“The Commuters Corner:” I don’t dehydrate.

By Webster H.
November 5, 2009 on 12:21 pm | In Employee Adventures, Random Musings | No Comments

One of my favorite memories with a bike comes from a time my friend Rich and I decided to mountain bike on the hottest day of the year. It was sort of an impromptu ride and pulling up to the trail turn off Rich asks if I needed to get more than one bottle of water. I laughed and told him, “Don’t worry about man, I don’t dehydrate.” Two hours and one mad rattlesnake later, we are lost, out of water, and I am of course severally dehydrated. We survived and made it back to the car well after sunset but I learned an important lesson. I, in fact, do dehydrate.

Ever since that day I have made sure that I always have enough water while I’m riding. This year I went to Interbike for the first time and had the opportunity to go out early for the Outdoor Demo Days. We left in the morning and flew to Vegas. After landing we got in the car and grabbed a bite to eat on the way. We all watched in amazement as Erik (our Retail Manager) put down a 20″ Cheese Steak before riding all day. I made it a point to pack a camelbak so that I could have water, unfortunately I was not able to fill the Camelbak until later in the day . Long story short, I do not know if it was the lack of water, the plane ride, or the different climate, but I began to slowly fade.

Flash forward to the end of the day, and things go from bad to bloody. We grabbed a few demo road bikes for a quick ride and I got off to a late start so was pushing to try to catch up with rest of the group. I had barely caught up with them when my face exploded. My nose began gushing blood and I had to pull over and try to stop the bleeding. That took a while. Eventually I took off my base layer (an old white cotton t-shirt, not the smartest) and ripped a piece off and plugged the nose. With the remainder of the shirt I began to franticly try to scrub the quickly drying blood off the $7,000 demo bike. After the bike was clean and the bleeding stopped, I began the ride back to the tents to return the bike. Luckily we weren’t very far out but it was a bit of a climb and I am not a great cyclist. Oh, and I had just lost a pint of blood. If it wasn’t for Mark giving me a push at the end, I do not think I would have made it without walking.

So what did I take away from all this? First, always know your limits. I knew that I should not be riding any more but I couldn’t resist. Second, water isn’t enough. I had always been from the school that water is all you need and everything else is just marketing and capitalism. I was wrong, probably not as wrong as the time I said I don’t dehydrate but fairly close. When you’re on the bike for longer than an hour you are going to lose performance without something extra to help refuel your body. So look into some different nutrition options and see what is right for you. Everyone is different but for me I am finding that I do well with Hammer Nutrition Heed. If you have any other suggestions let me know.