Sick, Sick, Sick
I haven't been sick in a long, long time. Yesterday, I felt really sick.
I made the mistake of going out for a bike ride with less than 1/2 the supply of water that I needed. Under average conditions, a cyclist requires 500ml of water per hour of activity to replace fluids lost to sweat. This requirement obviously goes up on warmer days. I only intended to go our for a quick sprint around the neighborhood, so I only took one bottle, roughly 500ml with me. I found a new trail that I hadn't explored, and before I knew it, I had been gone for just under two hours. It was a pretty warm day and the result was that I I managed to serve myself up with a really nice case of heat exhaustion. I really should have known better - better to head blindly down a new trail without a thought about coming back and better to head out in such warm weather with so little water.
I suppose it could have been worse though, towards the end of my ride I noticed that i was getting a headache and put two and two together - I was losing more water than I was taking in. I chugged back my available supply and started to replenish immediately when I got home. Even though I drank about six litres of water over the next two hours, I still developed a fever, nausea and a massive headache.
I went to bed pretty early and even when I got up this morning, I was still feeling pretty punky. Anyways, enough whining out of me. If you going out in the heat, make sure that you take plenty of fluids with you.
See this post as it first appeared on Blogware.