Training & Nutrition - quantifying electrolytes

Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.



PDA

View Full Version : quantifying electrolytes

LordOpie
05-05-05, 09:12 AM
I know how many calories to eat before and during a ride. I know how much water to drink. But I'm totally clueless to quantities of electrolytes. I use cytomax, eat bananas before hand, eat beef jerky during, but I would like to get a better idea of how much.

TIA!

nesdog
05-05-05, 11:44 AM
While preparing for my upcoming first Century, I also struggled with this. "I want numbers!" I kept thinking. What I found was that this is all over the map. Gatorade has you high on sodium, others low. In the end, what I did was read the "technical" papers on each of the websites for the vendors; ie' Cytosports, Gatorade, etc. and try to decide who I thought made the most sense.

In my case, I leaned towards Hammer's information. They have a pretty good guide that I gleamed the figures from: http://www.e-caps.com/downloads/fuelinghandbook.pdf

I can't say they are any smarter than anyone else. All vendors have their "expert" studies. It's just that I felt most comfortable with their presentation and conclusions.

Sheldon
OCR2