How to perform hydration testing

Use your turbo time to nail your drinking strategy

Hydration testing is something you can do throughout the year at different points as the weather changes. It’s a great way to stay on top of how much you should be drinking in order to avoid dehydration and hyponatraemia and it’s also perfect to do while in isolation and we have a bit of spare time. It’s recommended that we avoid water loss exceeding two per cent of our body weight. So, if you weigh 70kg, that would be the loss of 1.4kg of water.

TAKING THE TEST

• Take a standard session you might do – a onehour turbo session is ideal – and weigh yourself before (naked).

• Drink a controlled amount of water over the session, let’s say one 500ml bidon – and ensure you drink all of this. Oh, and that you’ve dressed yourself again!

• After the session, before consuming anything else, undress, wipe yourself down with a towel and weigh yourself again.

This number at the end, subtracted from the number at the start, will let us know your average sweat rate per hour in those conditions. It’s important to remember that this number relates to the intensity of that session and the ambient temperature. You will always sweat more indoors as there is no wind cooling effect. With that loss number in mind, add the 0.5kg from the bottle you drank. This now tells you your sweat loss per hour. So, if you lost 0.5kg you’ve lost in total 1kg over the hour.

You can use an outdoor ride to test this too, however, ensure it’s still only an hour long, as if you go for longer then you will start eating food or gels and you will also be expending large amounts of glycogen that will also affect the results.

“HYDRATION TESTING CAN HELP YOU AVOID DEHYDRATION AND HYPO N AT RA EM IA AND IS GREAT TO DO WHILE IN ISOLATION”