SpeshulEd 

I try not to fill my body with a bunch of lab made chemicals that are supposed to mimic the natural ingredients they're replacing.

I'd rather just drink the substance that has the natural ingredients.

GeneO 

Lots of water, keep moving, sweatband to keep sweat out of eyes, drink plenty of water,replenish electrolytes, and if you feel too overheated, slow down some and if you have the opportunity, pour some Coldwater on your head and neck.

njkayaker

????

The both have "lab made chemicals".

"Cane sugar" is "sucrose syrup".

(It doesn't appear you did well in chemistry.)

SpeshulEd 

Cane sugar vs. fructose syrup
Raspberries vs "grape flavor"

*shrug*

Gatorade just makes me queezy in the stomach after a couple of hours on the bike. I no longer have that issue with Skratch.

Use what you want, but I'll still continue to call it garbage.

SpeshulEd 

Awesome how you edited your post to throw in that jab at me.

High fructose corn syrup and cane sugar are not the same thing.

njkayaker

Gatorade is OK (on a hard ride). Keep in mind that it's mostly water with sugar (with some salt). You can get salt with food that you eat. People's stomachs tolerate different things (which means you might not want to try something new on a hard ride). What you mostly will need is water (plain old cheap water).

njkayaker

But I was right! Your understanding of basic chemistry is weak.

So called "high fructose corn syrup" (what is typically used in drinks) is 55% fructose and 45% glucose. Honey is pretty much the same stuff. "Fructose" is fruit sugar.

Sucrose ("cane sugar") is 50% fructose and 50% glucose bound together as a disaccharide. It gets split into free fructose and glucose in the gut very quickly. It's chemically pretty-much the same thing as "high fructose corn syrup".

There are studies that show that fructose is useful in high exertion situations.

"Cane sugar" is more expensive than "corn syrup" but it fools people into thinking that they are getting something "natural" and magically "better for you". They both are examples of "refined sugar". It's actually just marketing.



If you want to eat raspberries, eat whole raspberries. Don't think that the presence of processed raspberries in processed food make that food "healthy".

rydabent

In a way all talk warnings and worry these days about being out in the heat is kind of a joke to me. I grew up on, and worked hard on the farm with my father in the 50s. We worked out in the heat every day. We drank water when we were thirsty. We did not have an air conditioned house to go at night. In a way I think people are too used to air conditioning and are way too soft these days.

And as far as that goes, what about all the workers that are outside these days, such as construction workers? At least when we ride we have a breeze to help cool us cyclist off.

sevenmag

Living in the deep south, I'm used to it I guess. My usual strategy is to hydrate well the night before. I generally eat a fairly salty breakfast an hour before I launch. Wheels down as early as possible. I freeze one water bottle that's a 50/50 mix of powerade and water, and plain water in the second bottle. If I'm going to skip any rest spots, it's only the first one. I hit the rest of them and take full advantage of shade, fluids and proper foods. Peanut butter sammiches and bananas are my favorites. Refill my bottles, and drink some while I'm there. Keep one bottle with plain water all the time for pouring over your head and neck if the heat starts working on you.

There's no shame in stopping under a shade tree for bit either. I've even been known to salmon here and there when the wrong side of the road is shaded and there's no traffic. As the day heats up, slow down, relax and enjoy the ride.

I ride in the mid to high 90's and high humidity all the time. I've reached the point that I enjoy a couple of hours in it but you have to be careful and listen your body. I called the wife a couple of weeks ago to meet me along my ride to take me home. I was fine but I was trying to be smart.

Just be cautious and make good decisions along the way.

northernlights

Wear a tank top and shorts, use sunscreen if you burn easily. Wear sunglasses.

Stop and take a short break every few miles to rest and cool down.

zonatandem

Living in the Sonoran desert (Tucson AZ area) have ridden hundreds of times in 100+ degree heat.
Ride very early (sunup), loose/light clothing. carry lots of water and don't try to set any speed records.
Take a break now and then and in the shade if available (have rested in the shade of a telephone pole).
Warmest I've ridden in: 117 degrees on my commute; not recommended!

