Electrolytes and other spring awakening rituals
By Justin Short
It happens to me every year. At some point while April showers are giving way to May flowers, I’m out riding on a day that is creeping above 60 or 70 degrees after I’ve slogged through a long, cold winter. It always occurs on a tough climb, usually one of those steep roller coasters in the Palouse: I sweat into my eyes for the first time of the season. “Aaagghhh, it buuurrrns,” I invariably shout as I’m temporarily blinded. But it’s a shout of joy, because the season of warmth has returned and the season of having to pack a snowmobile suit to descend whatever hill I’ve ridden up is going away. It’s the season to think less about the layers I’m wearing and more about what’s in my water bottles. It’s time to think about electrolytes.
It’s hard to imagine that once upon a time I left the house in the dead of summer on a bike with no water bottle. It was 26 miles to the BMX track where I’d meet up with the guys, and smack dab in the middle of that ride was a gas station where I’d get an 8-ounce courtesy cup and refill that thing 19 times at the sink. That got me to the BMX track, where I drank hose water all day until it was time to depart for home, whereupon I’d make a second dromedary stop at the aforementioned gas station. If I was splurging that day, I carried a dollar for a hot dog to pair with the two raw potatoes I had on hand. I did that three times per week and raced on the weekends, and somehow I never cramped.
The dreaded leg cramp is the arch nemesis of every cyclist, and science isn’t entirely clear about why cramping even happens. But leg cramps in general have a strong correlation with overexertion, dehydration, and depletion of electrolytes, so we’ll start there. For starters, the wisdom of long-distance cyclists says that you can ride in a single day your average weekly mileage. If you join an early-season event like the Lilac Century, you can begin training by adding 10 percent to your weekly mileage without stressing yourself out. If you get conned into the Cascadia Super Gravel in Olympia, you’re going to need some good old-fashioned off-the-bike leg strengthening to deal with the elevation profile in Capitol Forest, because those kinds of hills are still buried in snow out here on the East Side at that time of year.
There’s a good chance any early season bike event you may be targeting will be your first hot ride of the year (if it’s not snowing), so, for the love of God, don’t put sunblock on your forehead or you’ll be blinded until September when that stuff seeps into your eyes with perspiration. A cycling cap will protect your forehead quite nicely and should be worn both on and off the bike so that everyone knows you’re a cyclist.
But now that it’s hot out and you’re barely acclimated to it, you must get strategic with hydration. There’s a mathematical formula that would boggle the mind of Stephen Hawking to calculate the water-to-electrolyte ratio you must consume while biking in the blistering heat to keep your electrolytes balanced. Electrolytes are ionized minerals that permit fluid to travel inside and outside of the cells in your body. You want to keep these things balanced, because too many electrolytes, and you’ll have problems with water retention, and too little and the water will go right through you, causing dehydration that gets oddly worse the more water you drink.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to keep your electrolytes in balance, and that is to carry two bottles, one with straight water and the other with some electrolyte mix or another, then about every 10 minutes or so take a drink of whichever one you thirst for. It’s that simple, your body knows. This method sustained me on a two-day, 300-mile ride out to St. Regis, Mont., for a huckleberry milkshake during one of those early season heat waves we had a few years back. I learned it from Dr. Allen Lim of Skratch Labs on a cycling podcast, and this wisdom has carried me through many sweat-soaked misadventures.
I tend to carry four or more varieties of electrolytes with me on the bike, Skratch Labs among them. They all have different formulations of sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium and other stuff. Some electrolyte mixes have caffeine, others have calories. I don’t really pay attention to that. I just know that I’m thirsty for different ones at different times.
Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do, and you’re going to cramp on a ride. Some folks swear by pickle juice shots; I, for one, prefer leg cramps. As far as scientists can tell, pickle juice confuses your senses to the point that your muscles forget to cramp. In researching this article, I stumbled upon a cramp remedy on the Selle Anatomica website (they make leather saddles): pop a couple of Tums when cramps start. The calcium in Tums doesn’t absorb well, but apparently it’s enough to stave off cramps once they begin. I hope I don’t need to try it soon.
OTO writer Justin Short has been saving his Oxford commas for years and trading them in for double and triple exclamation points. He also bikes around a bit too.
