Hydration, Hydration, Hydration

We all know from our early years that the human body is largely made up of water, amazingly structured on a cellular level to prevent us from becoming an amorphous puddle.  Running large distances causes horses to sweat, men to perspire and ladies to glow.  Ergo, I must be a horse. 

This simple heat-management process (cooling the body by the removal of heat through vapourisation) is great, but uses up a lot of your body fluids.  What Pheidippides really needed as he ran from Marathon to Athens in 490BC to report the astounding victory over the Persians was a regular supply of isotonic hydration fluid to provide not just water, but simple, non-complex, sugars and electrolytes.  But as this was yet to be invented and packaged in a portable clear polyethylene terephthalate container with a resealable sipping spout, he collapsed and died.

So, my longer training runs (anything over 5 miles) require logistical support and planning.  I can either run with a bottle of Gatorade (other fluid replacement drinks are available) in my hand for an hour, resisting the temptation to drink the lot in the first five hundred yards, or I arrange a simple drop-box.  Often this is achieved by jumping out of the car half way round on my route recce, or by depositing it early into my run if I'm doing a multi-lap course (e.g. round a reservoir twice etc).  This also acts as a pathetic little incentive to keep going in the early part of the run in order to reach the plastic oasis.  I said right back in the early days of the blog that the psychological battle would be as hard as the physical - and so it is.

One small note of surprise: when I last looked, Lucozade was an old-lady's drink in a glass bottle with an orange cellophane wrapper - now Lucozade is described as a supplier of sports science solutions.  How did that happen?

It's less than three weeks to half-mararthon day.  Please, please, wil you consider sponsoring me?