They give you bottles with sports tops that fit right into your cages. There is an area at the aid station where it's legal to throw down your empty bottles.

Most people just slow down and grab a bottle from a volunteer's outstretched hand. If you want to stop you're more than welcome to, but please don't do it right in the flow of traffic.

Just put one of your bottles in and leave one cage empty. They'll hand you a water bottle with a sports cap on it so you can just shove it in the empty cage and roll on. The bottle of yours can just be a spare. I always like grabbing fresh ones at aid stations because they are usually cold.

I too am following this post to get some pointers. Did my first half a few weeks back and it was my first race with bike aid stations. I kept going but found it tricky to refill water bottles (not knowing that I should have just brought disposble Poland Spring bottles and tossed them when I swapped out at the aid station or so I assume). Question to go with this, how do you manage to refill the bta bottle before the end of the aid station when you need to toss the bottle. Just a really quick squeeze into the quick fill opening?

Thank you! Knowing that they give you bottles with sports tops answers my dilemma. So I can just take some old water bottles with me and toss them at the aid station and grab the new ones they give you.

Leave a cage open for this. You can fill your bta while rolling, shove the bottle they gave you back in a cage and dump it rolling up to the next aid station. The stations are usually close enough that running out of water is never an issue. At least it hasn't been for me on other courses.

Rinse and repeat as needed.

This is how I rotate my old bottles out. Donate to the race gods.

I always buy a water or gatorade with a sports top at a gas station on the way to the race. Start the race with that single bottle and plus up when you get to the aid station. (I don't want to throw away my own bottles because I use camelbak's).

All of this advice works fine if you are using a standard bottle holder. If you are using an aero bottle like a Razor or Virtue you have to make couple of adjustments.

I keep the Virtue full as an emergency supply in case I miss a water station for some reason, one is missing, or I drop a bottle. I have a PD HC between the bars with a big flip open cap that I open before I enter the station. I then slow down (A lot more than most) grab the bottle and fill the HC bottle. If all goes well I can usually do that and toss the bottle with in the discard area. If I don't pull that off I just tuck the empty bottle in the back of my tri suit and drop it at the next station. Once I even handed it to a spectator and asked her to throw it away for me. I assume that is not outside assistance?

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

My method for HIMs is as follows.

1) Start with my Torpedo bottle full of gator aid.
2) Drink it before the aid station (or as much as I want), I also have an Ensure (Strawberry shortly after T1) and likely at least 1 gel before The first aid station.
3) Before aid station, open the top of my torpedo bottle so it is ready, decrease speed to 15 to 20 kph, HOLD line.
4) Toss all my garbage (Ensure bottle, water bottle, empty gel packs). Pick up water (assuming it is first) and put in empty cage. Pick up Gatorade, hold in left hand and unscrew cap, pour into Torpedo and all over handlebars, toss bottle and close lid on torpedo. Splash water from water bottle over spilt gatoraid to wash it off, take a good drink out of water bottle and toss. Get back into aero, pick up speed and boogey.

Note that in the above scenario the water bottles did not have sports cap and were handed up with no tops and being smaller, would not stay in cage very well (as was evidenced by all the ejecta within a Km or so of the aid station). But, Gatorade was in a standard sports bottle with a top so could have easily fit into a holder.

Had I not been using the torpedo, I would have had a large water bottle on my down tube and unscrewed the cap before the aid station to fill it and stuffed the water bottle into my seat tube cage (or whatever I was using).

I strongly suggest you set up a couple of tables in front of your house and practice this. Also practice picking up water first, then second as you never know what sequence for sure you'll get them in. And, practice missing a pick up and practice at different speeds. Throw in a couple of kids running back and forth to simulate other cyclists stopping in front of you or swerving around as well. Well, maybe just set out some pylons instead of kids. But, do practice this.

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BC Don
Pain is temporary, not giving it your all lasts all Winter.

simplicity is the key to this. I have 2 bottle cages, one BTA, one behind the seat. Behind the seat is nutrition, 24 oz bottle with infinit. That one only gets touched every 15 minutes. BTA is for water. 2 ways to do this, 1 way is to have a torpedo, or the like. open lid, grab water bottle at aid station, refill torpedo. The other way, which i use, is to start the race with a disposable sport top bottle (arrowhead, or the like) and when going through the aid station grab a water bottle, and shove it in the BTA (after chugging the remainder of the current bottle and tossing it in the bin at the start of the aid station). Because these disposable sport top bottles dont quite fit snugly I have a fabric covered pony tail elastic tied to the front of my BTA cage and I grab that and put it over the front of the bottle to hold it in there.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdwCeOi0PmY

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)