Friday, May 22, 2009

Giving Blood and Running??

I haven't blogged in a month - now I feel I have so much to say.
This is really a question though. I've been giving blood for quite a few years now - I think yesterday was my 23rd donation or something like that. I try to give at all the blood drives we have at work and sometimes I'll give when I'm at the mall - I think it's a great cause and something easy to do.
Anyway, it does take some out of me each time I do it. I assume this is true with everyone?
I make sure I don't give right before races or even important long runs. This seemed to be the perfect time - I had just finished two major events and it was even a recovery week. I gave right before lunch, ate a decent lunch afterwards and made sure I drank lots of water all day.
I did my run at about 5:30pm and it was still pretty warm out. I felt pretty good on my out route of 3 miles - kept a good pace - just got thirsty so I stopped by the Y and grabbed a drink. Afterwards headed out to pick up another mile before taking the straight 2 miles back to my house. That's when it hit me that I wasn't feeling so good. Seriously it's recovery week so I just backed off my pace a bit thinking that would help and I made it through the rest of that mile fine - no problem - only had to run back to my house - an easy 2 miles.
It was terrible - I felt dizzy and faint - was seeing black splotches. I just don't know is it all from giving blood, is it b/c I am recovering, was it the heat??

What I want to know is - does my heart have to work harder with less blood in my system? Or, is my heart not working as hard, just faster to get it through? Or is it just that blood is what supplies the oxygen and I wasn't getting sufficient amounts for the activity I was performing??
Just curious - I'm sure I'll do more research into it - for now I'm just pondering it...

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