Hydration

Maxime Lachance provided the following article about the dangers of hydration along with some tips and tricks you can follow to stay hydrated.

A waterbottle sock can help keep water inside a bottle surprisingly cool.
Click to enlarge.

Everyone knows the necessity of drinking plenty of water before, during and after exercising for an extended period of time. Bike touring is no different: your body needs water to work properly. Failing to drink enough water while on tour might temporarily hinder your performance and intellectual capacities such as your level of alertness and ability to make quick decisions.

If you don’t believe me, have a look up dehydration on Medline Plus and review the University of Maryland's First Aid tips for Dehydration and Heat stroke.

There are various ways to carry water, the most common being the use of water bottles attached to your bike frame for easy access. Some prefer to carry water in a special pack from which they can drink using a long tube (e.g. Camelback). Since wearing anything on your back while biking is rarely comfortable, most people stick to bottles but I have also seen people placing their pack in their handlebar or on a frame bag while mounting their straw on their handlebar for easy access.

Water, however, is not the only thing being lost through sweat while touring. Ever noticed how salty your body gets after sports? We exude a fair amount of salt when sweating. This salt is necessary to the good functioning of the body notably by helping the transmission of nerve influx to your muscles and organs. This is why sports drinks such as Gatorade, PowerAde and the like contain a lot of water and a little bit of salt. They also contain some sugar for taste and energy. Similarly, there are packets of electrolytes on the market to help people suffering from dehydration; these essentially contain salt and a bit of potassium. Talking about potassium, bananas contain a lot of potassium and are cheap, tasty and full of good sugar… they are, in my opinion, the ultimate cyclist’s snack.

You can make your own sport drink by diluting your favourite fruit juice in the same amount of water and by adding a very little pinch of salt. One of my favourite recipe consist of pressing a lemon in a bottle of water (about 750ml), adding just enough sugar for the mixture to taste good (usually two tea spoons) and a pinch of salt. I usually tour with one bottle containing such a mixture and one containing water. I then let my body dictates its own preference along the way.

Most of the time, you’ll find places to refill your bottle on the road: fountains, public washrooms, restaurants… you can even knock at someone’s door and ask politely for water. Sometimes however, you might have to cross areas where water will be inaccessible for more than a day. In such case, you’ll need to carry more water. The problem with water is that it adds a lot of weight and pack poorly. One way to solve this problem is to carry extra bottles in your panniers. Another way is to buy foldable water containers such as Platipus and MSR Dromedary bags; they take less space when folded and can be strapped to your racks or placed at the bottom of your pannier for more stability.

Sometimes, you might also have access to streams or lakes. In many cases you can drink from these sources but the water needs to be treated. There are many options available in most outdoor stores. There are, for example, filters available which eliminate most of the unwanted pathogens from the water as well as iodine tablets which when added to the water kill harmful bacteria. Boiling water is perhaps one of the most effective ways of purifying water but is much less efficient in higher altitude where water boils at lower temperature. Some people even make their own purifying system using bleach. In any case, make sure you are using a method that is effective under the condition you are faced with.

One of the problem with carrying water on your bike during those hot summer days is that the water gets warm easily… tepid water is supposed to be assimilated faster by the body but lets admit it, we also drink to feel the refreshing effect of ingesting a cool liquid. Sometimes, the though of drinking tepid water is so unappealing that we prefer skipping an otherwise needed drink. There are a few tricks to help you keep your beverage cold for longer period: some people add ice and others use insulated bottles. Since you can rarely find ice when on tour and that insulated bottles only work for a few hours, I believe nature offers us a better method for keeping the content of our bottles cool.

It is the evaporation of our sweat that keeps us cool in the summer. You can use the same principle to keep the content of your bottles cool. The trick is very simple and only requires an old cotton sock and an elastic band. By placing a sock around your bottle and securing it there with an elastic band, you have created a perfect envelop that should keep moisture near the bottle. Then, you simply have to fill your bottle and pour a bit more water on the sock. Once the sock is wet, all you need to do is to pedal so that the wind helps at evaporating slowly the moisture; this should cool down the bottle and its content. Many are extremely sceptical of this very simple solution; to them I simply say: try it and judge afterward!

Submitted by Maxime Lachance

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