Hydration

I recently bought a 1L Klean Kanteen Insulated Water Bottle, along with an additional and oversize bidon cage to carry it, on the Troll and did so primarily because I want to do a fair bit of riding during Summer (a minimum of 200KM per week). Having learnt, from my trip through Spain, the effects of riding in the heat, I wanted to minimise the chances of doing that again....

I mean sure I'd watched enough professional cycling races to know that maintaining one's fluid intake was important, what I didn't realise however is that, seemingly if one loses anything more than approximately two per cent of one's body weight, as a result of sweating or what have you, then this can result in a number of negative side effects, namely being:

• An increase in core temperature
• Reduced carbohydrate absorption
• Reduced muscle contraction
• Mental fatigue

Dehydration also results in one's blood becoming more viscous and therefore harder to pump around the body, something that I am particularly keen to avoid. One heart attack and four cardiac stents are enough Thank You very much. 😊 😊

The other aspect to all of this is that the most vital electrolyte for sweating riders is sodium. 

Now of course the media is constantly telling us that there is too much salt in our diets, particularly when one eats processed or fast food, and I am not advocating that one starts going mad with the salt shaker whenever we sit down to dinner BUT sodium does play a vital role in terms of maintaining our blood plasma volume and transporting water from the blood stream to working muscles.

Sodium however isn't the only electrolyte that is lost when one sweats. One also excretes:

• Calcium - It is involved in muscle contraction & relaxation and blood clotting.
• Magnesium - Depleted levels of this electrolyte can lead to fatigue & depression.
• Potassium - It helps transport glucose around the body and hence is vital for energy generation

As a result of gleaning all of this information from a book titled "The Science of the Tour De France" by James Witt, I've come to appreciate that I will have to start paying more attention to the frequency with which I sip on a bidon, but also look at using electrolytic drinks and tablets particularly on longer rides, etc.