Hello everyone,
This summer I have been experiencing very bad headaches post run. To preface, I rarely got these in the past. I did IM Lake Placid last year which was in July so a good portion of my training was in the heat. The day of the race was hotter than the past couple current months of training. I experienced nothing like this during the race or in my training last year.
I use the same hydration tabs/nutrition. My nutrition is good besides the occasional pizza or burgers, I drink plenty of water, use my tabs before and after training, getting around 7-9 hours of sleep per night. Heart rate data seems pretty normal for me, no dizziness or any other symptoms. Just very bad headaches post run, they last the remainder of the day but by the next morning I feel good. This doesn’t occur on the bike, even on long or difficult sessions. Only the run.
I am curious if allergies could be playing a part? Or maybe I am deficient in potassium or something.
Any insight, advice or past experiences and how you have fixed the issue would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance.
My guess would be dehydration. Is it after every run or only after hard/long runs? Make sure you are also getting enough sodium in order to absorb the water you are taking in.
Mostly after harder efforts, my easy runs I get headaches less frequent, or they aren’t as bad. I take precision hydration 1500 tabs which have 750mg of sodium per tab. But I could be drinking too much water throughout the day and flushing that out. Or maybe that one tab isn’t enough. Thank you for your response!
The old me would have been suggesting a few things to try. However, ‘new’ headaches 99.9% of the time will be down to the minor things that you are starting to cover above. I’ll add in random things like the pressure from ear buds, you’re clenching your jaw when running, etc. But equally this is something it’s worth going to your GP to get checked out as that .1% is something that you’d want to get on top of.
Never even thought about jaw clenching or anything of that nature, makes total sense though! I think i’m going to take your advice and make an appointment to rule out some things with the doctor. Thank you for your insight Duncan!