I spent most of the day yesterday celebrating Dr. Joyce Kuykendall‘s Ph.D. in Social Welfare. {She’s my mother-in-law. Congratulations Mom!} It was conferred on her at the graduation ceremony for the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University in Manhattan. My wife and I travelled up to New York with her parents, and her brothers and sister for the ceremony and a reception. We were on the go from 7:30am until about 4:30pm, including travel time.
The weather was clear and about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, which was a lucky thing because the ceremony was in an auditorium that didn’t seem to have an air conditioning system. The difficulty I ran into yesterday was that I became dehydrated and developed a terrible headache toward the end of the trip. This is something that seems to happen to me with more frequency recently than in the past. In spite of the fact that we attended a graduation reception, I wasn’t able to take in enough fluids to avoid some pain.
I feel like it’s easier to keep myself hydrated in the running races and duathlons that I participate in during the summer months. Most 5k and 10k races have water stops on the course that you have to run away from if you don’t want to take in fluids. My bike has two bottle cages on it, and I always ride with at least one bottle filled, regardless of the distance of the ride.
I don’t tend to have problems with dehydration when I’m working because the natural pace of my work allows me to think about food and drink periodically. I seem to have problems at big social events like weddings and graduations that take place on days of moderate temperatures.
My first thought whenever I run into a minor physical problem like this is, “Is there a technical solution?” A couple of weeks ago, I read about the Lance 4 Watch from Nike and learned that it has a built-in hydration timer. Even if this worked to remind me to drink something, it’s an expensive way to deal with this problem, and it’s unlikely that I’d take the time to set it properly before heading out of the house. I also could set an alarm on one of the devices that I carry with me everyday, chiefly a Nokia 6600 mobile phone, but even that requires advance planning based on the weather conditions I expect to encounter at the event later in the day.
For me, the best way to avoid this in the future is probably to drink more than I want first thing in the morning and to drink before I am thirsty throughout the day. My question is, does this happen to you, and is there anything else that I can do to avoid the problem?