How much water to carry?

[froze]

The most efficient place to carry water is in your body.  So if you know you have a long waterless stretch ahead of you drink until you almost pop before leaving the last water source.

Also, caffeinated drinks like coffee or tea are diuretic and you should go easy on them in very dry conditions.  To a lesser extent sugary drinks are diuretic too and even though sweet tea is delicious on a hot day I wouldn’t recommend drinking four or five glasses of it when riding a big day.

Electrolyte replacements are also a good idea in dry conditions when you are drinking lots of water.

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with gulping all the water down till you pop idea.  At first I thought maybe something new came out I didn't know about, so I had to research it, and everything I read all agreed with this I got off of AI google:

When hiking and far from any water source, it’s more effective to drink water gradually rather than consuming an entire bottle all at once. Here’s why:

Hydration Frequency: Aim to drink water at regular intervals rather than gulping it down all at once. Even if you don’t feel thirsty, remember that you’re losing fluids through hiking, so staying hydrated is crucial.

Recommended Amount: While individual water needs vary based on body weight, a general guideline is to drink approximately 1 liter (about 1 quart) for every two hours of hiking1. Splitting this into smaller portions throughout the hike is more beneficial.

So that was in agreement with other websites I went on which agrees with the old school thought as well.

Coffee is a diuretic as you said, but it isn't as bad as they once thought. Again AI:

A review of studies by Lawrence Armstrong from the University of Connecticut found that caffeine is a mild diuretic at most. Interestingly, in 12 out of 15 comparisons, people urinated the same amount regardless of whether their water contained added caffeine or not.  So why do some folks feel the urge to visit the restroom more frequently after sipping their coffee? Most studies use pure caffeine added to water, not the actual tea or coffee you’d drink at home. Perhaps there’s something about the combination of substances in coffee and tea that makes a difference.

So when scientists did their research they used pure caffeine instead of coffee and added it to water and what they got was a heavily out-of-balance study.  Now of course, if you drink 5 large cups of coffee you will pee a lot, but guess what? drink 5 large cups of water and you will pee a lot!  If you knew you were going to be without water for a long time, and only had one bottle, plus a packet of instant coffee, I probably would not use the coffee even though the effect would be very small, but any effect in that situation is too much.

[jwrushman]

I think davidbonn and Google AI can both be correct. Camel up when you're at a water source and then use your saved water at regular intervals and as needed.

[froze]

I think davidbonn and Google AI can both be correct. Camel up when you're at a water source and then use your saved water at regular intervals and as needed.

That's not what other websites say to do, and the reason for that is because all that will do is make you pee like crazy losing what that way as well as through sweating, whereas taking in small amounts of water as you travel stays in the system better, and you will lose a lot less water through peeing, but the sweating loss will be the same.  Not only that but a belly full of water while hiking or biking could give you stomach pain. Just think about this more.  If you can find me a website that says to chug the entire bottle instead of sipping it as you go, I would love to read it, but I searched like crazy and everything I found said not to do that.

[Westinghouse]

I bicycled the southern tier alone from southeast coastal Florida to San Diego, California. It was in the highest heat of summer, at times 110 degrees F. Water was going in and out of me like I was a sieve. Baseline hydration was at least 6 full 47 ounce fountain drinks.  Add to that draining the water bottles, water and other beverages in restaurants it came close to three gallons of water daily. I could drink three gallons a day for four consecutive days, and not urinate at all.  The water went through me so fast it did not get to the kidneys.

I have bicycle toured and camped 36,000 miles through 19 countries.  Like other experienced distance tourists, I was outside in the elements in some dangerous and challenging surroundings. The worst events were sudden, unexpected, unforeseen, extreme changes in the weather. You know, like, you are slumbering comfortably in your tent and bag.  All is peaceful and calm. Then without warning the wind suddenly gains velocity and it is 30 mph, then 60 mph, then 70 mph.  The tent is hammered to the ground.  You hightail it to a nearby bridge and get under it. You crawl up the retaining wall.  You sit perched at the top.  The rain is coming in parallel horizontal to the roadway at 70 mph.  Interstate highway traffic stopped.  Tractor trailers pushed over on their sides. Thousands of bolts of lightning slamming to earth all around. It is dark night made to look like daylight with all those electrical bolts. A bobcat comes running in for cover. Lightning strikes fifty feet away, conducts through water across the road, and kills it. That is how I spent one night when bicycling across America.

