The Vineman organizers have screwed me by removing cups from the course last minute. All athletes are going to be required to carry something to fill up with water/sports drink/coke at the aid stations. And, I’ve already pretty much decided that I’m not going to experiment with their “hydrapouch” on race day.
That leaves me with two options.
I can carry a 20 oz water bottle, like I’ve done on most of my long runs, even though I know it slows me down by about 15 seconds per mile.
Or I can use a fuel belt, and I just bought a amphipod 4 bottle belt.
But I’m a bit puzzled about the logistics of using the fuel belt. Even if the 8oz bottles were frozen the night before, they will be steaming hot by the time that I get to the run, so it will be necessary for me to fill them at the first aid station. How big of a hassle is it to stop and fill up 4 individual water bottles? And of course, I’ll have to stop at least one or two more times to refill all of the bottles.
Or do I just carry two of the bottles??
Any advice would be appreciated. I’ve only got a very small amount of time now to experiment with this, and find out what works for me.
soft sided lunch cooler with some dry ice in it will keep your bottles freaky cold. you can leave your fuel belt in it ready to go. it will take a few seconds to unzip it and you can put your belt on as you run.
X2 on the Soft cooler also good to have more bottles ready to switch out in another cooler in run special needs, although by then I have usually Been sick of my drink of choice, good to have enough calories to go the distance…
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I use an Amphipod belt a lot for longer races. I wouldn’t go w/ more than 2 bottles tho, that just slows ya down. YMMV.
The soft side cooler idear is a good one, I’ve used that w/ my special needs bottle for the bike, don’t see why it wouldn’t work for the run too.
Put a frozen water bottle in there as the “fridge”, and your bottles, also mostly frozen (I’d probably fill 'em a little more than half to freeze, and freeze 'em on an angle or on their side, so they still snap in and out of the belt properly.), then topped off the am of the race w/ cold water. They should keep cold pretty well.
On the run - when one is empty, take it out and unscrew it as you approach the aid station, get a blast of water, screw the cap on, and GO.
such bullshit on vineman to drop that change such last minute!! yes, its a great idea, but they should make those changes months ago so people can plan accordingly!!
I use an Amphipod belt a lot for longer races. I wouldn’t go w/ more than 2 bottles tho, that just slows ya down. YMMV.
The soft side cooler idea is a good one…
Okay, a lot of votes for the soft side cooler. Thanks.
I just got back from an 18 mile run using my fuel belt for the first time. It went okay, but not great. I think it’s going to just take some getting used to before the fuel belt feels natural. Even before I left, I realized that 3 or 4 bottles was too many. I started with two bottles in the back, and half way through changed it to one bottle in front and one in back.
Do you have advice on bottle positioning (front/back/side), bottle angle (up/down/sideways), or any other misc. advice at all for someone who has never used a fuel belt before?
I keep the bottles ALL in back. They don’t interfere w/ my arm carriage that way. YMMV.
For Epicman (the last time I used multiple bottles), I ran:
R front hip - velcro 2-compartment pouch: coin purse w/ electrolyte caps in it, and a spare gel packet
R rear hip - small GU flask
Center rear/small of back - water bottle
L rear hip - water bottle
So basically, the 2 water bottles and the GU flask all right together, across the back of my hips.
I find the one centered tends to stay put nicely, whereas the stuff on the sides (water bottle in particular), sometimes move forward a bit.
Pushing 'em back repeatedly can get minorly annoying.
I drink from the L rear hip one first, so that way it will be empty first, and no longer move around.
(I never thought of this before, but - I would imagine a small bit of strategically-placed duct tape would fix the sliding issues but good.)
Bottles UP. Always. Sideways or down is just begging for them to leak.
Make sure you feel and hear the bottles SNAP back in. When I was first training w/ it, I would occasionally drop a bottle by not being 100% sure it was in.
With practice, you can do this quickly and easily w/o even thinking about it.
The hip/waist band needs to be somewhat snug, so you’ll want to get fit that dialed in too. Set it up so you have the ability to tighten or loosen it a bit on the go, since you never know what the day will bring.