Hi All,

What do you drink on a long ride? Just water or water and squash? Anyone recommend a good isotonic drink or a personal homemade recipe you can make yourself and put in a hydration bladder etc…

Cheers

Dan

Weak orange squash with a pinch of salt, dioralyte, or lucozade isotonic mix all work equally well.

Water, or Torq orange. Or water + elete electrolyte stuff. Depends on the weather, how hard I'm riding and the definition of long.

Beer.

no really – a nice stop at a pub for an ale is top notch…

otherwise; expensive = isostar – brilliant, cheap = tesco concentrated orange squash…

Lemon Squash in the camelbak. Single Malt in the hip flask.

water only unless we make a pit stop.

Great thanks for the info guys. Useful having just done the Dusk till Dawn relying on water with not the best results!!!

Did Lands End to John O Groats (85 mile a day average) used 2 bottles an hour of 6% Torque Energy/Electolyte mix and cake and a brew at one stop and sarnie and torq bar at the other. On a hot day 7hrs in the saddle got through ten bottles to stay hydrated.
Normally use for off road rides of 3-6hrs one bottle of HighFive 4+1 with 3 litres of water with three Nunn or Zym tablets in the Camelbak to stave off cramps. If it a 6hr ride a Torq Bar too at half time.

Torq Natural Pink Grapefruit in a Camlebak, tastes like a margarita! The Torq bars are good tasting and easy to unwrap on the move.
Cosr effective end try Boots isotonic range.

Water.

But only cos it saves me washing the bladder out!

sis lime or sis orange depending on how hot it is

Water

Less than an hour – Ribena or whatever other squash is around

Longer rides – SiS Go, as I seem to struggle finding an LBS stocking Torq in a decent flavour.

Most rides – tea or coffee mid ride – usually with a concentrated form of calories in cake form to ensure optimum carbohydrate uptake.

Post ride recovery – if I'm on my own, strawberry or chcolate milk. With mates, especially the mid week night rides, a couple of pints of the guest ale in the Punchbowl. And a share of a packet of McCoys.

Water

and this…
http://sites.google.com/site/mtbsglos/recipes/pikeyade

SIS PSP but overdiluted or it gets sticky.
Water isn't enough.

Tea stops @ least one every 2 hours end of ride Guinness or proper beer its the LAW, water in bottle for the dehydration from the night before.

Powerade.. The blue stuff that looks like antifreeze..

WHY DO YOU WRITE THE TITLE IN CAPITOL LETTERS?

SIS stuff does it for me 😉

I'm liking Nuun tablets a lot at the moment, either one in a bottle on a short ride, or one in a camelbak, refilling and replacing as necessary. It's a plain, simple electrolyte replacement, so I've had no problems with gutrot or the squits, as you do with some energy drinks. I tend to average out at one tablet per two shortish rides of 1-2 hours, but will

I take on energy in cake or beer form, or feed off my fat reserves otherwise. Seems to work, and no-one has tried to harpoon me yet.

SIS PSP or electrolyte weather dependant, unless it's a really short blast, i.e. an hour or so. It's taken a while to dawn on me how important nutrition and hydration on a ride is.

Watta.

i take somthing i dont like the taste of so i dont sup it all the time didnt work on sunday though 🙄

For 2 hours or so usually I just drink water. Any longer and I'll tend to have pop some nuun tablets into water and get carbs via eating.

Water, but usually eat something about half way round. That does for 4 hour rides anyway.

for under 1.5hrs i use water, unless its a race, then i use sis go or some crap or a gel and water, but for long rides i really like nunn tablets and water and take some food, gels, bagels, flapjacks, jelly babies, sandwiches or halloween gingerbread bats! that kind of thing…

Sports drink combo of energy and electrolyte balancing.

Probably hot chocolate when it gets colder though!

Drink water or orange squash and take a few gells if I get really hungry and out of energy. Currently using SIS but might try another type soon.

Camelbak full of water because anything else makes it gunky. Take a 500ml plastic bottle and a tube of NUUN tablets. Drink water and make up a bottle of NUUN from the Camelbak now and then.

for all day rides i mix isostar at half the recommended concentration and add a couple of scoops of maxim. cheap, not too offensive and seems to work for me.

water unless it's a monster ride. If I'm riding for more than 4-5 hours I'll stop and get some lucozade.

Make my own isotonic drink.
Tub of dextrose, tub of maltodextrin, tub of waxy maize starch, plus some flavours and electrolyte power total cost £20 for 3 kilo's of the stuff. Makes about 60-100 500ml drinks depending on how many carbs you want in each one. I vary what i put in depending on the length of the ride.
The dextrose is there as a sweetener to be honest. The dextrin and strach are the main two i use as they aren't as sweet and the starch is actually the faster absorbing carb out the lot and is rare to find in isotonic drinks.
Basically its all the same stuff as you find in all the sports drinks you will have every seen only this way is much much cheaper and you can have the drink exactly as you like it.

If you fill your camelbak up with it you will need to clean the camelbak and use the tablets becuase the carbs will cuase some nasty things to grow in there.

Water unless it's really long or really hot, in which case I might use some ZYM tablets just to stop cramp.

verofit – cause it doesn't give me stomach upsets unlike some of the other iso stuff.

for all day rides, I'll take a few bottles of palin water too; but remember your body stores fluid in carbs but also burns these to keep you going, so no food = no carbs = dehydrate despite drinking lots! you do need both.

Even on the longest rides I use half water and half fruit juice.

I used to do the whole carb-drink thing until I realised that even though I was riding more than ever I was putting weight on as there's no way I was burning the calories the drink gave me.

I'll back up the water/juice mix with handfuls of dried fruit, nuts, occasional chunk of chocolate and banana or apple.

Ben

Whatever the length of the ride it's water… But then that is because I don't drink alcohol otherwise I'll have some red wine with the other.

If its a proper full day in the saddle with lots of climbing then I just get 4 bottles of Lucozade sport and dilute it.

Otherwise, just water.

Very little – if it's under 3 hours and under 20C air temps I'll just do without.