Am I drinking too much?

[karen]

Maybe it is how much you are drinking before?

That might be it... I drank a lot the night before because I didn't drink nearly enough during that day or the previous day. And my riding buddy and I went to Starbucks before the ride while we waited for no-show folks.

My longest ride to date was 32 miles and I drank 2 liters water and 1 and a half bottles of gatorade and didn't have to take as many breaks as I did this past weekend. But, the temp was over 100 for that ride so I was definitely sweating a lot more of the water out
I may have started that ride a bit dehydrated, though - I was totally wiped out by the end of it which is definitely something I'm trying to avoid in subsequent rides...

[michelem]

This is from Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide by Hal Higdon:

"Timing your prerace hydration can be tricky. I recommend that runners drink as often as possible until 2 hours before the race -- then stop until just before they start to move . . . Otherwise, they may need to urinate at midrace, an obvious inconvenience. In the last 5 minutes before moving, I start drinking again, often downing a 12-ounce soft drink (usually Coke or Pepsi) while standing on the starting line, knowing it will be absorbed by my body before it reaches my kidneys."

I would imagine this applies to cycling as well, and have found it works for me (although I forego the soft drink). I get up at least 2 hrs. prior to my rides and drink about 32 -40 oz. of water and pee a gazillion times before I leave the house. But then, even though I can go through both of my bottles (one of water and the other replacement drink) and maybe even refill one with water and drink that too, I don't have to pee on my rides that last less than 3 hours. Over three hours, and I have to pee at least once though!

The general recommendation is to drink about a quart an hour. By drinking about half to 3/4 of that per hour as a beverage that contains between 4 and 8 percent carbs, this will generally help you maintain blood glucose oxidation and delay fatigue as well. I bring one bottle of water and one of replacement drink and alternate drinking from each.

One last thing, it IS possible to drink too much (and it is dangerous). The best way to gauge whether you are drinking enough, not enough, or too much is by weighing yourself before and after your rides. If you lose weight, you didn't drink enough; if you gain weight, you drank too much; and if you maintained, then you drank the perfect amount.

Hope this helps.

[KnottedYet]

How many times are you stopping during your 2 hr ride? Are you really "going" for 15 seconds or so? (Like peeing out 16 oz each and every time you stop for a potty break.) Or are you "going" a little bit, multiple times?

I'm just wondering if your urethra is being irritated by your chamois or something and making you feel like you need to pee before your bladder is actually full.

[karen]

It may be a little of both, Knot... most of the breaks were quite satisfying (in that there was a good amount to get out of the bladder)!

I had to go about 4 or 5 times on the ride but I was sipping water from my camel pack every few minutes...

[Bklynmom]

My rule is 1 bottle an hour alternating GU20 (like Gatorade) and water when it's hot. When it's not hot, 1 bottle of GU20 every 2 hours. Having a hydration plan prevents over and under hydration.

For my century I tried pre-hydrating the day before, and I think it helped.

I found when I had the Camel back I drank constantly and had the Pee issue too.

[OakLeaf]

\The best way to gauge whether you are drinking enough, not enough, or too much is by weighing yourself before and after your rides. If you lose weight, you didn't drink enough; if you gain weight, you drank too much; and if you maintained, then you drank the perfect amount.

I really don't like that measure, because it presumes that you're in a good state of hydration when you weighed yourself the first time. Weighing tells you whether you're getting *more* dehydrated, but not whether you were dehydrated to begin with. Or conversely, whether you were bloated and happy to lose the extra fluids.

The truism that works for me is the one that says urine should be "copious and clear" and no darker than a light straw color. Remember when judging the color of your urine, you're talking about the color of your *urine,* not what color it is when it's diluted in a gallon of water in the toilet bowl.

IANAD and yada yada yada. But as long as you're drinking one sports drink to every 3-4 liters of water whenever you consume that much water in a single workout, I totally would not worry about hyponatremia. (Or maybe, drinking that sports drink *is* worrying about it, and preventing it.) Dehydration is a much more realistic worry for most athletes.

It is not fun to wind up in the ER and get jabbed eight or ten times because you're so dehydrated they can't find a vein to give you IV fluids. Trust me on this one.

For my own body, if I'm not peeing every 90 minutes to 2 hours, I'm not drinking enough. (Another popular measure says that if you don't have to pee every hour, you're not drinking enough. Which may well be true, but it's a useless measure, since dehydration often irritates the bladder and makes you pee more, not less, often.) IMO it's okay to cut corners a little bit if the ride doesn't last much longer than that, but it's definitely not something I want to push on a longer ride. Think about what urine is *for*: it's removing toxins from your body. Everything that's in that urine stays in your bloodstream if you aren't drinking enough water to pee it out. You want that?