Agreed. I've lost bottles or had to physically hold one in the cage until the next aid station bc they were giving out undersized bottles. They was my last race with a standard cage.

Also, refilling a BTA is fast enough that you can grab 2-3 bottles in an aid station without slowing down. Even the pros going 25mph+ can refill with multiple bottles. Not sure why people think you need to slow down or waste time/energy to refill.

Interesting. I always thought they were the same. Do you have any reference to how these were tested?

Would there be any difference between races that give out slim sports bottles vs. fatter spring water bottles?

How do you do that (genuine question)?

Usually race volunteers only hold out one bottle for you to grab. I can also only safely grab one bottle with one hand at time.

Let's say I do manage to grab 2-3 bottles, where do you store them. My Xlab torpedo only hold one bottle worth of water. I have 1 BTA mount + 1 behind the saddle mount. Usually race given bottles are smaller than normal bottles and will surely fall out if I leave them in the saddle mount

There are multiple volunteers,too I'm not sure I get the part about one bottle. What I do is grab the first bottle, shove it in my BTA valve, and quickly squeeze it ~3 times really hard. That gets 90% of water out in a couple seconds. Toss that one. Grab one more near the end of the aid station, top off the BTA, chug the rest.

Well then I need to practice!

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I typically grab 2 water bottles per aid station. Before I get to the aid station, I drink whatever is left in one of my bottles (water or efs pro). That bottle then gets tossed at the start of the aid station. I grab my first water bottle at the start at the aid station and I chug as much water as I can from the bottle and squirt water on myself if it’s a hot race. That gets me to about 1/2-3/4 through the aid station and then I toss the bottle. I then grab a water bottle from the end of the aid station and that replaces the bottle I tossed right at the start of the aid station.

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Huh, myabe I am doing something wrong, I feel like every time I squeeze, I got to wait 1- 2 second for these water bottles to return to shape. And If I permanently bent the plastic on first squeeze, I'll just have to make do with tiny follow-up ones. Never been able to finish re-filling within the aid station's distance.

Maybe I gotta get a large pack of these from the supermarket and practice.

But sounds like you are only topping off 1 BTA anyway?

Yes I only have one BTA bottle? So the second bottle I grab is for topping off and the rest goes straight in my stomach. There's time to drink between the last volunteer and end of the trash zone. I'm still taking minimum two bottles at each aid station. I guess if I had a second BTA bottle it wouldn't take longer to fill than the process of just drinking the second one.

If I'm also swapping am empty BTS that's the 1st or 2nd bottle which only takes a couple seconds once you have the muscle memory to know where the cage is (which should be empty before you reach the first volunteer).