SHBR

High humidity is worse than high temperature in my experience. July and August in Shanghai are brutal, last night it never went below 32C (90F) humidity above 80%. Daytime temps are close to 40C without a cloud in the sky, humidity above 60%.

I would opt-out, as I often do when the temp gets above 30C with strong sunlight.

I do most of my riding after dark from April until November.

jwalther

Avoid Gatorade and the like. The blog on this site has lots of good information. News ? Sword

Sangetsu

Start eating now. Rice, pasta, and other carb-rich foods will release energy as you need it. Don't eat a meal in one sitting, eat a little bit every hour or so, so the food is evenly distributed in your digestive track. Use a lot of salt, as your body will sweat out large amounts of it. And, obviously, keep yourself as hydrated as possible. Drink regularly, even if you don't feel thirsty.

Beware of heat exhaustion. As you ride along at a decent pace, the wind will keep your body reasonably cool. If you slow down, or stop, your temperature will jump or spike, which can cause dizziness or fainting. The best way to keep cool is to keep pedaling.

I have ridden some horrible centuries in tropical heat and humidity, and have managed to complete them without bonking or falling out.

Ajkollme

In addition to what everyone else has posted, I would just add that, at least for me, it takes a couple of rides to acclimate to the heat. Each summer during the first heat wave my first ride sucks, the second one is a little better, and by my third ride I am close to normal.


While your first day will be very challenging, I would expect it to get slightly easier as your body gets used to operating at a higher temperature.

Hypno Toad

I know a woman riding with you! The weather here is not nice at all (but Lisa is working on the deck today, SMH).

I started this thread after riding the Westside Dirty Benjamin (137 miles with temps and humidity like this week): https://www.bikeforums.net/long-dista...hydration.html - you may find some useful info.

I was planning to skip the two aid stations on the race course, I had 4 large water bottles on my bike. I used every rest stop and stopped at a gas station too. My advice, don't skip any aid station.

The one thing I found, I can't drink any sweat drinks when they heat up to air temp. If they have iced Gatorade at the aid stations, drink it ASAP, while it's cold.

Luke Jackson

People planning and executing 300 mile bike rides in the summer need to be reminded to hydrate?
Who knew...
Wear clean underwear in case you get into accident also.
No offense to the OP btw as I could be wrong but I believe he was looking for advice other than simply being told to 'hydrate'

SpeshulEd 

I bet he was hoping there would be a huge argument about gatorade vs skratch.

ptempel

+1 I pick the gear that I feel comfortable in and go 1 gear lower. Seems to save me on most occasions. Will be doing just that on the ride home today since I feel a bit tired.

pacalolo

Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid...

SpeshulEd 

It's funny, whenever I talk to the more serious athletes in my area, they all seem to agree with me.

I'll be sure to inform them that they're all wrong and that awful feeling in their stomach is just in their heads. I'm sure they won't mind losing their race because they're too busy ****ting their pants in the meantime.

cyccommute 

Selective reading?

The Gatorade uses sucrose syrup as well. "Cane sugar" is sucrose. Add water and it becomes "sucrose syrup". Just because one company uses the chemical name of a chemical while the other company uses the common name doesn't meant that one is different from the other.

"Glucose/fructose" syrup is actually a good thing to use here. The idea is to get the sugars from the drink into your body quickly so that they can be processed quickly. "Sucrose" or, if you want the really scary name, ((2R,3R,4S,5S,6R)-2-[(2S,3S,4S,5R)-3,4-dihydroxy-2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)oxapent-2-yl]oxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxahexane-3,4,5-triol), is a molecule that contains the deadly and hated fructose molecule bonded to a glucose molecule. In terms of weight, the ratio of glucose to fructose is 55%/45% which also happens to be the ratio of glucose to fructose used for high fructose corn syrup and, for that matter, honey. But sucrose takes a little bit of time to break the bond between the fructose and glucose so that your body can absorb and use it. But when it does break down in your digestive system, it releases both glucose and fructose.

