Water as hydration on the run - bring my own race food racer.

Leslie Sedlak

I recently listened to @Coach Patricks podcast on racing in the heat.  I am an athlete who races with all of my own nutrition (my gut does not race well with Fructose).  One comment he made was "Water is for on your body, not IN your body".  While on the ride I'm good with this.  I bring my own water bottles full of my electrolytes/calories, and add same to my front water bottle as I add aid station water.  But on the run, I run with my chews/gus/whatever, and then grab sips of water from the aid stations when I add calories.  

Any thoughts on this?  Or ways to do this better?  Or is this OK, since I'm just adding the aid station water to help process the calories?

Note:  For any athletes who have a problem with fructose on race day, I have found nuun for electrolytes, and UCAN works really well.  I don't train with UCAN much because it's so pricey.  Once I found it works on race day, I am typically good with other foods/bars during training.  Also I use the Skratch bites on the run, and sometimes Huma gels (simply less space and less to carry - so easy to bring in case I may need some extra nutrition on race day).  

Gordon Cherwoniak

@Leslie Sedlak if it's working for you then go with it.  If you find yourself pushing the at the end, or even just trying to make the end of a race the chews/gus maybe too much for your stomach.  The I'm a big guy and take in some water at every aid station on the run just so I don't have to take on that much Gatorade endurance.  Just note that with the water you may have to take some electrolytes.  If you need more water due to temps then this will add to that.  12oz of GE has 310mg of sodium that say if you were drinking 3-4 oz you'd take in over and hour, you should look at you sodium intake per hour as you should have a replacement for this.  600-1000, maybe 1200 for big or heavy sweaters/hot temps is what you are looking for.

The sweat trial document recommend starting at 1000mg. http://members.endurancenation.us/Resources/Wiki/tabid/91/Default.aspx?topic=Sweat+Trial+Instructions

I hear you on the price of stuff and not using it as much unfortunately there's no replacement for training with what you will use on race day.  For me this means starting to purchase some IM food supplies in the fall to spread out the cost for when I start to use them exclusively for the 12 weeks prior to IM.