Dehydration, Revisited

A few weeks back I did a post I called "Dehydration: Think 7-Up, Not Mountain Dew" wherein the color of your urine during and after an athletic endeavor is probably the best clue to whether you are drinking enough fluids.

A run earlier this week and daily life brought that home again, and I wanted to point out how dehydration is not always obvious in the sense of causation.

That run was undertaken during cooler weather, so I had no particular impression of copious sweating.  But when I got home my short, shoes and sox were all pretty damp.

Clue 1 ignored.

That morning I had run early and only had drunk a single cup of coffee prior to the run.  Then afterwards I had another cup of coffee, not a big glass or two of water. 

Clues 2 and 3 ignored.

Then I set out to working on some stone steps in a new flower bed (I'll post separately on that cool project, with photos, when it's done).  At this point I did sweat a bit.  Yet I still did not drink much.

Clue 4 ignored.

Gradually I felt a strong headache coming on.  I went to the bathroom to pop some Ibuprofen and figured I might as well pee while I was there.

Think Mountain Dew, not Seven Up--heavy yellow and not much volume.

I finally realized that I was dehydrated, and it'd had been creeping and building up throughout the day.  Not the result of a major athletic effort but more or less a cumulative result of not paying enough attention to the clues that were obvious. 

As an athlete I should have known better.

More Golf Ball Coverage...and Ultrarunning

[photo by Gary]

In yesterday's run along my beloved Pig Farm 10 mile route, I found a golf ball in a corn field (the corn is barely up and visibility is good).

This one was in a field beside the road, at least 1500' from the nearest house, with a scrubby woodlot on the other side of the road.  Certainly NOT a result where someone was practicing in their backyard and one got away.

Then a mile later I found the golf tee laying on the road.

Thus my incisive golf-ball-while-running coverage continues.  Last previous post was here where I postulated:

The ubiquitousness of finding golf balls in unlikely places now leads me to consider some formerly outlandish theories. I'm beginning to suspect that they are alien eggs, prepositioned, awaiting a hidden signal, and when they all hatch en masse there will be hell to pay for mankind.

The link to Ultrarunning?  None, other than I was running when I found these artifacts.  Plus Ultrarunning is a sport; golf is not.  Case closed.

 

This is Why Blogging is Tough

The cats lay all over the computer area...when they're not laying on me, walking in front of the monitor, or stepping on the keyboard.

Amanda

 

 

Ca Beere

 

 

"Animal Spirits"...and Ultrarunning

     The need passed as I grew;

     the mind took over, devising
     paths for that force in me, and the body curled up,
     sedentary, glad to be quiet and read and read,
     save once in a while, when it demanded
     to leap about or to whirl—or later still
     to walk swiftly in wind and rain
     long and far and into the dusk,
     wanting some absolute, some exhaustion.

 
Source: Excerpt from "Animal Spirits" by Denise Levertov, via The Writer's Almanac for 14 May 2013.

As I always note whenever I post a bit of poetry, mots of you can't hit that DELETE key fast enough, the moment you see the verse format.

But this poem is about being an active child, then a largely sedentary adult, except for those times when the body demanded to be used.

People who are active as adults (such as Ultrarunners) know they joy of motion, for the sheer animal pleasure of it.  We know the pains and the pleasures, and the sheer exuberance that comes from going to the edge in an extreme athletic endeavor.

And the beauty is that you get to define what "the edge" is, and how close you care to come to it:

     to walk swiftly in wind and rain
     long and far and into the dusk,
     wanting some absolute, some exhaustion.

  

Mount Vesuvius...and Ultrarunning

[image credit NASA and Slate]

Sorry to shout but YOU REALLY OUGHT TO READ THE BLOG BAD ASTRONOMY.  You don't even have to have an astronomical bent to appreciate it--author Phil Plait makes it of interest to laymen and scientists alike.

The photo above  was taken by astronaut Chris Hadfield from the International Space Station and is of Italy.  Phil Plait commented:

I love this picture: Looking down the throat of Mt. Vesuvius, surrounded by towns and cities. Over a half million people live in the “red zone” of the volcano’s blast region. 
 

I find the photo almost mesmerizing.  The connection to Ultrarunning is pretty tenuous: just the fact that where I run I do not have to worry much about natural disasters or dangers.  Weather would be the only real concern; certainly not volcanic eruptions.

