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A Drinking Problem

08.07.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

As a sort of follow-up to the last post about problems eating during a ride, guest poster Don Blount addresses his trouble with drink.

I am not afraid to admit that I have a drinking problem.

I have had the problem of drinking too little when I’m riding my bike. (rimshot!)

That may not seem like a significant problem to those who do not ride or who drink more than enough. But it is a huge issue for someone such as me who has suffered from hellacious, make that H-E-L-L-A-C-I-O-U-S leg cramps.

I found that I would go through about 14 ounces of fluid, about 2/3 of a 20 ounce bottle, an hour instead of the recommended 20 ounces an hour.

Given this, why not just drink more?

Three reasons: 1) I was not thirsty 2) I was not sweating much 3) It seemed that the more I drank, the more frequently I had to go to the bathroom. This was inconvenient enough on solo rides and even moreso on coed group rides.

It was not as if I was not carrying enough fluids with me as I carry one 20-ounce bottle of water and another with an electrolyte such as Nuun or Endurolyte.

But after a last round of leg cramps a few months ago that led me to borrow some electrolyte pills from a fellow rider, I just decided enough was enough and I would tackle this problem head on.

I started by making sure I had some fluids in me before leaving for a ride.

While on the bike, like Pavlov’s dog, I would work at conditioning myself to grab for a bottle at a given signal. In this case I used the lap timer on my Garmin as my signal to take a sip. When the Garmin chirped at the one-mile mark, I would take a drink.

Of course this time could vary by as much as a minute or two depending on where and how fast I was riding. Early on it seemed terribly inconvenient but I forced myself to follow through.

A mile goes by – grab the bottle and sip. Another mile – when it seemed like I had just put the bottle away – grab it again and sip. Initially the miles seemed to come up far too quickly but slowly, and I do mean slowly, I found myself drinking regularly even without the Garmin reminder. An hour would pass and I would have one bottle down and had started working on another.

On really hot days I would go through 20 ounces before the hour mark. My new problem became calculating where I could refill my bottles on longer rides and choking down the inflated price of Gatorade or Powerade at convenience stores.

I have not had any cramping problems since I began this program. I have not even had to stop more often to do No. 1. Perhaps my body conditioned itself. More than likely it shows how much I really needed those additional fluids. Overall, at least for me, it illustrates the important role hydration plays in cycling.

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Categories // guest post Tags // Blount, hydration, sports drink

Comments

  1. donbynum says

    August 7, 2012 at 8:08 pm

    Good post. Forgetting to steadily hydrate (including full spectrum electrolyte replacement ) is a problem that bedevils lots of us. Being on a Catrike I rarely worry about running out of water. I usually have a couple of extra 700ml bottles for friend on prostate crushers, in addition to 3-4 for me… and I have a 100 oz camel back that I haven’t yet needed, even on 50+ mile rides.

    Reply
  2. Paul Jakma says

    August 8, 2012 at 2:49 am

    Re hydration, have a read of: http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4737

    PS: Talking about water volume in terms of ounces going to be meaningless to nearly all your international readers.

    Reply
    • donbynum says

      August 8, 2012 at 5:10 am

      That’s OK. Talking ml is like using cubic furlongs to most Americans… yet somehow we still get called on to bail out the metric part of the world. 🙂

      Reply
      • Paul Jakma says

        August 25, 2012 at 7:28 am

        Funny, but my understanding is that the US “owes” China a tonne of money (never mind rest of the world), rather than the other way around. And no, don’t respond to that – that’s deliberately a subjective, over-simplified and highly-debatable statement, just as “wrong” and “right” as yours is. This is not the place for it.

        I never ceased to be amazed by how some people insist on trying to turn normal conversations toward “Hoorah USA!” or whatever other kind of nationalism, often on ridiculously over-simplified, if not factually suspect grounds. I, and many others, never cease to find it distasteful either. How about being polite and leaving your nationalism at the door, when entering this cycling web site? (Along with other stuff like religion and politics).

        Reply

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