Adventure Racing Holiday Gifts: Day 4

Posted by Grant on 7. December 2009 00:37

What can make a water bottle worth $30?  How about being computerized and tracking your consumption, comparing it to your goals or targets?  This would create a very regimented hydration schedule to keep you on track and optimize your fluid intake . . . and that is worth $30 (or at least it is according to the makers of the HydraCoach Intelligent Water Bottle).

I don't know that I quite buy it, but it's intriguing enough to make it onto my list of gift ideas for an adventure racer.  I'm trying hard to avoid the easy "buy a $3000 mountain bike" sort of gifts, and this is firmly in the "cheap gift" price range . . . and if you're shopping for somebody who has to have the latest and greatest gadget, then this is going to be right up their alley.  

I know some race nutrition products like Perpetuem have a suggested consumption schedule (a small sip every 15 minutes, if I recall), and a bottle like this could really help keep tabs on that sort of thing.  I can see where using a computerized gadget to automatically track this data, instead of keeping a rough count in your head, would be nice for a longer event.

This reminds me of a few years back when me and the people I raced with were really into the engineered nutrition like Perpetuem.  A friend of mine mixed up a giant tub of Perpetuem in a water cooler, and put it in the support vehicle for the race.  It was like having a Perpetuem keg, and was a pretty good idea since we all used it to refill our gel flasks.  It went downhill, though, a month later when the same keg of Perpetuem appeared . . . and then at the long training session 3 weeks after that . . . and so on.  This single big batch of Perpetuem -- mixed in January -- lasted into the summer months and nobody would drink any except for Mr. Perpetuem, who brewed the batch up, who still really liked it.  I spoke with a Hammer rep about our particular perpetual Perpetuem and she nearly laughed me off the phone; seriously, she said something like: "hold on, let me put you on speaker phone -- then tell me that again!"  She highlighted the fact that Perpetuem has no preservatives to protect it for extended freshness -- you should mix it, drink it, and what you don't drink within a few days you should discard.  She thought my buddy, Mr. Perpetuem, could be doing bad things to his digestive track.

Now, Mr Perpetuem has since left the sport of adventure racing as his digestive track now doesn't deal well with 6+ hours of activity.  I don't know if the Perpetuem frenzy did it to him, or if it was something else entirely, but he never really got back on track from that season of the endless Perpetuem jug.  

For the record, I think Perpetuem is fine and there's no evidence when consumed properly that it causes any problems (in fact, I've done lots of racing with Perpetuem as my main source of calories).  The main reason I've gotten away from it these last couple years is that my body craves solid food and psychologically I do better with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tortillas with jelly and espresso beans, or even pizza in ziplock bags.   I'm a whole food kind of guy, now, for any activity beyond about 12-hours.

Now where was I . . . oh yeah, this crazy computerized water bottle . . . this could be a fun gift idea for the right kind of person.  Just don't fill it with a protein/carb mix today, and expect it to be fresh and nutritious 5 months later.  Don't repeat Mr. Perpetuem's mistake!