Random Bytes...by Ross Rader

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Sunday, August 17

[09:01PM EDT] 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. C | T (31) | #

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