Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Hydrate Hydrate Hydrate!!!

G3 and I went biking yesterday evening with a bunch of the newly joint Tri-Oomph girls and Amit Bhai..and a scary incident happened…halfway through my ride…I felt a little faint and dizzy…and next thing I knew, I had lost control of my bike and blacked out for a couple of minutes or so. THANK GOD all the other girls + Amit was there, and there was no traffic on the road etc, so I was completely fine. Two reasons this happened were that a. I wasn’t hydrating enough throughout the ride, b. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch – no snacks whatsoever before the bike, since I had rushed directly from work! I felt my stomach growling even before the bike ride, but just chose to ignore it - never a good thing!


PLEASE PLEASE drink lots of water when you are training and ensure that you are eating well both throughout the day and also have enough nutrition in before/during any training session. With the terrible weather these days, hydrating is even more important!! Also, I’m one of those people who has trouble drinking while riding the bike. If that’s the case, with you as well don’t be afraid or hesitate to ride your bike to the side.. stop..and have a drink. It’s better to lose a couple of minutes doing that than becoming dehydrated later - or worse yet blacking out like I did!!

Other than that though....my ride went well! This was my first ride on my new road bike - Scarlett II - and it took me a while to get adjusted to the new gear positionings, pedals, my new posture on the bike etc, but I got the hang of it after a while and even managed to conquer some hills - thanks to some pushing from Amit Bhai!


Big big thanks to Amit Bhai, G3, Rad, Kalp, Amina, and Anne, for being there for me yesterday when this incident happened and offering me all their H2O and nutrients. You peeps totally rock!! Amit Bhai - you are truly coach material!!! :)


Also everyone....here's introducing Scarlett II! :)


6 comments:

Vishwas said...

One thing I do to fight dehydration is that I drink water all day, even if I am not training/playing sports. I usually have cramping problems and hence I try to drink tonnes of water. With breakfast I drink two glasses of water, that sets the trend for the day. At work I go through about 2l of water during work hours- approximately. I would recommend it. Of course gatorade is the better, but that much gatorade would be expensive :).

Glad to know nothing major happened. Keep hydrating! :)

Charanya said...

I am usually good about hydrating too, cos I have those same cramping issues - but kinda lost track these last few weeks, what with work and other craziness! Back on track though!! :)

Stephanie Hardie said...

Beautiful bike!!

Amit Bhutani said...

Hey Cha! I am glad I was there right besides you to grab ya when you blacked out. There were so many factors working against you when that happened though...the humidity, the heat, (ahem) the self confessed dehydration and insufficient fuel in yr body and definitely the fact that you'd just scaled a massively steep hill exerting a lot of effort!

Many beginners focus on hydrating the day of or the day before the race and in reality, it takes up to 3-4 days for the body to be properly hydrated. Same 3-4 day rule applies to carb-loading as well...although that being said, for any endurance event short of 2 hrs, it's not that critical to "carb-load".

Hopefully, I will get to see you on Thu, well hydrated and fueled up ;-)

Sharanya said...

Hey Cha, sounds scary. Glad you're feeling better, though.

Yes, I too find it hard to hydrate on the bike, and especially in the race, I hate pulling off to the side to drink water because it breaks my rhythm. That's definitely one of my goals - to learn to hydrate on the bike at regular intervals.

Good thing u had cycling buddies out there with you. It's one of the main reasons why I prefer to cycle in a group - so that we can look out for one another.

Itisha said...

Scarlett II is gorgeous :)