I had such high hopes for this one…
Part of the learning curve for all this endurance racing this year has been to figure out the nutrition aspect. Essentially, if you’re going out for a race any longer than 2 hours, you’d better plan to replace some of those nutrients you lost during the race. Electrolytes become important even before that.
Earlier this year I was using HEED, a Hammer Nutrition product designed to give you a handful of calories and an adequate dose of electrolytes. It was effective, and proved its worth to me at Calvin’s Challenge. It kept me from cramping or bonking in a few events and several training rides, but I always had a problem with it not dissolving all the way. You’d get 3/4 of the way through a bottle, and then it was like drinking sandy water. Not so good when you’re also sucking wind.
Right around the Tour de France this year, a bunch of ads and endorsements popped up for this stuff, OSMO. A lot of riders on the Tour claimed to be using it, it’s organically flavored, and not horridly expensive on Amazon, so I figured I’d give it a try.
I can say that it does do the job, in terms of preventing muscle cramps, and it tastes pretty good. But that’s where the good part ends, for me, as it has the same dissolving issues that HEED had. Also, drinking it produces a really strange reflux reaction from my gut, and I very nearly puked it up on a training ride once. That’s especially strange for me, because despite how hard I train and how long I’ve been doing it, I think I’ve puked maybe once, in all that time.
I have had some success with filling my bottles the night before, to give it extra time to dissolve, but that’s not a particularly useful strategy, for me. If I go out for a long training ride, I might be refilling the same two bottles three or four times, and then I’m right back with sand in my mouth.
So I’m still in search of a good hydration mix. After picking up and reading Feed Zone Portables, I think I’ll check out Skratch next, along with trying to switch to real food for my rides and races, instead of gels and chews. More on that another day.