Hydration

[nickyboy]

Its fast pace so quite a nice breeze . Funny enough we stop for fish and chips at the seaside and then smash it back only stopping for a pint at a pub . @130 miles in all
Now i'm really wondering why no one drinks fruit juice on a ride .

To give you a yardstick, I did a fast paced Glossop to Llandudno ride in hot weather a couple of years ago. That's about 115 miles

I drank 5 litres of fluid during the ride. A mixture of dilute orange squash that I took with me and then water refills at cafes and then anything I could buy in little shops along the way

If you're going to do a fast, long, hot ride you're going to need a lot of fluids

 

[Heltor Chasca]

12 hours + out on the bike in yesterday’s heat. I lost count of the amount of water I drank. I also use an electrolyte powder called Tailwind. It does have carbs which is handy in this weather when you are less inclined to eat.

I use the ‘tasteless’ powder so it’s not too sickly. I like to have one of the bottles with just water. It’s a blessed relief to drink pure water.

 

[si_c]

To give you a yardstick, I did a fast paced Glossop to Llandudno ride in hot weather a couple of years ago. That's about 115 miles

I drank 5 litres of fluid during the ride. A mixture of dilute orange squash that I took with me and then water refills at cafes and then anything I could buy in little shops along the way

If you're going to do a fast, long, hot ride you're going to need a lot of fluids

I did a 50ish mile ride yesterday, and drank over 3 litres - 1 litre of electrolyte and two or so of water, and it wasn't particularly quick. For comparison, normally I'll do that and not finish a single bottle.

 

[Gravity Aided]

Usually, I use diluted gatorade, 50/50 with water. Gator Ade was developed for playing American Football in hot weather, and may have helped the Florida Gators (FSU) defeat Georgia tech in the 1969 Orange Bowl. Salt, sugar, potassium phosphate, and lemon juice. I've tried more expensive drinks and water additives, and I've tried cheaper, but Gatorade does best for me. BTW, it often gets up to 35C here in the summers(although I usually don't ride much in that, unless there's an event.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Went out this morning on a recce trip, 7 miles to check out a work building I want to leave my bike in for the day soon when I go off somewhere else. Drank a pint before I left home and pushed it pretty hard to see what my minimum journey time could be. Made good progress - but I was boiling hot when I arrived, had to stick my head under the cold tap to cool down and drank more water, maybe 3/4 of a pint. Took a 10 min breather then headed back at a slightly slower pace via a little detour, about 8 miles. Ambient temp noticeably hotter out on the way back though and drank another 3/4 pint when I got in. So that's 2 1/2 pints for only 15 miles fairly brisk riding.

 

[Ajax Bay]

Milk. Readily available, cool, cheap (cf anything in a bottle), and palatable/digestible, and full of goodness.

 

[NorthernDave]

I usually take two 800ml bottles with electrolyte tabs out on a ride.
Normally I have plenty in reserve when I get back, but this mornings metric half was something else.
Nearly stopped to buy a bottle of water but being a tightwad I decided I'd have enough left.
I should have bought some, as my reserves ran dry about a mile from home - fortunately on this morning's ride the last mile was pretty much all downhill.

 

[nickyboy]

Did a fairly hard effort 50 mile ride this morning and I managed 68mpg

 

[Ajax Bay]

The latter

 

[Pat "5mph"]

Milk. Readily available, cool, cheap (cf anything in a bottle), and palatable/digestible, and full of goodness.

Last time I was on a strenuous to me ride in hot weather, I made the mistake of having a halloumi sandwich at the cafe stop.
I discovered dairy is a no no for me on a ride, as a bit later I had to hurry find a powder room asp

 

[Heltor Chasca]

Noticed on these hot days at the Audax controls, all the usual-have-a-pint-suspects weren’t indulging.

 

[NorthernDave]

Milk! in a cycling bottle in the boiling hot weather, really? or do you mean you drink it from a cafe/garage straight out of the fridge?

When I was a youngster, I thought that the riders in the Milk Race actually had milk in their bottles - that was interesting when I decided I'd take the best part of a pint out on a hot day.
But not as interesting as the time shortly afterwards when I'd exhausted my water supplies and bought a bottle of Barr's Cherryade to refill my water bottles.
It seemed such a good idea at the time - buy it, fill my water bottle, neck the rest and get my 10p back before continuing my ride.
The subsequent explosion of pink, sugary fizz as the water bottle was unable to contain the pressure about half a mile up the road took a lot of cleaning up....

 

[StuAff]

Seat post mountings are quite common on TT/triathlon bikes. I've used bottle cages velcro'd to the stem on my Dahons, I now have an Alpkit Stem Cell bag for the same purpose. You can buy multiple extra mount options for bottles on frames, forks....

 

[NorthernDave]

I think you can now get a bottle holder for other places on the bike like on the handlebars and on the seat post/saddle as well. People can always take a flask in a saddlebag as well.If they have got one that is or a camelback.

Seat post mountings are quite common on TT/triathlon bikes. I've used bottle cages velcro'd to the stem on my Dahons, I now have an Alpkit Stem Cell bag for the same purpose. You can buy multiple extra mount options for bottles on frames, forks....

A triathlete mate has bought three of those seat mounted bottle holders, at considerable cost as he likes all the blingy stuff (it's his money, so why not?).
The reason he's bought three of them is that he's broken the other two: one of which literally vibrated itself to bits on a ride and the other one he whacked with his leg while getting on the bike...

 

[Ming the Merciless]

A sweat test is worth doing if you frequently suffer from dehydration. It basically determines the concentration of salt you are sweating out under various conditions and then recommends replacement strategies for different scenarios. Some suffer heavy salt loss and others less so in the same conditions. Heavy losses affect cell function including the heart.