Dehydration ... not fun

[marni]

yes you can get dehydrated in freezing or cold or cool weather as well as hot, you just don't feel so thirsty when it is cooler. Unless it is pouring rain and cool, the air is generally drier when it is cool.

You can do a concentrated study of your sweat rate per mile by weighing yourself naked, gearing up, riding your average pace for as hour out and an hour back, ungear, weigh yourself again, subtract the second weight from the first to see how much weight you lost to sweat, add in 8 ounces for every 8 oz. equivalent of liquid you consumed and you will have your average sweat rate per hour for those particular weather conditions. Do it on several different days with different weather conditions, always on the same route, and you will have an idea of how much you should be drinking per hour.

My particular rate is between 12 and 18 oz per hour which works out to 2/3 a bottle of frs or water per hour. I alternate bottles and carry extra tubes of FRS so that I can buy plain water and mix a fresh batch on longer rides.

The bonk is insidious, and usually by the time you notice that you are bonking, you have tonconvince yourself that you don't have two flat tires and that the world is not spinning.

easiest thing to do is to stay ahead of it, even if it mean you have to stop and pee a bit more often.

marni

[Jiffer]

Well, it looks like the weather is going to be similar when I do my event this weekend of 60 miles with 6,000 feet of climbing. High of 69, which is at least a degree or two cooler, but I'll just assume it's going to be as warm or warmer as it was last Sunday. So, I'll have an opportunity to work on my hydration skills.

I did about 25 miles yesterday and worked on drinking every ten minutes whether it seemed like I needed to or not. I think that's a good rule. Sometimes you might only take a small sip if you really don't think you need more (like it's 40 degrees outside!) ... or take a lot more if it's warmer, but I like the idea of being conscious of it every ten minutes one way or the other. Seemed to work well yesterday. I'm pretty sure I drank more than I normally would have for that ride. Whether I needed it or not, it was good practice.

One thing that messes with my drinking on climbing rides is ... well ... the climbing. If it's a constant climb for several miles, like it was on Sunday, it's harder to take a drink. You're working hard to get up the climb and might be breathing hard. You have to stop breathing for a second or two to drink. You just want to get it over with and don't want to slow down to take a drink. But I gotta get over this ... obviously!

[SheFly]

Try pre-hydrating. Drink a lot leading up to your event. It won't prevent dehydration or negate the fact that you still need to drink on your ride, but it will help. I do this for long races/events, and it has always helped me to avoid being quite as bad off as I may have been otherwise.

And yes - winter dehydration is equally as bad, and I've suffered that more times than I care to count. Seems more natural to drink when it's hot out, I guess.

SheFly