it was 41 degrees, I dressed as if it were 60, so I was cooling off rather quickly waiting for the gps to start. Runmeter was like a horse at the gate, ready and willing - when I felt the familiar vibration on my left wrist, I knew I was all set with both devices. About 40 yards in, though, I glanced at the watch and noticed it was still in 'lift' mode, and it would not be recording splits. I just stopped for about 50 seconds to reset the watch, and started off again.
I had no particular plan in mind when I started out. I knew that I wanted to work on my form again, especially my posture. I needed to lift my rib cage to facilitate increased lung capacity. I also forgot to put on a breathe-rite strip.

 Note to self: I've got to bring them downstairs and leave them with the other running stuff.

Even before 2 miles were run, I had the feeling that my heart was throwing irregular beats. At around the same time, I was coming up to the part of my route that was fast - level with a brand new road surface, and limited debris, especially after the previous rain and wind storm from yesterday. I decided to slowly speed up my pace, run just under max effort, and slow down again. I did that 3 times, I think. By the last time I was wiped, only really running about 20 seconds each time. It was taking me way too long to recover from each sprint. My mouth and the back of my throat was really dry. My heart kept skipping beats. Then, it dawned on me, that I must be dehydrated. I don't remember drinking that much water yesterday, or even taking a glass of water with me to bed last night. With only a cup of coffee as liquid this morning, it pretty much explains what the problem could have been.

I felt immediately better after my recovery drink, and I plan on taking a bottle or two of water with me during my home care outings today.

Looking at the data, Runmeter does a great job graph-wise showing when I picked up the pace and slowed down.

I'm hoping for good weather for the weekend, as I'd like to get at least a easy 10 miler in before the week is through.

Magellan Data

Runmeter Data