Dreww10

Been working on my hydration of late (with noticeable improvements in muscle recovery), but I'm finding it difficult to actually stay hydrated. In general, I drink at least a gallon of water a day, plus a bottle every hour on the bike and a tall glass of Gatorade post-ride. However, within 60-90 minutes after I stop drinking for the day, my urine is yellow again. Or if I stop drinking for an hour mid-day, it does the same. Is it normal for the body to dehydrate that quickly? If I ride early in the morning and stop drinking early the evening before in order to sleep, it's virtually impossible to "pre-hydrate" at this rate, is it not?

gregf83 

Are you getting enough sodium? I've found in the summer if I don't replace the sodium I can't rehydrate properly and my weight goes down until I get sufficient salt back in my diet.

79pmooney

How warm (and how humid) is it where and when you ride? Do you sweat a lot? How heavy are you? If its warm when you ride, you are a big sweater and a big person, you could be sweating a lot more than 20 oz/hour. If you get too dehydrated your body has trouble re-hydrating. (I haven't seen this as "fact" but have been this in myself for decades.)

Also what do you drink when you ride. I do not do well on water and fare far better, both during rides and after using a good electrolyte replacement. Vitalyte aka Hydrolyte aka ERG aka GookinAid has worked very well for me for 40 years. It claims no miracles. Just hydrated and replaces electrolytes properly. If you eat and sweat a lot of salt you probably should take additional sodium/salt. The Vitalyte will help you a lot wrt potassium. (I also like it because it never makes me sick and always stays down. My mouth stays feeling clean. (I have learned to bring a ziploc of it for organized rides in case the provided electrolyte is one of the newer mixes with proteins, etc.)

Hope some of this helps. Keep monitoring your pee. Kidney stones are not fun.

Ben

Dreww10

180 pounds. I do typically have lot of salt on myself after a ride, and sweat above what I'd consider normal, but not overly excessive. I generally drink only water during a ride...sometimes 50/50 Gatorade mix, but haven't ever noted any difference from drinking water. It is hot/humid here, but I've gone through periods of proper hydration during the cooler months and had similar experience of not staying hydrated, as well. I should note that even on off-days (or consecutive off-days) I still drink roughly 4 liters and will have yellow urine again inside that 90 minute window.

When/what do you recommend for getting more sodium that's affordable and perhaps portable to take on rides?

79pmooney

I don't have the best ideas for sodium. I've done my best to not consume much and I never sweat it excessively. (I read my second season of racing that if you regularly ate a low fat diet, you wouldn't sweat much salt and therefore not get sodium depleted. It worked really well for me. I also found I no longer liked heaviuly salted food. Still don't.)

Ordinary table salt is sodium. Getting enough sodium shouldn't cost you anything. Most palatable and effective way to consume it? Maybe read advice from a sports nutritionist?

Gaterade absolutely doesn't work for me. Yes, better than absolutely nothing when I am fried, but not much. (Vitalyte was developed by a biochemist/marathon runner who failed to qualify for the '68 Mexico City Olympics after getting sick in the hot qualifier marathon drinking Gaterade. Put his expertise into getting it right. Its been on the market since 1970.)

Good luck!

Ben

DrIsotope

Generally, it looks like I'm emptying out a vat of highlighter fluid-- and I drink ~2 gallons in a day on ride days, and no less than 1 gallon on non ride days. So I asked you know, a doctor about it. "Hey doc, how come my pee is always yellow. Like... always. No matter how much I drink." To which he responded, "Because urine is waste. It's your body getting rid of waste product. Yellow is every bit as normal as clear. So long as it's not pink, red, or brown, you're fine. Now if you're going every 20 minutes, no matter the color, that's a problem. But as of now, you have nothing to worry about."

Machka 

Are you living in North America and taking a North American brand of a B-multi vitamin?

FlashBazbo

Maybe it's not a dehydration problem. Are you eating enough carbs? Does the urine smell strongly of ammonia? When I don't eat enough carbs for the day's exertion level, my body burns protein and I get very yellow, smelly urine. That's my warning signal.

caloso

I'm not a urologist, but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be yellow.

DrIsotope

You are correct. If the urine is clear all the time, the individual is over-hydrated, and risks messing up their electrolyte balance.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yellow is good. IMO you're already drinking more than is good, possibly outrunning your electrolytes. Don't go by color. Go by how often. Peeing more frequently than every 2-3 hours is over-hydrated. OTOH only peeing every 4-6 hours is dehydrated. IME, that is. Frequency is often related to bladder and prostate size.

12strings

My cheap sodium intake for bike rides:

Water, sugar, salt....mix in bottle. It tastes surprisingly close to Gatorade. Play around with the amounts of salt and sugar till it tastes OK.

caloso

This is a good point. Look up hyponatremia. It's pretty rare, but potentially deadly.

Dreww10

No, I'm not taking any vitamins.

Dreww10

When I begin drinking in the morning it takes my body a while to "deal with it" and I generally finish 1/3 of a gallon before needing to urinate. Then it hits all at once and I'm excusing myself to the restroom every 20-30 minutes. After that it generally tails back off unless I keep consuming the water in high volume.

Carbonfiberboy 

That is, if you will excuse my bluntness, nuts. Everyone is different, so experiment. Try to manage fluid intake volumes so that you urinate more or less consistently about every 2-3 hours.