 

(Rail) Road-Killed Animals: Maybe not so Dumb?

Today, as she often does, the bride dropped me off on her way to work so I could do a run back to the house.  Today's route was from the village of Waynecastle (PA) north and west via the village of Clay Hill.

At the beginning of the run I explored a short section of the CSX branch rail line that goes through Waynecastle.  In fact, in a case where the real world meets the play world, the tracks are immediately adjacent to the Waynesboro Model Railroad Club building, wherein they have a set of great model train layouts in various gauges.  Mister Tristan (the 5-year-old human being, not the blog) and I have spent some fun time there.

Anyway...along this section I encountered a dead deer, apparently killed by a train, as it was pretty far from any road access point or crossing.  My first thought was, "Now that was one DUMB deer!", then I realized there were mitigating circumstances.  First, the deer could have been killed at night when it was dazzled by the engine's headlights.  But moreover, deer did not evolve in a world where trains were a natural selection hazard, so to call a deer dumb for mis-reacting to an unknown threat is patently unfair.

Ironically, a neighbor's farm dog was recently struck and killed on the Norfolk Southern tracks across the fields from my place.  This dog--well used to trains as the line cuts right through the farm--was exuberant and playful; it seems that he just zigged when he should have zagged.  I heard a train horn that morning when and where there should be no horns as the engineer tried unsuccessfully to warn the dog.

Again, not dumb: just not prepared by evolution for that hazard.

My last experience with train-killed animals came years ago with an armadillo.  I posted about it here a few weeks back where I wrote:

The most interesting roadkill I ever saw was in Texas. While on a business trip I made an unfortunate choice of routes to get from Texarkana to see the Red River. I was running along a 4-lane highway that had an adequate but not very generous shoulder, and the incessant lumber trucks were making me crazy.

So I opted to run along the adjacent railroad tracks. There between the tracks I saw a roadkilled armadillo--the first armadillo I had ever seen, dead or alive, outside a zoo. I figured that this must have been one dumb critter and one dumb species to have been killed by a train.
 

I've since reconsidered the "dumb" label.  The poor armadillo was just unprepared to deal with a train.

 

Cats in Art: Bourgeois Afternoon (Bonnard)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

This is part 1 of 8 of a multiweek study of the cat art of Pierre Bonnard, a French painter (1867-1947).  In this series I will feature Bonnard's cat art both before and after this painting, which is one of his better known pieces.

This image is the first of two published by Zuffi, and dates from 1900.  I'll show the other (from 1912) next week: 

 

Image credit WikiPaintings, The Bourgeois Afternoon (or The Terrasse Family), Pierre Bonnard, 1900, oil on canvas, 54" x 83", held by Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France

 

 

Zuffi comments:

 

...three cats and a dog brighten the Terrasse family's country house; in their own way, they enjoy the sunshine and peace of  a Sunday afternoon in the company of members of the family, including numerous children, spanning three generations....One of these is certainly the cat, which unquestionably feels--and behaves--as if it were the true master of the house.  Fat, sated, and satisfied, ensconced on the cool grass, the cat is the only living thing in the painting that looks in our direction, establishing with the viewer a surprising and effective mode of communication.

 

 

All I can is, "Duh!"  Or in other words, Zuffi knows his cats: the gray and white feline truly owns the show here.

 

One other comment: from this image, it appears that Zuffi, or his editor, or translator, has made a mistake in counting animals: there are three dogs and one cat, not the other way around.

 

Note that I had previously done this Bonnard piece back in 2010, but I'm redoing it as part of my series study.  In that earlier post, I provided this quote:

 

In this detail from The Terrasse Family, the family cat enjoys a social afternoon with his humans.

 

Followed by my comment:

Actually, the humans are enjoying a social afternoon entertaining their cat.
 

 

The Race NOT Run

Today, even as I am writing this, runners are slogging around the course of the Capon Valley 50K in Yellow Springs, WV (you'll have to Google it, don't have the link handy).

I have run this race twice and I love it.  I came very close to sending in my app to run it again this spring, but my weekends looked pretty jammed up, so I passed.

Now I am glad I did.  It is an especially ugly and rainy day today.  The stream crossings, indeed the whole course, must be a swollen, soggy mess.  On a different day I would consider it to be a great adventure. Today I'm just glad I passed.  Must be getting old, I guess.