Sweating Like a Pig.

I am a little too scientific for my own good. It's probably why I suck at cooking. I like things that are formulaic and that if I poke at hard enough and in the right directions eventually yields a relatively concrete answer. The world is a mystery and damn it if I am not going to solve it. And that solving pops up in really weird places.

So I've mentioned sweat rate before. It's been a while and I am totally not inclined to dig through the reams of my posts to find whether or not I expressed an opinion about sweat rate stuff, but being highly opinionated and not afraid to share said opinion, let me waste some of your precious time with my little rant.

Most athletes are told at one point or another to compute their sweat rate. They are given the following instructions:

1. Get nekkid. [CHECK.]
2. Get on scale. [Starting to lose appeal.]
3. Record weight. [Still more appeal waning.]
4. Go run for an hour. [I am sure most websites accidentally overlook the redressing part, but it could explain the occasional naked runner or the entire Bay to Breakers experience.]
5. Get nekkid and dry again. [CHECK.]
6. Re-weigh. [CHECK.]
7. Determine sweat rate using formula: Pounds Lost x 16 + Ounces Consumed During Exercise [UMM... Hang on a minute there.]

So this thing pops out some random fluid ounces you are supposed to drink in an hour when you are exercising. Tie a nice little bow around it and fill your water bottles, ladies and gentlemen, you now know your fluid requirements.

IF YOU ARE STUPID.

Seriously. I mean, come on! And everyone is doing this. Does no one engage the critical thinking part of their brains anymore?! As if you are operating in that tiny a little vacuum?!

What happened to things like, oh... I sweat more when I run than when I bike. What about when I swim? (*JC's brain begins to calculate the approximate ounce in a freak-out-swim-gulp*) What about things like... oh... TEMPERATURE?! HUMIDITY?!? INTENSITY?!? CLOTHING?!? Do people not stop to think there might be a wee bit of variety between, let's say, being dressed in a snowsuit in the sahara desert in august while being chased by a cheetah (cause, yeah, they totally hang out in deserts. Haven't you heard of the sand cheetah? D'uh!) and let's say Borat running this year's NYC Marathon? I mean, here is me out there on my little twig of a limb thinking maybe there might be a freaking difference. Call me crazy.

And maybe this accounts for all kinds of ill-preparedness in distance racing. I mean, I'm in my glass house here, right? I'm the moron who wore shoes she hadn't really trained on roads in only to have it bite her in the butt. But if there is one thing I've learned its hydration. Know thy body. Stay hydrated all the time and don't expect that the day of the race itself is the only time you gotta deal with it. But as the distances get amped up over time and as the preparation for it begins to deepen (I am working on defining my race list for next year, cause I am racing it, dagnabbit.), I know that I need to begin to dial that in a little tighter because I also need to start dialing in the electrolytes and the sodium. No more queasy puke-inducing runs. No more feeling drained because the electrolytes aren't happening. And sure as heck no more hitting walls and getting dropped by them. So we gots to get serious.

Look, sweat rate is a factor of a lot of things. And those things aren't hard to figure out. Heck my little garmin does most of the work for me, all I got to do is use da brain to see da pattern. Let's start with looking at a few things, shall we. We'll start with the following factors to consider:

1. Type of exercise.
2. Intensity (hmm... heart rate monitor, much?)
3. Temperature. (*coughWEATHER.COMcough*)
4. Humidity. (*coughYOU DIDNT CLOSE WEATHER.COM DID YOUcough*)

We could probably leave it there, if you think about it. I mean, quantifying the wicking quality of clothes to figure out if i am running in the equivalent of a plastic bag might be a little too scientific for even me. But you get where I am going with this. (Ooooh, or the solar radiation absorption level of varied running surfaces!)

Look this is all stuff I am already maintaining. I always have. I have probably 3 years worth of workout data in my fancy little tracking program along with my caloric intake for almost as long (ain't nothin more humbling than being able to scientifically quantify the poundage of Amy's Macaroni and Cheese that has fueled my many athletic successes over the years). So for me dialing this kind of stuff in is just a matter of plotting and crunching. Not hard. But it should really prove valuable when I start defining fluid intakes for races and then wake up the morning of the race and realized Mother Nature has thrown a New England-style weather curveball at me and left me to compete in pea soup. I wish more people would start to consider some of the factors too. Numbers that are freely available shouldn't be so scary. And people need to stop buying into the reductionism of our cracked out little quick-answer world.

Which brings me to my next topic. Cavemen. Or Cavewomen. Or Cavetransgendered. Whatever floats your boat. I gave up the whole vegetarian thing several months ago. Try as I might I just could not keep muscle on me. It's been my battle ever since I started training and racing. The day I woke up and popped onto the scale and was down to 105 I realized I needed to do something about it. Whey protein supplementation never cut it. It helped, don't get me wrong, but left to my own devices I am made up of 3 things. Bone. Skin. Happy layer of puff separating the other two. My molten chewy marshmellowy layer. Not muscle. So that needed to change. So I gathered the woodland creatures and they agreed to sacrifice a few on my behalf.

Rules for the agreement:
1. Cows don't eat corn. Ever. Find me a cow chewing on a corn stalk and I'll be proven wrong. Left to their own devices cows eat grass. And sometimes boot-laces from back in my days working at the barn. Not corn. Cows that eat corn come from another planet and the woodland creatures and I agreed to eat from this planet. Grass only.
2. God gave me legs so I can use em. 2 of them to keep me from hopping too much. God also gave legs to chickens. He meant for them to be used to. It's why he gave them fake pansy wings (my proof that god has a sense of humor). If my chicken cannot walk it is a land manatee and those are endangered and taste bitter. No non-ambulatory chickens.
3. Pigs have tails. That's why people wear their hair in pigtails. If pigs didn't have tails everyone would look like Princess Leia. Back when I was 7 that was hot. It's not now. All consumed pigs must have tails. Which requires a lot of roaming around space. Pigs don't have fingernails to bite when they are nervous so pig tails are good substitutes.

Other than that, the woodland gave me the go ahead and I rejoined the pack of omnivores. And now I can eat like a cavetransgendered person. This means that in the next few weeks JC will stop hoeing her many fields and cultivating her Aztec Quinoa and searching high and low for the merry land of pastaville and will begin eating in a way that should keep her from losing still more muscle mass while allowing the marshmellowy goodness to congeal into something a little hotter. No more pillsbury dough boy over here, cavetransperson is getting lean.

Ok more later. Must.go.to.yoga. Last boxing class in the AM. Oh and ran 7.14 miles this morning. Longest since Boston Marathon. Felt good. Too slow tho. But that'll work itself out in time.