Making your own sports drink
Written by heraldo on Jul 22nd, 2009 and posted in 2009, Training
Want to make your own custom sports drink, save some money and reduce plastic bottle usage? Here’s a very quick recipe:
Ingredients
sugar, 2 1/2 tablespoons (about 32 grams, or “a handful”)
salt, 1/8 teaspoon (about 0.75 grams, or “a pinch”)
flavoring of choice (fruit juices work great, e.g. lime)
Take all ingredients, add to a sports bottle, fill with water, shake. Done!
Most sports drinks, it turns out, have three main components: carbohydrates (some form of sugar, providing calories), electrolytes (mostly sodium and potassium, replenishes what you lose through sweating and speeds up water absorption to boot), and flavoring.
For flavoring, my favorite is lime juice (plus, it’s easy to carry a few limes along for a bike tour!). Another option I like is using brown sugar instead of refined sugar and skipping the fruit juice altogether. Other ideas include using honey instead of sugar, flavoring with tea (adds some caffeine as well if you’re into that), or herbs (got some mint taking over your garden? put it to use here).
Happy cycling!
