I had my last long training run before the half marathon, 11 miles, on Saturday. It went really well, though my mouth was terribly dry the whole time (probably due to taking a Claritin) and my legs started cramping at the end.
On Sunday, I woke up feeling fine. I had some yogurt and raspberries with coffee for breakfast. About an hour later, I started feeling crampy. I thought maybe the yogurt had gone off, or I was cramping because my period was coming. I went to bed, but things only got worse. My kidneys started feeling sore.
Protip: if your kidneys start hurting, DRINK SOME DAMN WATER. I didn’t, for quite some time, because unlike on Saturday, my mouth wasn’t dry. I even thought it was appendicitis.
I got to the point where I thought it would be a good idea to get some medical attention, so I called my insurance company to see where I could go. They gave me two urgent care centers, both of which were closed. An ER visit would run me $100 for a copay and probably take all damn day.
I finally got some water, and that helped the cramping, so I drank more. And I went out and got some Pedialyte.
So I guess I’d gotten way more dehydrated yesterday than I’d realized; I’d consumed two 20-oz. bottles of water and a 20-oz. Gatorade during the 2 hours and 23 minutes I ran, so I thought I was adequately hydrated. I probably didn’t realize how much water I was losing because in this climate, I don’t really sweat (or more likely, I still sweat buckets, but it just evaporates instead of hanging around soaking my clothes and running in my eyes). Also, this hadn’t happened on any of my other runs.
I’m now mainlining water and Pedialyte, and I’m peeing again, so that’s good. I will pay much closer attention to my hydration on race day AND the day after race day. That was hellish.
Be sure to hydrate prior to race day! While you’re carb-loading for the long runs, just over-hydrate.
Your kidneys will thank you.