[froze]

Sounds like you've done a lot, but I wasn't asking for an autobiography, all I asked for was some sort of website discussing the benefits of drinking the last bottle all at once instead of sipping as you go so that myself, and others, could read it.

[Westinghouse]

There was a case on television in Florida years ago. It was the lesson taught in ancient Greece thousands of years ago. All things in moderation. Take all things in moderation. There was this young fellow. I think he was in junior high school or high School. He played on the school football team. He decided for some reason to supply his body with all the water he would need during the game. That way he would not have to stop and drink more. The volume of water they said he drank at once was unbelievable. He died. I know they have a word for that. There is a technical or medical word for death caused by over consumption of water. It was in all the news. I had put a story on a forum about my experiences bicycling across the United States in the summer. I mentioned drinking 2 gallons and 3 gallons of water a day. I did not say I had drunk that much in one sitting. I stated clearly that I had various drinks throughout the day and I gave information about the volumes of those drinks. I cannot imagine anyone drinking a gallon of water or any other liquid at once say in 5 minutes or 10 minutes or even 30 minutes. I think this poor young man was going for two gallons. Unbelievable. Everything in moderation. As for some things, nothing at all.

[BikeliciousBabe]

The above-link is spam posted in several threads.

[Westinghouse]

The above-link is spam posted in several threads.

0

Why did somebody post spam here?

[zerodish]

Comming out of Colorado into Kansas I hit fierce head winds. After pushing through this at about 6 miles an hour for 6 hours I pulled into a road side park and drank a gallon of water. Then I bought 32 ounces of coffee and drank that. The temperature was perfect but the dry air had depleted me of water.

[Westinghouse]

A steady sure unlimited supply of clean drinking water is taken for granted in the United States. A salubrious level of water in the body charges the internal organs for efficiency. It is very important to stay properly hydrated when bicycling all day for days and weeks. It is possible when traveling over the road long distance, even in the United States, to find yourself dehydrated with no immediate source of what is absolutely essential for life, water. It is not as though anyone will die from it. In an emergency you can always flag motorists and seek aid. The thing is you can be caught short on water with a significant distance between yourself and the next Oasis.

[davidbonn]

...cIn an emergency you can always flag motorists and seek aid.

You make the optimistic assumption that there will be any motorists on your route.

On a recent journey I had a 100+ mile sections that were, for all practical purposes, waterless.  Yes, there was surface water but it was obviously polluted by agricultural activity and was unlikely to be treatable by any purification technology I could carry.

Usually my go-to in situations like this are fire stations, which nearly always have several faucets with available water outside their building.  I diverted to a nearby (about 4 miles) fire station and discovered that all of the faucets had locks on them.  So I ended up diverting to a town about 25 miles off the route just to water up.  While the going was much easier (mostly good gravel roads) that water run still added almost a whole day to that section.

The big letdown was that at the end of this section there was a nice campground with a pumped well.  When I got there with no water very late in the day I discovered that the well had been vandalized there was going to be no water for me there.  But it worked out that it was a short brushy hike to a tiny creek that at least wasn't obviously polluted.

This trip was (nearly) all on primitive forest roads and jeep tracks.

[Westinghouse]

Many people seem to be interested in bicycling gravel roads and single tracks and mountain paths. That kind of cycling has never held an interest for me. I never considered doing it that way. All my touring, bicycle travel, stealth camping, moteling was over the road. Highways and byways. Interstates. The only time I took a dirt path was to walk the bike back into the woods to find a place to sleep for the night. Keeping in close proximity to food and water is a comfort zone. I intended to always stay in it.

[davidbonn]

It takes all kinds.

My really negative experiences cycling have all been on busy paved roads.  Clawing my way out of and around busy urban areas, especially ones with poor bike infra, always ends up being one of the least pleasant aspects of any bicycle travel I have done.

Having said that, even "moderate" traffic on an unpaved road can also be no fun.

In the end, I usually plan trips around a lot of unpaved and very quiet roads and that works for me.  In practice I will go a long way from the "obvious" route if it lets me avoid traffic.

[Westinghouse]

The busy, highly trafficked, urban areas can become something of a shock. I remember cycling very long distances on interstates. There was not much for quite some distance.
 It was free cycling with no stop lights, no intersections, no insane furious traffic, no pedestrians, no strip malls. Just plain old cycling forward. Then you must exit for an alternate route. The exit channels you straight into the pits of hell. A city crowded, noisy, dangerous, smelly, stop lights, stop signs, intersections, cars pulled across the bike lane, no bike lane at all. You can feel the constriction when you go from a long free ride into an urban area.