Dirt-cheap homemade sports drink for indoor training

Nutrition
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I mixed 50 grams of honey with a bit of lime juice (would have used lemon and lime but I was out of lemon juice) and about a gram of 50% sodium chloride 50% potassium chloride (reduced sodium salt substitute) with one bottle worth of ice water and it wasn’t totally gross. Plus, I could swear it make it easier to get through a fairly hard workout.

What do my fellow cheapskates use to fuel during hard workouts?

Are there any good ways to also get calcium and magnesium in your drinks as well?

Any suggested tweaks to my formula? Two types of sugar, maybe?

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From Empirical Cycling:

Homemade Hydration Recipe

  • 500mL water (16 oz or a bit over 2 cups), fill a bottle up to the middle of the bottle holder indentation (400mL for cold days, 550-700mL for hot days)
  • 1 heaping tablespoon dextrose (~10g)
  • About 7/8 tablespoon of sucrose (table sugar) (~10g)
  • 1/4 tsp sodium citrate (adjust to sodium requirements)
  • 1/8 tsp calcium lactate and/or potassium citrate
  • 1/8 tsp ascorbic acid (vitamin C) (to taste)
  • 1/8 - 1/4 tsp citric acid
  • ~1/2 tsp freeze dried fruit, ground up, or fruit juice (not too much) to taste
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Which of these bulk ingredients can you buy in a grocery / drug store?

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I’m one of those super cheapskates who adds just salt in that really expensive tap water :wink:

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Water and one or more out of bananas, dates, trail mix or Haribo.

I save the sports drink for races where I want the convenience of swigging my calories from a bottle and not having to faff around getting stuff out of my jersey pockets.

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I do that too! :slight_smile: Sometimes I add also a little bit of honey

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:sweat_smile: Not how I thought that sentence was going to end!

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I use the mix I posted in this thread.

Seems to be working out ok for me, both as a carb mix and as the base for a recovery mix.

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I normally have the carb mix in addition to real food, but definitely find the mix handier in winter with big gloves on which make unwrapping harder!

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In a 500ml bottle
60g maple syrup
1tbls lemon juice
1tbls lime juice
1/4 tsp salt (I’m a salty sweater, so I double this and it does taste to bad)

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Hello, thank you for the recipe, I just wanted to ask you what juicer do you use? I squeezed lemons with my hands, but got too tired from it :sweat_smile:

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@ TiWi

Ramp test then adjust effort to squeeze at sweet spot :thinking::rofl:

Seriously I use the little plastic lemon and lime juices from the supermarket

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