Quarantine Day 54. One thing I probably didn’t emphasize enough in my Strava report yesterday was how dehydrated I was.
I mentioned that I lost almost 10 pounds over a 6 hour period, during which I only drank about 4 cups of water over 26.2 miles and 4500ft of climbing. I also mentioned drinking a ton of water as soon as I got home.
What I didn’t mention was all the bloody pee.
Actually, to back up a bit, one hallmark of this run (and my previous 16.5 mile run to Walnut Creek this past Thursday) was the absence of pee breaks. Because I was deliberately rationing water both times, I didn’t need to pee as much. This was successful on Thursday (and in fact, I finished that run with some 300-350ml to spare!). And I thought I was fairly successful yesterday, thinking that I had been able to survive on a lot less water than I usually need.
So after I got home from the run and drink over gallon of water (kombucha, actually, since I wanted something cold immediately), it didn’t occur to me that I pretty much hadn’t peed all day. When I finally did feel the urge to pee, after regaining some 4 pounds in water weight, I discovered blood.
At first, the hue was dark red, a couple hours after getting home. It became a muddy brown before I went to bed.
Sunday morning: a psychedelic orange.
I’ve had temporary acute renal failure once before (from strenuous physical activity), with no (noticeable) adverse, long-term effect. I’ve also had friends experience this too, after intense efforts. So I knew I’d only have to worry if the bloody pee continued after 48 hours. Fortunately, every time I went to pee on Sunday, there was less red (or orange) each time.
I consider this a “test” run today because I consider myself “injured” in a way (hence no running the past 3 days). It’s kinda weird, because I really have no way to tell how recovered (or damaged) my kidneys are without going to the doctor, and I’d rather not examine my own urine under a microscope for signs of blood.
There’s a certain irony in that I was more “mentally tough” than physically tough in this situation. I mean, I knew I was dehydrated but eh, I kept pushing through. I wasn’t even “ignoring my body” per se; everything felt “fine.” I didn’t have alarm bells ring in my head. But I’m guessing that I do, in fact, need more than 4 cups of water during a marathon effort in the sun. 😆 It’s possible that the damage also accumulated from minimal fluid consumption during my 16.5-mile trail run two days prior too.
For now, I think I might start riding a bit more, and running a bit less, at least this and next week. When this whole COVID thing is over, I should probably go get my bloodwork done and urine tested.
Other than the whole bloody pee thing, the main highlights today were the two virtual boardgame sessions. One from 2-3PM, with Yao, John, Jennie, Janita, and Seth. And the other from 8-9:30PM with John and Tammy.
The 2PM session was one game of setwithfriends.com, and another of skribbl.io (one implementation of the drawing game where you win by guessing what other people are drawing the fastest, plus bonuses for getting people to guess what you’re drawing). After a few rounds of skribbl, we decided to play with custom words. Our final list (which we’ll be using for future rounds):
fort, cool, bird, face, duck, doom, room, roof, tile, null, done, sick, tick, zoom, java, milk, born, cute, code, data, pump, boss, rack, boob, yoga, boba, dabs, sudo, kill, swim, nuke, warm, blue, moon, slay, fuck, shit, damn, hell, cuck, cock, suck, hole, port, part, weed, weep, swapThe 8PM session’s been seeing some attrition. But 3-players is good enough for Azul, which is what we played today. Later, when John left, Tammy and I added a random stranger to our game room; she inadvertently blocked the stranger from winning at the last second, allowing me to win. LOL
I don’t think I did much after that. End of another Quarantine Week…
