How Long for gatorade to effect your ride?
 

I had to bargain with my Doctor about riding fasted. Bottom line, she wants me drinking Gatorade any time I ride.

I do seem to have a better ride when Gatorade is in my bottle, does it really act that fast?

"Research has shown that the most efficient and effective sports drinks have a carbohydrate concentration of 6 – 8 percent and absorb into the bloodstream quickly, at about the rate of plain water."

Gatorade use both sucrose and glucose, and a roughly 6% carb content. People keep drinking it because I works.

I too often ride fasted, with one bottle of Gatorade and one of straight water. The bit of carbs as well as the salts make a big difference, especially in the warmer months.

You can do so much better and possibly for less $ depending on how you are buying Gatorade. Look into Tailwind Nutrition. You can survive on this alone on endurance rides or runs. With the sodium and potassium, it's readily absorbed through the gut and puts that glucose to work right away. I buy it by the 50 scoop bag for $34 and mix 250 calories (2.5 scoops) per 24 oz bottle which I take in periodically during an hour. I use the flavor that has caffiene in the mix. Thats helpful in many cases. You can determine and adjust just how many calories you want and it's sweetness. It's very easy on your gut and that's intentional. Gatorade is rot gut.

www.tailwindnutrion.com

How about something with carbohydrates added to your water bottle with half'n'half sodium potassium? Half'n'Half is available very inexpensively in the supermarket. Add a bit of sugar and flavouring and you've got yourself a very inexpensive beverage that you can tailor exactly to your needs/tlerances.

Cheers

If you're drinking it at the start of your ride you probably won't be able to notice how fast it affects you. However if you drink it after your ride when you're a little energy depleted,you'll notice the affect immediately. Ymmv.
I'd stick with what the Doc said, providing your tummy can handle it. If it doesn't agree with you, then look for a replacement. In my experience doctors know more than what we give them credit for.

"The American College of Sports Medicine recommends 30-60 grams of carbohydrate per hour of exercise"

So about a bottle per hour seems good -- if a bottle contains 34 grams of carbs.

I think that if you are out for 1 hour, you won't notice a difference. If you spend the first hour of your cycling trip drinking one bottle of gatorade, I think by the middle to end of the second hour, you'll probably notice that you feel less-diminished than if you didn't intake any carbs at all. I'm more a fan of carbs in the form of a solid food and drinking water, I would have definitely asked my doctor about that option...like if you started with a snack with jelly, then every hour at that same snack with jelly, and just drank water when you were thirsty. For me anything 1.5 hours to 2 I have no problem just filling one bottle with gatorade though.

What is the purpose of riding fasted? How long is the ride?
When I ride 6 or 7 hours I always eat before and during the ride. Sometimes I have Gatorade during a ride but I don't make a point of it.

It only takes a few minutes for me to start feeling like garbage after drinking Gatorade.

I've been riding with one bottle of Gatorade and one bottle of water for years. Never had a problem.

And here I am, buying Gatorade for $3.75 a gallon, thankful my constitution is tough enough to handle drinking ~16oz of it a day. Well, also thankful that I don't have to resort to anything 3X the cost. I imagine someday I'll be relegated to the powders, gels and chews crowd, but today is not that day.

It doesn't mix well with beer.

For me, I start feeling effects of food or drink about 15 to 20 minutes, give or take a little, after consumption. There are some chemical and physical processes that must occur, and I suspect they are not instantaneous.

That would have been funny, but I don't drink beer.

Used to have a neighbor whose favorite between-commutes (two part time jobs and school, averaging about 8-10 miles each) snack was a Whataburger cinnamon roll with 1-2 mocha Clif gels squeezed onto it, (mostly depending on whether she had a headwind that day) washed down with a 1L Coke. Then after work, she'd eat a large Papa John's pizza for dinner, swap to the road bike and go for a training ride. AFAIK, she only ever carried water in her bottles.

How much did she weigh? 20 miles a day at commuting speed isn't going to burn 1/4 of those calories.

