# Post ride health question



## bicicletă (Aug 18, 2008)

New to the forum. 1st post. Hello everyone...

This morning, in the shower after my training ride, I got dizzy and threw up the water I'd consumed during my ride. This is the 2nd time this has happened in a few weeks. Then, after several minutes I feel great. Is this normal, or not?

Details:
I've been riding my singlespeed (32/20) mountain bike on a flat dirt/gravel canal for the last 7 months getting fit for a planned road bike purchase. After warm-up, I ride at about 100-110 RPM for 10 miles each ride. I ride about twice a week. I feel great while riding. The temp for this paticular ride was 85°F. I just had a comprehensive physical a week ago, and got a very positive result for my 5' 5", 140 lb, 45 year old body.

Thanks in advance for your opinions.


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## fleck (Mar 25, 2005)

avoid chugging anything right after a ride. Drink, but do it slowly.
and get easy to digest foods in you as well.

it's not abnormal to have your stomach a bit on edge after hard rides.


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## Andrea138 (Mar 10, 2008)

How was your blood pressure at your physical?

A hot shower after you exercise can cause a drop in blood pressure, and vomiting is one of the reflexes your body has to bring it back up. Try taking an extra long time to cool down after you ride. It will allow your body temp to drop, and, more importantly, it will give your circulation time to return to normal (i.e. the extra blood vessels that opened up in your working muscles will close and the vessels to your internal organs will become more open).


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## bicicletă (Aug 18, 2008)

My BP was 117/80. The hot shower makes sense, because both times it happened in the shower. Thanks for the advice Andrea!

- Adam


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## Andrea138 (Mar 10, 2008)

That's a normal BP, but I'm still inclined to think that you're experiencing a drop in BP. 

When I'm teaching my beginner ex phys. students, I use the analogy of a water spigot & sprinkler system...
When you exercise, it's like turning the water up high at the spigot and opening up all of the available pipes for it to flow through (raising BP and opening vessels). A proper cool down is like turning the water down slowly and slowly closing off some of the open pipes (allowing HR to drop and vessels in the previously active muscles to close back off, resulting in a gradual lowering of BP within the available vessels). However, if you were to just turn the water down, without closing some of the pipes, the water pressure would be too low for the water to get to all of the pipes. 
This is analogous to what happens if you don't cool down long enough before getting into a hot shower- your HR drops after exercise (as it should), but you may still have extra dilated vessels at the muscle. On top of that, when you get in the hot water, it causes dilation of the blood vessels near the skin (part of your body's cooling mechanism). The combination of your normal heart rate with both "sets" of dilated blood vessels can give you symptoms of low blood pressure.


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## Nimitz (Jul 8, 2004)

Andrea nailed it.

your cool down is lacking....are you stopping pretty quickly after that and sitting down?

ride around to get your heart rate to drop back down.

anytime I ride, run, swim etc. and am really burned out, I don't take a HOT shower....just enough hot water so its room temp, or slightly warm.

the hot shower just makes the dizziness worse.

Chad


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