Since I've never seen anyone actually die of thirst while riding a bike, why do we carry waterbottles? We spend thousands of dollars to shave ounces, chucking a water bottle can be as much as a pound and a half! I would guess that kind of weight loss would allow a normal guy who can spin a 53-13 the ability to spin 50-12. What do you think?

Because carrying and drinking two water bottles is chaper and more convenient than an ER visit for dehydration. Any ride over 30 minutes requires fluids.

Because you need water to stay hydrated and being dehydrated leads to a significant loss of performance.

I can't believe I'm answering this question.

I know you're trying to be funny and entertaining, but I had a friend who got extremely ill from dehydration. The odd thing was, she had water in her camelbak. If she was alone, she would've died for sure cuz she was disoriented by the time anyone realized something was wrong.

hydrate or die

Why on earth would you need to drink when going on a long ride?

I think we've all been thinking too much about the whole "who needs cycling shorts" debate.

55/Rad

i dont use water bottles...i carry a really large water bottle strapped to my back =)

Hahahaha.....I know you are trying to mock me, but I still think you are funny as hell. Proceed by all means.....this forum gets a little dry sometimes......dry sometimes....dry........get it? (thread about water bottles....oh, never mind I'll take that joke back to the cheese factory)

Good idea.

I'm also going to throw away my component group controls and just wrap the cables around my handlebar to acheive the proper settings, ride in nothing but tighty whities and use solid rubber tires.

agreed, which is why many people enjoy having you here... to love or hate.

PS: fix your fookin' sig!

Over at analictic cycling.com you can see that a frame mounted water bottle does make you more aerodynamic, so...while they would need to run the numbers if you strapped a 5 gallon Alhambra bottle to your back I bet you would substantially reduce your wake turbulance. You could even carry a gallon of water in it, cause we all no thanks to ZIPP that aero is much better than light weight!

Thats cause no one's dumb enough to go far enough without water to die.

That's like, "Why do we need a firesuit, I've never seen anyone burn to death walking next to a 2000 degree volcano flow without a firesuit.

Duh - I took that bait - how dumb

I would think that weight reduction would allow a fellow like yourself to improve your performance enough to break the bicycling record across Death Valley. Why don't you try it?

Hey good point, another corporate myth forced on us for white male greed...

FYI, it's actually the water that you need. The bottles are fairly worthless without it. If you don't need water, then they have something else for you. It is called an IV and they will be happy to insert it once you pass out from dehydration.

I don't think we need food either. Just think..if we all stop eating we could loose weight then those hills wouldn't be so hard. Of course eventually we'd all starve to death. But think of the abs we'd have.

Is that the one you pass on the Riverbank Cheese & Wine Century??
When I fisrt started riding again, I dehydrated once and had softball sized cramps on each thigh. Hydration is no joke.

on my pista i just carry a bottle in my jersey pocket so it doesn't add any weight to my bike!

water bottles are a good source of entertainment. just "accidentally" chuck a full one into some poor idiot's spokes during a criterium and watch the fireworks. priceless.

Common sense is important.

I remember when my older brother was in late high-school, maybe early college, and he "got into" road biking for a short while. He once told me straight-faced, you don't need to carry along water unless you are going on a 2+ hour ride. I knew nothing about road cycling, but I almost instantly deduced he had confused food-related info with water-related info. He apparently read a cycling magazine that gave a 2-hour rule on food, and his mistaken recollection was that the 2-hr rule pertained to water.

Common sense, people.

Has anybody noticed that on this forum especially, the flaming threads are the ones with the most responses besides the sticky

Tell me your not serious! An athlete, you are obviously not!

On the subject of bike weight, rolling resistance weight is what counts most - that's why people spend big bucks on light wheelsets.

During the winter, I can ride hard for about an hour without any water. Summer, about a bottle per hour.

Actually - you're right, water is a waste of time. I carry beer in my bottles, helps me up those hills. The advantage with beer is that it contains all sorts of other goodies to keep you going, and the more you have, the quicker you seem to go.