jmcavoy
Likes Dirt
Or you could just drink a sport drink that is designed to deliver caffeine and electrolytes at the levls some scientist determined to be the best mix, in a flavor you can drink all day and costs about the same... but if you love the flavor of coke, go ahead and start mixing your own formula, plenty of people make their own sports drink all the time, it's a good way to find out what works for you as an individual, we're all different after all.I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to add electrolytes to coke.
I'm not so sure you can just pile more caffeine in all day long and hope it has less and less effect... straight from wikipedia:As for too much caffeine, any stimulant has less effect on the body as it gets used to it.
The symptoms of caffeine intoxication are not unlike overdoses of other stimulants. It may include restlessness, fidgetiness, nervousness, excitement, euphoria, insomnia, flushing of the face, increased urination, gastrointestinal disturbance, muscle twitching, a rambling flow of thought and speech, irritability, irregular or rapid heart beat, and psychomotor agitation. In cases of much larger overdoses, mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, disinhibition, delusions, hallucinations, and psychosis may occur, and rhabdomyolysis (breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue) can be provoked...with serious symptoms of overdose requiring hospitalization occurring from as little as 2 grams of caffeine
Hmm, that might impact your race performance...
At your 1L rate of drinking, it would take about 24 hours or so to build up 2 grams in your system, so if you plan on using coke for solo 24hr hydration (assuming you can drink it for that long, I'd wager you couldn't face the sticky sugar taste of it after a few hours though), you would end up in hospital. For shorter races you would be find, but for an 8 or 12hr race, you'd hit the overdose levels that would give you some of the other minor overdose symptoms like nausea, the shakes and definitely gastro intestinal distress. And don't forget the issue of dilution rates, simple sugars must be mixed in weak 6-8% solutions or they will sit
undigested in the stomach and not pass the gastric lining creating stomach cramps and loss of apetite as your system backs up, unable to process such a high dilution of suger (coke is 11%). You can drink for a while, but after a few hours it will be game over.
But hey, I've never run on coke for hours, so what would I know man; I say give it a crack and find out... seriously, why not, the best way to find out is to try it I say... but let us know how it pans out, I would be very curious.
And if your events are shorter than 8 hours, then go for it, it should be fine.
Your stomach cannot process more than 300 cals per hour, you can try and eat 800 per hour, but its going to end badly after a few hours. Give that one a test too, it's always something interesting to find out, just how much you can take before you get sick.I go through around 800 calories an hour according to my HR monitor, so I don't think I can get enough calories.
Plus there's no point shoveling in more than 300 cals an hour if you can't digest it any faster, as it's just extra eating you have to do on the bike for no reason and extra weight to carry for no reason, other than scarfing yummy stuff I guess
Coke is 63, which surprises me and I stand corrected there, who would have thought hey! That's medium GI, so pretty good for endurance cycling on that front.A GU would have to be around the same GI as coke, no?
Some gels have fructose in them which has a GI of 20 though, so could be lower than coke, but whatever, a GI of 63 of good enough.
Yep, me included, but the gels I use contains maltodextrine and fructose, lower GI and you are able to absorb these at a higher digestion rate than the 300 cals per hour you are limited to by sticking with a simple sugar like coke.A lot of people here seem to run just GU for anything up to 8hr races.
So anyway, I say we can speculate all day on whether it would work or not, but the only way to know is to give it crack. You asked for reasons why it might not work, and I've given some (that I believe are true), but I am always happy to be proven wrong, so give it a go I say, there's nothing to lose... let us know how it pans out...