Getting Sick After Your Run?

Getting Sick After Your Run?

It may be your stomach.

Here is something that you can try to help prevent that debilitating feeling of nausea that inflicts some runners after their runs.  Do not eat or drink anything immediately after your run. Give your body plenty of time to cool down and for your heart rate to come down and get back to "normal" before you try to hydrate or refuel. 

After a long hard run, usually in the heat, I have often been rendered nothing but extra baggage for my family due to the debilitating wave of nausea that came over me afterwards. The funny thing is that this feeling of being very sick and just wanting to lie down never occurs immediately after the run.  This terrifying monster only attacks some time, about an hour, AFTER I stop running.  After reading several forums and getting lots of advice (drink more water, try salt, keep moving etc) I think I am honing in on the problem. 

In one recent hard run, a full marathon in the heat, I did these things and I didn't get sick.

l         I had extra salt before the run and had a dash at each aid station.

l         I didn't stop moving after the run and kept walking and moving as long as I could.

l         I didn't drink or eat much of anything until an hour after the race. Then I started cautiously sipping on sports drink, and I mean just cautiously sipping. 

This seemed to work. But what exactly is the cause of the problem?  Was it a combination of these things that saved me from having to deal with the nausea or is there one simple solution?

Last weekend I ran a 30k race where I really pushed myself.  The weather was not hot but it was humid.  After the race I was tired but felt OK and then I made a mistake.  I was thirsty and I drank a bottle of sports drink.  And after THAT, the nausea hit again, about an hour after the race when we were in car headed home.  I had to make my family stop the car on the highway so that I could take a walk break in the fresh air.

SO, I am thinking that at least for me, I'll have to hold off on refueling or rehydrating until some time after the race.  I think that if an hour passes and you are still OK, then you can start sipping on something. 

Someone said, if you are not hungry, don’t eat. We often feel that we have to get those carbs and proteins into our bodies as quickly as possible after the run.  You see this advice everywhere on blogs and in magazines.  Maybe this is good advice generally, but for me, I have at least two reasons now not too.  About an hour after my everyday runs I have breakfast anyway and after a long hard effort, I don’t want to get sick, so I’ll stay away from the food and the drink then.

People have told me to drink more water but there is only so much water that I can drink before I feel uncomfortable.  Maybe that is also something that I need to work on, personally. During the last full marathon I drank two cups of water at each aid station for a total of about 2 liters of water drank during the run but I lost 6kg of weight during the run.  There is no way I could drink enough to NOT LOSE WEIGHT has many people suggest.  It's just not possible and I don't think it is necessary either and possibly dangerous.