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?