DWR: Drinking While Running
Today's run: 4.3 miles of Warm Up at 8:47 pace and VO2 Max workout of 3 x 1,600 m
I am in the third lap of my first 1600m run, trying to gain time since I am behind pace, and I as approach the turn, I notice a line of children and one adult walking towards me, on the track, side by side. Soon enough, the little girl on the end, perhaps eight years old, eclipses the first lane, so they are effectively blocking the first four lanes of the track on the bend of the track. At this point, I notice the girl has a cell-phone pressed to her ear.
She finally looks up and steps aside at the last moment. The adult, presumably the girl's mother, shouts at me: "That's my daughter you're talking to!" Perhaps unadvisedly, I shout back: "She's walking on the track, the wrong way!"
I found myself thinking indignantly through the rest of my laps. This was aided further by a little boy (who must have been one of the four children) heckling me: mimicking me by saying "Hey Hey Hey" when I run by (in a fake low voice), yelling at me to slow down, and yelling at me that I wasn't running in the right direction. I remember thinking mostly about the response of the adult there, who chose to defend her child instead of correcting her child's oblivious behavior. I came to realize that her perspective was that I raised my voice at her child, I was running fast, I am an adult, and therefore she needed to protect her child from me. I knew that there was no point in asking her any of the following questions:
• • •
The reason this post is titled "DWR" is that, since I had a track workout to do, I decided to do my warmup miles on the track in order to practice drinking. Drinking not from a bottle, but from cups. I looked at my schedule and saw that there was really no chance left for me to do this, so instead of running 4 miles in the park, I lined up some 9 ounce Dixie cups, filled half-way with water, and placed them on a bench adjacent to the track. As I did the 17 laps of warm up, I periodically swung wide, grabbed a cup, pinched it closed in the middle (spilling some water in the process), and tried to drink. I figure that the most water I was able to get in my mouth on any given cup was about 2 ounces. There are 12 water stations on the course, so that works out to 24 ounces of water, unless I stop at a water station to drink water. Will 24 ounces be enough? I hate stopping when running.
I think I got the hang of it. I only choked a little on the fourth one. I just hope, at the water stations, they use nothing smaller than a 9 ounce cup!
• • •
The 1600m repeats were pretty challenging. The idea was to do them all at the same pace I've done all the previous track repeats, about 96 seconds per lap. In between each repeat, I was to jog for 2 minutes. Two minutes have never passed so quickly in my life. After the first repeat, I was breathing heavily on the last lap, and my breath wasn't back to normal when the two minutes were up. With only one lap into the second repeat, I was breathing hard. I was breathing hard almost the entire way through the third repeat, which showed signs that I was reaching some sort of limit, and represents the first time in any of these track workouts where I ran an interval slower than the target pace. My splits, given a target of 6:24:
This was the last difficult run before the marathon.
• • •
Happy Birthday, Galen! May this be a great year for you!
I am in the third lap of my first 1600m run, trying to gain time since I am behind pace, and I as approach the turn, I notice a line of children and one adult walking towards me, on the track, side by side. Soon enough, the little girl on the end, perhaps eight years old, eclipses the first lane, so they are effectively blocking the first four lanes of the track on the bend of the track. At this point, I notice the girl has a cell-phone pressed to her ear.
Hey. Hey! HEY!
She finally looks up and steps aside at the last moment. The adult, presumably the girl's mother, shouts at me: "That's my daughter you're talking to!" Perhaps unadvisedly, I shout back: "She's walking on the track, the wrong way!"
I found myself thinking indignantly through the rest of my laps. This was aided further by a little boy (who must have been one of the four children) heckling me: mimicking me by saying "Hey Hey Hey" when I run by (in a fake low voice), yelling at me to slow down, and yelling at me that I wasn't running in the right direction. I remember thinking mostly about the response of the adult there, who chose to defend her child instead of correcting her child's oblivious behavior. I came to realize that her perspective was that I raised my voice at her child, I was running fast, I am an adult, and therefore she needed to protect her child from me. I knew that there was no point in asking her any of the following questions:
- How is yelling "hey" offensive?
- Why didn't you notice me, either?
- Would you let your child wander into a street like that and then yell at a car that honked?
- How is it that you come to a track and don't expect to find people running on it?
- What did you think I should have done instead?
• • •
The reason this post is titled "DWR" is that, since I had a track workout to do, I decided to do my warmup miles on the track in order to practice drinking. Drinking not from a bottle, but from cups. I looked at my schedule and saw that there was really no chance left for me to do this, so instead of running 4 miles in the park, I lined up some 9 ounce Dixie cups, filled half-way with water, and placed them on a bench adjacent to the track. As I did the 17 laps of warm up, I periodically swung wide, grabbed a cup, pinched it closed in the middle (spilling some water in the process), and tried to drink. I figure that the most water I was able to get in my mouth on any given cup was about 2 ounces. There are 12 water stations on the course, so that works out to 24 ounces of water, unless I stop at a water station to drink water. Will 24 ounces be enough? I hate stopping when running.
I think I got the hang of it. I only choked a little on the fourth one. I just hope, at the water stations, they use nothing smaller than a 9 ounce cup!
• • •
The 1600m repeats were pretty challenging. The idea was to do them all at the same pace I've done all the previous track repeats, about 96 seconds per lap. In between each repeat, I was to jog for 2 minutes. Two minutes have never passed so quickly in my life. After the first repeat, I was breathing heavily on the last lap, and my breath wasn't back to normal when the two minutes were up. With only one lap into the second repeat, I was breathing hard. I was breathing hard almost the entire way through the third repeat, which showed signs that I was reaching some sort of limit, and represents the first time in any of these track workouts where I ran an interval slower than the target pace. My splits, given a target of 6:24:
- 6:14
- 6:22
- 6:33
This was the last difficult run before the marathon.
• • •
Happy Birthday, Galen! May this be a great year for you!
posted by Brent at
6:25 PM
2 Comments:
The aid stations are long, so you can grab a cup at the beginning, drink it, chuck it, and grab another on the way out. Plus you should at least slow down while going through the station and drinking. Whatever few seconds you lose is a pittance compared to a coughing fit from swallowing wrong or bonking from dehydration.
Plan on drinking around 4oz of fluids at each aid station after the second. I usually skip the first one and have a few sips of water at the second.
Thanks for coming to bday dinner! Good times.
By
Anonymous, at 2:11 PM
My strategy: carry a disposable water bottle (with makeshift handle) to ensure proper hydration for the early miles without having to slow down for congested water stations, then as things thin out, chuck the water bottle and rely on the aid stations. I can understand why Galen would skip the first station, but I would keep drinking a bit at a time, as early as possible.
p.s. Happy Birthday Galen!
By
Anonymous, at 3:32 PM
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