Hydration Question
 

I have been trying to drink lots of water to try and keep myself hydrated. I have heard recently that you can over hydrade yourself. So how much should i be drinking on days when i ride and how much when i dont ride. When i do ride it is for about an hour.


Dan

I heard 64 oz was all the body (under normal, sedentary actions) could handle

but again, Im a dumb redneck lol

jk I dont really know

If you're overhydrated, you're p!ssing every half hour. It is possible to do, but you really need to be an endurance athlete, MDMA user or obsessive-compulsive to do it to a dangerous level.

1.5-2 litres on non-training days.

Same on training days, plus:

1 bidon per hour on the bike should be OK. More if it's hot or you're exerting yourself heavily.

The most your stomach can empty in an hour is 750ml +/- depending on what you drink. A 24-280z water bottle holds about that amount, so emptying a bottle during the ride is about as much as is feasible. If this is not enough it will take you a few more hours to make up the deficit. Calories should not be a problem in that short a ride assuming you have eaten reasonably in the several hours prior to the ride. Rides in higher temps (above 90F) can result in sweat loss that exceeds your ability to keep up but this would rarely be a problem in an hour. The over hydration hullabaloo has occurred in slow marathoners who take 4-5hrs to finish the run and drink "to excess" whatever that means. I suspect an adequate exam would show most of these people had some abnormality in their physiology which predisposed them to hyponatremia which is what caused their demise. As andygates says, most people just urinate off the excess in very dilute urine but will drop their sodium level to some degree, but not enough to get into a lot of trouble just from that alone. Steve

One 750 ml (3 cup) bottle of water and/or sports drink every 1 to 1.5 hours while you are riding.

Remember to eat some salty foods and foods with potassium to keep up your electrolytes too. What a lot of the articles denouncing hydration fail to mention is that if the people who had developed over-hydration problems had consumed electrolytes with their water, they would have been fine.