You’ve read all the articles and heard the stories about how important proper hydration is to performing well in an endurance event like an adventure race, well let’s look at some facts. If you loose just 2% of you body weight through water loss, it can decrease your performance by as much as 20%. Dehydration can lead to poor decision making, lesson your drive, and put you a plain old bad mood.

You need to consider the temperature you are performing under, the length of your adventure race and the intensity of the event to estimate how much liquids you will need to replenish during the race. One test I’ve seen recommended several places, is to weigh yourself before you exercise, go and workout for an hour without taking in any liquids, weigh yourself again and you will have generally how much water you lose in an hour.

Now, let’s say you weight 170 pounds before the workout and you weight 168 afterwards, you have lost 2 pounds and require 32 ounces of liquid to re-gain your weight loss. Thus you know in an adventure race you will need to take in about 32 ounces per hour. Now, you don’t want to do this all at once, but break it into say 15 minute increments at around 8 ounces each.

In a race or workout that is less than 90 minutes long you should be fine replenishing with just water. At 90 minutes or less your body should have enough electrolyte and glycogen energy stores to get you though without bonking. In events longer than 90 minutes you should aim for 50% of your fluid intake to be an electrolyte and carbohydrate solution. An intake of 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrates (glycogen) per hour is sufficient for the average individual. Work with different solutions until you find the one that your stomach can handle and does the job. Make sure whatever solution you use contains sodium, which stimulates thirst reminding you to drink and helping your body absorb liquids efficiently.

Adopt a system for hydration that is easy to use, like a hydration back pack, waist belt or easy to carry bottles. Don’t rely on thirst to tell you when to drink, take a drink at least every 15 minutes.

Some common sense should be employed, such as the hotter the weather, etc., the more liquids you will need. Also, start yourself out right by pre-hydrating before your adventure race; make sure you don’t start in a deficit. Drink three glasses of water in the hour before the race or workout.