It's not necessary to be so strict about it - no one that I know is - but it will be instructive for you to see what a reasonable intake schedule might look like. Then if you have a deviation, say on a ride you have to pee too frequently and lose the group, or you find you haven't peed for like 5 hours, you have some idea about what went wrong.

Basically, our bodies have this great system for regulating hydration levels. It's called thirst. So drink when you are thirsty. Not a lot, just enough so that you're not thirsty anymore. When you're not thirsty, don't drink. If you think you might be dehydrated but aren't thirsty, don't drink water. Instead take electrolytes or eat something salty. That'll stimulate thirst and you'll wind up with proper hydration and electrolyte balance.

If I'm on a long, hot ride, say 6 hours or longer, and I haven't peed in too long, or the skin on the back of my hands stands up when pinched, or my forearms have stopped sweating, I'll drink water and take electrolytes until I pee at least some. Then I'm good to go again. No pee, no go.

FBinNY 

Other than the extremes, especially unusually dark, urine color isn't a good indicator of hydration.

As pointed out above, various things can con tribute to the color.

I suspect that when your riding, you're over hydrating, which is fine within reason. But when you stop, the various proteins and whatever that end up in the bloodstream, including stuff related to muscle recovery and repair. That stuff gets flushed by the kidneys, and is no longer as diluted, so the urine darkens.

No big deal, and you can feel free to disregard any normal changes in urine color, and worry only about something that's unusual for you.

FWIW - I dive, and monitoring hydration via the urine is important because dehydration increases the risk of decompression illness. In doing so, I disregard color entirely and care only about volume.

thenewjs

This is what I used in the DC area. It can get humid and hot. It has calcium and magnesium which helps with the burning.


I was cramping like crazy and I drink about 2 gal of water a day. Saw this in Target and the cramps went away. Expensive so I just take a couple big gulps of this before each ride.

Dreww10

I wasn't aware when I made my initial post that an electrolyte imbalance from over-hydration was a real thing, but my experience of late pretty well mimics your response. My cramping is now setting in abnormally early (40 miles'ish) and whereas cramping for me has historically been a "need to wrap up my ride soon" thing, it's now a sudden and debilitating ordeal. I'm also covered in far more salt than usual.

Taking that into account, I've cut my daily water intake back by ~50% the last few days, but can also see a steep back-slide in my daily recovery from doing so. I presume the only way to keep up the water intake but not flush out the electrolytes would be to significantly increase the daily consumption of electrolytes, as well, yes? Going a step further, might vitamins off the bike be a good source for balancing this all out?

caloso

During the summer I take a magnesium supplement daily. I usually carry one bottle of water and one of sports drink. If it's going to be particularly hot I will drink Osmo Preload before the ride.

Carbonfiberboy 

Everyone's different. Which also applies to salt etc. loss. Though I never do, I ride with folks who'll have white shorts by the end of the same ride.

The simplest thing to do really is to read this fueling guide: https://www.hammernutrition.com/media...guidetosuccess

I've found through experience that it's all correct. Since it's from Hammer Nutrition, it recommends the use of Hammer products, though that's unnecessary as long as you get their recommended doses from other products including food.

That said, on long hot rides I keep a coin purse full of Hammer Endurolytes up my shorts leg where it's easily accessible. I take about 1 Endurolyte/bottle, or about 1/hour. 1 Endurolyte contains 80mg sodium.

One of the most important recommendations in the Guide is to have the proper daily salt intake off the bike, which is about 3/4t, including all foods and on the bike, not to overload your body with salt.

In spite of old tales to the contrary, there's no evidence that dehydration or loss of electrolytes causes cramping. Cramping comes for overexertion, meaning exertion beyond that for which you've trained. A properly trained cyclist simply doesn't cramp, so what you're experiencing is quite odd. Something funny's going on. Follow the recommendations in the Guide and I think you'll fix it, unless you have a medical issue or medication which might be causing it.

That said, if you do cramp, pickle juice is the best remedy. It can also be used prophylacticly before the ride. Hammer Nutrition sells these "Hammer flasks" Hammer Flask - Carry your Hammer Gel on the Go | Hammer Nutrition and coin purses Quick Coin Dose Dispenser - Supplement Carrier | Hammer Nutrition.

Dreww10

Although I can cramp from riding hard on the flat, too, hitting the hills really speeds up the process. About 3,000 ft. of elevation gain is the limit on my best day before I have debilitating cramps, regardless of the pace. I ride 8,000+ miles a year, so I'm not "untrained" per se, but certainly not at some elite level.

Carbonfiberboy 

"Trained" in my vocabulary is to have done specific short training bouts which impose much greater loads than do one's usual rides. For instance 3 X 15' X 5' lactate threshold intervals, 6 X 1' X 5' all-out hill sprints, 2 X 30' X 5' 100 cadence zone 3 intervals, stuff like that done once or twice a week. Plus of course the usual long endurance rides, usually about once or twice a week, giving a weekly mileage of 120-180 miles or more. Do you do those workouts or similar ones? Do you cramp during or after?

Yesterday I did a 114 mile ride which started with a continuous 3400' climb, then finished with a 2800' pass climb and some more rollers. 95° much of the way and no cramps for most. We did have one guy who cramped, but he was undertrained, pedaled much too high a cadence, and ran out of gas badly on the 2nd pass climb.