I will probably never forget the painful running experience I had one summer evening when my running partner and I decided to run at 7 o'clock on a day that exceeded 100 degrees. Neither of us actually thought it was a good idea, but both of us assumed the other had something planned after. The idea of running later when it would be cooler was never even addressed. It was not a good run. We felt like we were going to die of thirst. We were yearning to drink out of the low spraying sprinklers we passed watering various yards. We were only out for a 4 mile run, but it seemed to be 4 miles of pure torture with a thirst we couldn't quench. There was sweat pouring down our maroon faces. Which didn't really help the dehydration problem. Several times during the run I thought about how soothing ice cold water would feel running down my throat. I kept trying to swallow the saliva in my mouth. Usually when I run, I chew a piece of gum to keep my mouth moist, but of course on that fateful day, I was without even that. We ran past a guy watering his yard with a hose and I almost jumped outside my very rigid little comfort zone to ask for a drink of water. My thirst however did not overpower my feelings of self consciousness that keep me from making bizarre requests of strangers. Shortly after the hose, we ran past a church where some sort of young men's activity was just finishing up and some guys were walking around with water bottles. Even more torture. My legs were willing me to stop, but I knew that if I kept running I would get home quicker and drink all I wanted. It was so hard to keep going. Every step felt like it took ten minutes to hit the ground. I will never again run in that kind of heat if I can help it. Or at least without a lot of water fountains close by. I felt like I was dying of thirst.
Of course I wasn't dying. I did get a feeling of nausea and a never ending pounding in my head, but no dying. I recently read a book where the main character has a thirst that far exceeded the thirst I had that day. She has to find a source of water and she wasn't choosing to run in the heat and go without it. She was stranded in an area she didn't know the geography of and forced to survive. The author describes how her lips became chapped and she could literally feel her body drying up. How her body could no longer support her own weight and she eventually collapses and has to crawl to the water source. I have never really experienced an extreme thirst that I had no control over. Any time I am thirsty I have the option of purchasing a water, or going home and getting a drink. I don't even know what it would be like to not be able to obtain water within a short time of when I need it. And if I want it cold, that's an easy fix too. I don't think I want to know what real thirst or dehydration is like.
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I had to get out my water bottle and take a drink before I wrote this.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like the use of "fateful day" You were uncomfortable for four miles? That's like forty minutes. A fateful day is when your cat dies, you wreck your car, and Canada invades.
I do like how you acknowledged that it was a little exaggerated and talked about how if you feel this way under relatively easy circumstances what real thirst must be like. Maybe you captured something there though, that our bodies only have one reaction to thirst no mater how really pressing it is.
Besides air water is our most basic and critical necessity. I think that is why we "feel like we are dying of thirst." I couldn't have gotten past the exaggerated explanations of your thirst (torture, dying) if I didn't understand how our bodies work to prioritize our needs and make it seem like we WILL die without.