Cycling UK Forum

I'm undertaking a charity ride of the full trans pennine trail over three days with 12 others at the end of the month, we have been putting loads of training in since January ranging from 26miles with hilss up to our mazimum daily milleage on the actual challenge , reading up on nutrition and swapping our training runs to include hill's short and long runs speed and endurance and recently been using zero training drink with electrolyte's to replace salts when training as I say I think our training and prep is well on the mark but I have just one question:
As a pretty big guy of 16 stone I take on fluid almost constantly during our rides , for instance we put in a good fast 50 miles at the weekend taking in some decent hills of the cheshire countryside during this time I drained my camelpack of 1 litre of the electrolyte mix and also about half a litre of water.
Granted it was very hot and the sweating never stopped but when I returned home and for the following few hours my urine was dark, I'm told signifying dehydration.
I have to be honest I dont think I could drink much more liquid if I tried, any tips advise please would be a help.

One and a half litres on a fifty mile ride in hot weather is definitely going to result in dehydration, you need to drink loads more than that. What's the problem with drinking more? Do you feel ill if you drink more or what?
I rode 36 miles in yesterday's warm sunshine at an easy pace and drank at least two litres on the road and more when I got back.

Don't know if this applies to cycling, but worth a read.
http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-242-302--8785-0,00.html

Thought so bud, like I said in the title 'Think I know the answer' better strap some more bottles to the bike for charity ride, only side effect I find is ppeing like a bull elephant?

I find the little Capri-Sun juice pouches go down a treat. Also easily carried.
jonty

Touring on a very hot day in Co.Kerry, years ago I cycled 96 miles and drank 14 bottles of water.

Back in the olden days .........

I used to do cross country running, I'd cycle to school and back, I'd play out all day, and I'd be as much an active boy as could be.

Did I take a bottle of water with me at ANY time?

NO.

Why now?

What's changed?

Mick F wrote:Back in the olden days .........

I used to do cross country running, I'd cycle to school and back, I'd play out all day, and I'd be as much an active boy as could be.

Did I take a bottle of water with me at ANY time?

NO.

Why now?

What's changed?

Did you read the link I posted further up?

If you get really dehydrated it can make you feel ill when you try to eat or drink anything. It's a downward spiral from then onwards. The only thing you can sensibly do when that happens is to stop. I had that happen once on a very hot day with about 30 miles to home. I had to call out the (motorised) cavalry, I couldn't make it home under my own steam.

If you are not peeing you are not drinking enough.

kwackers wrote:

Mick F wrote:Back in the olden days .........
..........What's changed?

Did you read the link I posted further up?

No.
It took ages to load because of all the adverts, but I'll persevere.........

Tried again ....

Fewer adverts now.
Why?

Any road up, it was a bit longwinded and overly stated, but the point is made. Thank you Kwackers.

It's like I said, we drink too much.

I thought low sodium levels for long exersizing periods especially when you take on lots of fluids was well understood? Certainly I've always thought about how much I might need or what type of foods I'm taking on board when doing all day activities.
Can't say I'm a big intaker of fluids comparative to some, I have to really think about it so I get some down before I think I need them, very rare for me to feel actually thirsty for some reason. Certainly as a chef back in the day I never drank half what I probably needed though there was plenty of food on hand to keep up the sodium levels

Fathead1 wrote:I have to be honest I dont think I could drink much more liquid if I tried, any tips advise please would be a help.

1. Lose 3-4 stone. I was fat once (6'1" and 13 stone) and sweated like a pig. Once back down to an athletic weight range, sweating wasn't an issue.
2. Lose the sports type drinks. Water and dehydration powders are sufficient

Tonyf33 wrote:I thought low sodium levels for long exersizing periods especially when you take on lots of fluids was well understood? Certainly I've always thought about how much I might need or what type of foods I'm taking on board when doing all day activities.
Can't say I'm a big intaker of fluids comparative to some, I have to really think about it so I get some down before I think I need them, very rare for me to feel actually thirsty for some reason. Certainly as a chef back in the day I never drank half what I probably needed though there was plenty of food on hand to keep up the sodium levels

That's pretty much what the article I linked to says:

One of the points made was that the amount of sodium present in 'sports' drinks is too low to be significant and research showed that it was little better than water.
The issue isn't that you can't dehydrate so much that dehydrating is actually less dangerous than drinking too much water which dilutes the sodium content of your body and causes your brain to swell. To be effective the ratio of sodium to water in sports drinks would need to be massively increased (and that brings into effect other issues).

There's another related article that looks at deaths during marathons and found that more people die these days than used to (as a percentage of those running), this has always been presumed to be because more 'normal' people run them but in fact it turns out that the cause of death is nearly always due to hyponatremia.
Indeed random sampling of the finishers of marathons has shown that 13% of them show signs of hyponatremia. (This same sampling is also what shows that energy drinks provide no benefit in preventing it).

In summary it appears that we've all taken on board the message we should drink more without question as being good advice when in practise it looks like it might not be so simple.

Having said all I'm guessing that cycling is different. The effort is less and spread out therefore there's probably more time for liquids and sodium to be absorbed but I haven't found a similar study for cyclists. Runners also generally don't stop to excrete excess water, cyclists do...

For myself I work to the rule of roughly 1 litre of water per hour is all that the body can absorb through drinking.

Then make up any shortfall by stoping in the shade for 1 hour to slowly drink a litre and then carry on. If it has been a long hot day then make sure to carry on sipping your drinks at the end of the day.

Whether running or cycling I think (for myself) that the 1 litre hour is a good benchmark.