Kilimanjaro and Tokyo Marathon Training Tip 1

Why hydration is important

Staying well hydrated is very vital to successful marathoning,training, and racing. Dehydration

Causes blood volume to drop, which lowers your body’s ability to transfer heat and forces your heart to beat faster, negatively impacting performance.
Causes reduced blood efficiency which impacts the ability to remove waste products and bring nutrients to tissue for repair.
Dehydration in athletes may lead to fatigue, headaches, decreased coordination, and muscle cramping.

What to drink

One can drink water, juice, sports/isotonic drinks, tea or even coffee.
Some studies have however shown that caffeine may cause dehydration and cancel out its performance enhancing benefits.
Sports/isotonic drinks are a mixture of water, electrolytes (sodium and potassium-which starve off cramps, nausea, and hyponatremia) and easily digestible simple sugars, which provide you with the energy needed to run for long lengths of time and also help the body to absorb fluids faster.
There is no need for drinks that contain electrolytes or additional calories if doing short runs under an hour.

How much to drink

This is dependent on a number of factors like

sweat rate, which varies from person to person, weather conditions (more hydration on hot days),
distance one is running amongst others. One can determine their sweat rate by checking weight before and after an hour’s run.
How to determine how much to drink.
Over hydration can also lead to a serious condition called hyponatremia where the body salts due to sweating etc are overly diluted setting off an electrolyte imbalance.

Sweat test rate can be done under different weather conditions to determine how the conditions affect ones sweat rate.

How to hydrate

Pre-Run Hydration-Ensure you are well hydrated during the few days leading up to the run. You know you’re well-hydrated if you void large volumes of pale urine at least six times a day
Before race-Drink 0.25-0.5 liters one to two hours before a run another 0.125-0.25 liters an hour before race. Practice this intake during training to come up with the best intake that doesn’t give you too many bathroom stops
During the runs-Take in at least 100ml of fluid every 15 to 20 minutes during the run. Plain water is sufficient for runs of less than an hour. Practice hydration strategy well before race day
After a run-Determine amount of fluid loss by weighing before and after race. For each kilogram lost during activity, drink about 1.5 litres. of fluid. If your body weight increased, you have over hydrated and you should drink less fluid in future exercise sessions.

Ways To Stay Hydrated While Running

During a race–use the water and sports drinks provided by the race organizers.