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Are You Sweating Away Your Joggling Glory?

What do you do after the longest run of your life?

I jumped on a trampoline for over an hour. See, the party that I was running to on Saturday was a birthday party for my 5 year old nephew. For some odd reason little kids find me amusing. Perhaps because I’m easily persuaded to bounce around on a trampoline with them hours after joggling 29 miles. Of course, I love jumping on a trampoline and it’s even fun to do trampoline juggling.

Sweating like rain

It was a hot day and as I was bouncing around trying to send little kids flying in the air like popcorn, the following exchange occurred.

4 year old Nephew: “I think it’s raining.”
7 year old Niece: “No, that’s just uncle Perry’s sweat.”

And it was. I was drenched.

This reminded me of another time a couple of weeks ago when I was running with my sister Fay. After our run we were talking with the other people on our trips and the subject of my sweat came up.

Then she innocently asked, “Do your balls get wet?”
To which I replied, “Yes, they all get wet.”

But these two incidences made me wonder…Do I sweat too much?

How much sweat while running?

As a scientist, I like to quantify things as much as possible. So, yesterday I weighed myself before and after a 7.1 mile, 50 minute, tempo joggling session. (Day 228 of the juggling and running streak)

Before: 191 lbs
After: 187 lbs

Total weight lost…4 lbs. This must all be water because I didn’t have more than 1 ounce of water the entire time.

Facts about sweating

Here’s what I found when doing a little research about the topic of exercise induced sweating.

1. Sweating is how the body attempts to keep cool. Your body temperature can rise as much as 3 degrees.

2. Water loss. Extreme heat stress can cause the body to lose 1/2 a gallon of water. I guess mine was extreme because that’s how much I lost. Funny, it didn’t feel that way.

3. Heart rate increases as a reaction to water loss. This was news to me. Apparently, it’s because you have less blood volume which decreases your blood pressure. This does explain why my heart rate increases the longer I run, even though my pace doesn’t.

4. Exercise performance decrease. When you become dehydrated your performance can decline from 20 – 30%! Yikes! Guess I gotta do a better job of hydrating.

5. Drink water to replace sweat. To prevent performance decline, drink before, during and after exercise. If you sweat like me, you’ll need more than the “1 cup every 15 minutes” that Simple Fitness Solutions suggests.

Do You Sweat this Much?

Everyone sweats. I just happen to be on the excessive sweating side of the genetic curve. Which just means I’ve got to drink more than the average joggler.

Is it just me or do other people sweat this much? I know it doesn’t matter whether I’m joggling, running or juggling, I’ll work up a sweat minutes after I start. If my embarrassment nerves weren’t severed when I was a little kid, it would probably make me a little self-conscious.

But how about you joggling community…any sweaters out there?

This Post Has 9 Comments
  1. One of our blogging friends, Robin, just went through a bout of heat exhaustion. Very scary!! but high lites the importance of consuming the proper amounts of fluid all the time….

    Uncle Perry’s sweat?!? Very funny 🙂

  2. 3 weeks ago on a very hot and humid Saturday morning I lost 8 lbs on my 17 miler. Not to healthly I am sure, but I was drinking even moe water than normal. It di me in and I was useless the rest of the day.

  3. I sweat a lot too. So much so that I can not do a run without a headband or a hat cause the sweat will get into my eyes. I can definitely tell when I’m dehydrated cause my pace will slow way down and i have to work harder. It’s hard to judge at a marathon how much to drink since you ahve to balance the hydration aspect with the not having to pee aspect.

  4. I don’t joggle but I do run and I sweat heavily. This morning, I ran 12 miles and lost 8-9 pounds even though I drank about 10 oz of water before running and drank a 20 oz bottle of water through the first 10 miles. That’s pretty normal for me — when I finish, there’s nothing dry on me, even my socks and shoes were “squishy” this morning from about mile 8 on.

  5. I’m a human cactus – I hardly sweat at all and don’t need to drink much on the run. If I’m well-hydrated beforehand, I only need to drink once or twice during a marathon.

    I remember reading that Alberta Salazar had a very high sweat rate but didn’t like to drink during marathons. After his duel with Dick Beardsley at the Boston Marathon, he ended up on an IV drip and never ran the same again.

    And remember that you need to replace the sodium lost through sweat, so it’s better to go for a sports drink or water and a gel than plain water. A little bit of sugar will also help you absorb the water to rehydrate faster.

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