When glucose and fructose are not bonded, on the other hand, they both absorb into your body much more quickly. Fructose is actually a bit quicker to absorb and get utilized than glucose is. But even when the bond is cleaved in sucrose, your body uses them in the same way.

As for the flavors, you really don't think they are pouring raspberries into your favorite powder do you? They are extracting the flavors...using chemicals..., then drying the liquid extracted and then packaging it as a "natural flavor". I noticed that you neglected to include the "natural" part of the grape flavor in the Gatorade. They are produced the same way as the "raspberries" in your drink.

Finally there is the ionic stuff in both drinks. Gatorade uses "salt" which is probably sodium chloride that is dug out of the good old earth as it has been for millennia. That's a pretty "natural" "chemical". Frankly, I'm not sure why sodium citrate, magnesium lactate, calcium citrate and potassium citrate don't scare the bejebbers out of you. All of those are "chemicals made in a lab", with the possible exception of ascorbic acid. Lactic acid and citric acid don't exist as salts unless someone neutralizes them with other chemicals...probably hydroxides of sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium. You might be more familiar with those chemicals by their common names of lye, caustic potash, lime, and milk of magnesia when suspended in water, in that order. Only the last one isn't harmful to humans.

You are, however, comparing cheese to chalk in that you are comparing a prepared liquid to a powder. Gatorade powder is the same as your favorite drink

Same calorie count and same carbohydrate count. It also has about half the sodium of the other drink. The "dextrose", by the way, is another name for glucose. Again, glucose is used to speed up absorption and utilization of the sugar.

Now that I've scared the pants off you and most others reading this, don't worry. None of these chemicals are harmful. If you want to drink something other than Gatorade, fine. But don't go thinking that one product is "syrupy garbage" and the other is "pure and wholesome".

cyccommute 

And they would be wrong. As a chemist, I can't tell any difference between a chemical that is made by a plant in a natural manner and a chemical synthesized in a lab. That's the point of "chemistry". All chemicals are the same independent of the route used to make them. It's relatively easy to hydrolyze the chemical bond between fructose and glucose in a sucrose molecule. Once you have cleaved that bond, you could put the fructose and glucose into a high fructose corn syrup...made by hydrolyzing corn starch and using enzymes to invert some of the glucose produced into fructose...and no chemist on earth can tell you which is the "natural" sugars and which are the "unnatural sugars". They don't have name tags.

People are, by and large, ignorant of chemistry and chemicals even through they encounter chemicals every single moment of every single day. Every breath you take, every drink of water, every sip of coffee, even the skin of my fingertips and the nerves feeling the keypad and the neurons firing to compose this post are chemicals or the result of chemical reactions. We are awash in chemicals. In fact, remove one of those chemicals and the whole factory that is our bodies stops working in about 2 minutes.

Oxygen is a chemical.

cyccommute 

First they are trying to sell you something by saying that they are so much better than the others. But the mix contains pretty much the same chemicals as Gatorade and other mixes. Maltodextrin is, essentially, starch that has been broken up by CHEMISTRY! (I wish we had a lightning emoji). The fructose in the mix is added for the same reason it is used in Gatorade and will probably stampede the fructose haters over a cliff.

And it's much more expensive the Gatorade.

P.T. Barum was right.

cyccommute 

Have you tried ice in the bag? I suggest you try it at least once. It makes a difference. A cold water bottle in your jersey pocket is only going to stay cold for a little while...about 30 minutes even when froze in my experience.

I, however, don't understand the dislike that road riders have for Camelbaks. Mountain bike riders move slower, work harder, sweat more and love using Camelbaks. Maybe "love" is the wrong word but they understand that the utility of the bag far outweighs any failings.