What Do You Do When You Want To Use The Loo In The Middle Of A Workout?

• Posted: August 5, 2008
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• Author: Shéamus
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• Filed under: Observations, Workouts
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• Tags: Bathroom Breaks

Warning: Unsavoury content.

In the UK I’ve had to stop to use the bathroom twice mid-run. That’s out of about sixty workouts. If I can be frank, since arriving in the USA my bathroom habits have been decidedly uneven - I either can’t go or can’t stop going. A lot of that is to do with new and in many cases either very rich or very large portions of food.

Pretty much every run I’ve had to contend with a feeling like I need to go, even if I’ve gone immediately before leaving the house. I actually went twice before leaving today, but after a mile knew I was in trouble and, sure enough, at the two-mile point - which blissfully is right outside my house - had to dash inside for emergency relief.

(In the interests of full transparency, I didn’t stop my Garmin - I just paused it. So if you’re curious about my transition times, you can check it out in the splits below.)

Before I ran, I had a Clif bar, a banana, a 12oz low-calorie Gatorade G2 drink, 8oz of water and a cup of coffee. Now, I know what you’re thinking - it’s probably the Clif bar - and that’s certainly a possibility as that’s new for today. However, as said, this has been an on/off problem each day since I’ve been here and thinking things over I’m pretty sure that the problem is the coffee.

Now, I like coffee before a run - most modern research suggests it’s of great benefit ahead of workouts and as we all should know the very, very small dehydrator effect of the caffeine is more than countered by the energy benefits it releases as well as the fact that coffee is about 98 per cent water - but quite possibly the coffee I’m drinking here, nice as it is, is playing havoc with my body. Back in the UK I drink the same brand pretty much all the time and obviously I’m therefore used to it. Over here, right now at least, it’s new, and my body may well be thinking, “Yeah, I don’t like this all that much. Let’s get rid of it.”

The banana may not have helped today either, especially as it was a little while past the ripe stage.

So, experimentation time - the absolute last thing I want and need is for this to be a problem two miles into my race on Saturday. So, tomorrow, I’m going to try just the Clif bar, some water and either the G2 or some flat Coke. As said, I don’t like running on an empty stomach. I don’t need any of these things for energy - 3-4 miles is far too short a run for that to be an issue - but in this heat and humidity it seems pretty much essential.

I’m curious, though - what do people do when they’re out training for ultras and the like, or running miles on some trail in the middle of a wood or mountain somewhere? If you have to go, you have to go, but what about - ahem - the ‘clean-up’? Really - somebody put my puzzled mind at rest.

I ended up doing four miles today. It was again pretty brutal. The mini-rest both helped and hindered, as it seemed significantly hotter when I got back outside, even though only a few minutes had passed.

Splits and chart:

Less transition time, I actually ran the four miles in about 31:23. I’m not enormously worried about speed, although as usual anything over 8-mins/mile always feels like I’ve let myself down a bit. Actually, the 8-min/mile pace mark has been something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and I’ve made some interesting observations about that number which I’ll be writing about soon.

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