On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 12:09:07 PM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 6/20/17 9:00 AM, wrote:
I have rather a serious problem. When I ride I usually eat and drink nothing more than a pastry and a cup of coffee. The results of this are that I get extremely tired on long rides.

After reading physiological training books I'm informed that you should consume liquids with electrolytes in them - mainly slightly sweetened water with potassium and sodium in them. That is a type of cooking salt I believe.

Looking the drinks up that are replacement drinks the only one's I can see that aren't pure hype are Gatorade and Red Bull. The second one contains a little caffeine as well but only about 1/10th what you would get in a cup of coffee.

The "Sports Bars" and "Sports Drinks" in the stores upon reading the labels would scare the pants off of you. The amounts of sugar are so high that they cause your digestive process to freeze up and stop.

Does anyone have any good ideas about making your own sports drink since the cost of Gatorade or Red Bull are rediculous?

Look into Brawndo, The Thirst Mutilator. It's got electrolytes, and it's
what plants crave.

Seriously though, you can buy a 4 pound container of Gatorade powder,
which makes 36 quarts, for less than $11 at Costco
https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/Gatorade-Perform-Drink-Mix%2C-Frost-Glacier-Freeze%2C-4-lbs.product.11980343.html.
That's about 30¢ per quart, or about 19¢ to fill a standard 20 ounce
bicycle water bottle.

There's a bunch of homemade "Gatorade" recipes but since they tend to
use natural ingredients (juice, water, sea salt, honey) they're much
more expensive than buying the Gatorade powder which doesn't have the
expense of real juice or honey or sea salt, and is mostly just sugar,
citric acid, artificial flavors, and salt.

I could never stomach Gatorade for some reason. I think it was the cost of the original stuff. Buying salty water with sugar in it always made me nauseous.