About 125, mostly muscle, but she also wasn't a typical commuter; she carried full panniers to and from the school, swapped them out when she got home for the ones with her work clothes, and rode the whole commute like it was resistance training. On days she worked both jobs, that would be 8 miles to school, 8 back home to snack and change panniers, 10 miles to one job, 6 to the other, and around 9 home. 41 miles before switching to the unloaded road bike for another 1-2 hours of riding.

I find Gatorade acts very fast, almost instantly. On a long ride, I'll use two bottles of it. On a shorter ride, one each of Gatorade and water, with water as the back-up. In hot weather I'll prepare the Gatorade mix the night before, and freeze the bottles to keep them colder longer. Solid food is important too though, if I take Gatorade on an empty stomach for two long I get a stomach ache.

Same here! I find that electrolyte tablets work so much better and I don't feel like crap as I do when I drink Gatorade.

Gatorade is mostly a marketing success.

a lot of people don't ride long/hard enough to need electrolyte replacement...but, they buy into the advertising and chug the crap anyway.

Not worth starting a war over this, but I've read volumes about the absence of any reason for Gatorade - and even more about the negative effects of any of these sports drinks. Personally, these days, I just drink a ton of water when I am doing a long (50-60 miles for this old man) ride in the sweltering summer heat and I feel much better than when I used to arrive at my destination with a sugar hangover. In my younger days, I also experimented with electrolyte tablets and other expensive stuff from the health food store and they never made me feel any different than when I rode without them.

I love fruit punch Gatorade but not on the ride. Not even watered down.

But it's only because it doesn't quench thirst for me as well as plain water.

On long rides I take one Powerade and one water. On short rides and while commuting it's just water.

A body that always has access to carbohydrates will shut down beta-oxidation and be almost unable to derive energy from fat stores. Exercising while fasting is one way to force the body to uninhibit b-ox and thus make a second energy source available. The result is increased endurance and weight loss, at a cost of some uncomfortable time in the saddle.

This was the entire premise of "carbo loading" back in the '70s. Unfortunately, the exercising while low on carbohydrate intake part got lost in translation and all anyone ever heard about was consuming carbohydrates immediately prior to an event, which was simply to top-off glycogen stores.

I suspect the modern trend towards consuming gels and sweet drinks while riding, as though we are all riding grand tours all the time, is one of the reasons why we see so many cyclists with enormous guts. They turn the excess carbohydrate into fat stores, but that's a dead-end since fat cannot be turned back into carbohydrate (unless you're a plant) and they have effectively shut down their ability to turn fat into energy.

I don't drink sweet sports drinks. I prefer a good dark unpasteurized ale with active yeast. Feels reinvigorating within 5-15 minutes (if by reinvigorating I mean buzzed, which I probably do). Alas, it's a seasonal thing and not readily available everywhere year 'round.

Semi-seriously, which is all the seriously I can manage, I find the effects of a single beer, or even half a beer, much more beneficial in energy boosting and and longer lasting. After a long ride I'll nurse a beer for about an hour before heading home (often another 10-20 miles). No buzz, just refreshing and longer lasting than energy drinks or even coffee.

Sammy - three questions...

By "fasted", do you mean you get up in the morning, skip breakfast except maybe for a cup or two of black coffee, and head out on your ride? This is the commonly accepted meaning of "fasted."

Why do you want to ride in a fasted state?

How long and hard are your rides?

Fasted riding, as described above, is done to train your body to use your fat stores rather than just carbs for energy at low-to-medium levels of exertion, thereby saving your glycogen stores for more intense parts of your ride. It's a gradual process. If you get up in the morning, eat your regular breakfast and then go for your ride, it's not a "fasted" ride. If you go out after breakfast and your ride is at a comfortable pace for an hour or two, you don't need additional calories, just water and in hot weather electrolytes.

Next time you speak with your doctor, ask her if she wants you to use Gatorade for the calories or for the electrolytes. If the latter, there are other options like Nuun tablets or a home brew using lite salt.