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Woodstock Mountain Bike Fellowship

Your Body Needs Water

  • The human body is 65% water
  • Your muscles generate 8-10 times their normal heat during a hard ride
  • While riding on a hot day, you can lose up to ½ gallon of water every hour
  • It may take more than ½ hour to get thirsty. By then, your body is already beginning to dehydrate

If you don't hydrate, expect these effects as you ride in the heat:

  • 30 minutes - initial dehydration: equilibrium water level below normal; performance suffers
  • 1 hour - heat exhaustion: blood volume decreases and cardio system demand increases
  • 2 hours - heat stroke: body temperature rises, causing dizziness, unconsciousness, and possible death

How to Hydrate Your Body

  • Two hours before your ride, drink 16oz of water.
  • During the ride, drink at regular intervals before becoming thirsty (about 8 oz every 15 minutes).
  • Keep your drink cool - optimal absorption and body cooling occurs with water between 45-55 degF.
  • Studies show that people drink more if their water is flavored.
  • If you ride for over an hour you will benefit from a sports drink containing carbohydrate.
  • Take 30-60 grams of carbohydrate per hour to delay fatigue & fuel muscle contractions.
  • Weigh yourself before and after your workouts. Drink 24 ounces of water for each pound lost.

Your Spirit Needs "Water"!

Our bodies crave water on a hot day, but there is a deeper longing within our spirits. The Bible puts it like this: "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God."¹

But sadly, we often ignore this essential craving or spend our energy trying to quench it with the wrong things: "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?"²

At the end of the story, our Creator makes a final offer: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life."³

  1. Psalm 42:1
  2. Isaiah 55:1,2
  3. Revelation 21:6

How to Hydrate Your Spirit

Although we were created to enjoy God, we have all chosen to blaze our own trail: "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way."¹ Although we might find a few cheap thrills along the way, our path eventually leads to a dry wasteland.

Fortunately, God sent His own Son to come and rescue us. He stood in Jerusalem 2000 years ago and called out these words: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."² He's still calling out today - "believe in Me."

It's a dangerous thing to ignore your thirst.

  1. Isaiah 53:6
  2. John 7:37,38
Waiting their turn Bike Limbo! Derailleur clinic