Homemade Sports Drinks

Triathlon Forum
1

Does anybody else create their own sportsdrinks? I mean, it seems like a pretty simple idea. Calories, water, salt, a little caffeine. For six months or so, I’ve been using a mixture of 1/3 sweet tea, 2/3 water, and a couple pinches of table salt in a waterbottle. I like the way it tastes. I think it works. It’s cheaper than gatorade. Anybody else do this? Now and then, if I have coffee left over from the morning, I add sugar and salt and make a drink thats closer to 3/4 water.

Anybody have any interesting recipes?

2

Do you drink that on the bike or just for recovery, post exercise?

3

on the bike.

4

How about just dropping a tablet of NUUN into your water bottle? Great electrolytes and low calories. I started to use it recently and like it so far.

H

5

that sounds like a good idea. Better than table salt? haha.

6

Mine is actually a tasty Lemon Lime flavor. So yes, better than table salt, plus it actually just dissolves and does not require stirring.

H

7

sea salt teaspoon honey 4 to 1 water / white grape juice 1/4 pack of Goodies Headache Powder
.

8

For some more calories and complex carbs instead of simple sugars you can use maltodextrin and or dextrose (found in many/most sports drinks). You can get either for very cheap from a brewery supply place.

9

Hello Ajl407 and All,

I use InfiniT primarily (I am lazy) … But on the topic ‘Homemade Sports Drinks’ …

Frank Cokan has won IM Hawaii 8 … maybe 10 times in his age group …

Cheers,

Neal

Excerpts:

=====================================================================
Tom and everybody,

Like many parts of the sport, fueling has become a big money maker. For oly distance all I use is water with sugar and salt and I believe firmly that there is no physiological justification for anything else. The fueling solutions are on a “lemonade WITH A CHERRY” base to outdo the competition. Citric acid is probably the main reason for stomach cramps and nausea. When I used my own mix in IMH I no longer felt nauseated in the run. For details please see feman.com and click on SPEAKOUT. We are unpaid volunteers. The recipe for Cokanade is on your weekly Saturday run announcement.

IM Hawaii has gone through at least four fuels. When you drink 5 galolons of anything it becomes a problem. Here and there I replace a bottle of fuel with a Cliff bar followed by a bottle of water.

On Saturday runs we talk about all the problems including fluids.

Best of luck,

Frank

France Cokan MD ======================================================================================= http://www.feman.com/speakdrfnutrition.asp http://www.feman.com/speakdrfbanquet.asp It’s Not a Banquet, It’s a Race **** Excerpt: Average sized human body can burn more than one gram of ingested sugar a minute. I don’t get hung up on the word sugar, which I avoid in day to day life. Table sugar or sucrose (=glucose and fructose molecule bound together) seems to be passed through the stomach almost as fast as glucose polymers, also called maltodextrins (=chains of several glucose molecules, produced by chemically splitting the longer chains of glucose - called starch - into shorter chains of about 5-6 glucose average length).

Fructose has the theoretical advantage of raising blood sugar (glucose) with some delay, since it has to be changed into glucose in the liver first. It has a very practical disadvantage that it can upset your innards in large amounts. Some drinks have a little of it added, because it is very sweet.

I buy regular table sugar in boxes of cubes, which weigh just under 4 grams each. Eight of those in a standard 16 oz. bottle gives 32 grams in half a liter, or 64 grams in one liter (=1000 grams of water), thus about 6.5% solution, close to 6-7% sports drinks.

If I don’t like the race drink, I provide three hours’ supply of salt and sugar by putting 90 sugar cubes in a 32-oz. (1 liter) bottle. A #4 capsule (found in pharmacies) filled with fine salt contains 0.9 grams, which equals 15 mEq of sodium for those, who prefer to operate in those units. I owe thanks for this practical information to my old friend and avid cyclist Marjan Kordas, professor of pathophysiology in my country of origin, Slovenia). Therefore I shake six capsulefuls in the same bottle, fill it with water, and mount it behind the seat. Low on the aerobars, it is easy to suck from that level through a long tube (I use one with 3/16th inch or 4mm inner diameter) which is attached to a stiffer tube in the bottle, so it wouldn’t curl up from the bottom.

This year I may eliminate the bottle carrier by using a Camelback and refill it after 3 hours, so I will carry only a liter at a time.

10

yah, nuun’s a good idea…I don’t really feel investing in salt tablets, so what I do is I actually dissolved nuun into gatorade. It makes the drink twice as salty, and makes the flavor twice as strong; but as you can imagine that can be really good and really bad.

Another interesting thing you can do to supercharge you drink is Gatorade+Nuun+EmergenC Packet (tons of vitamin C and B).

I’m doing IM70.3 in florida in may and I know I’m going to be sweating crazy because it’s hot as hell…so to get the electrolytes i need, I’ll probably be doing this concoction (sp?) for my first bottle then just switching between water and gatorade+nuun. (I don’t care much for water+nuun like they advise…)

11

Instead of plain salt, try Mortons Lite Salt, it has potassium in addition to sodium.