The bike portion of 70.3 Ironman Canada will be 56 miles.  The goal is not to stop.  Just keep going and going.  To keep on the bike, instead of stopping for refueling, I needed to expand my total opportunity for on-bike nutrition.  The best way to do this is to have liquid fuel available so I can hydrate and carbohydrate all out of the same container array.  Just sip and go!

My liquid fuel of choice is :GO FAR orange flavor. Space age miracle powder.

It is specifically developed for workouts over 3 hours which is almost always my typical ride.  It has almost no flavor (oddly that is a good thing), not overly sweet like many sports drinks (in other words you don’t get sick of it), and it pretty much has everything I need for nutrition.  As it says on the package, “No need for bars, gels or even food.”  Perfect.  Probably the only time in my life I have been excited about no food.

All I needed was more capacity.  I have been living off of the typical two water bottle program ever since I started on the road bike last year.  Sometimes, on longer rides, I would pack another in the back of my jersey.  However, that stretches the jersey and just adds another layer of something on me that prevents me from cooling off and being a happier biker.

There are only two solutions to this need for the drink.  Either you mount something off the back of your seat, or you add a special kind of bottle between your handlebars mounted horizontally.  I opted for the mount behindeth the hindquarters.  Very aerodynamic and very accessible.

This new mount allowed me to add two bottles for a total of four on-bike fuel containers.  However, I have noticed that my sports bottle collection in the cupboard at home gets depleted mysteriously throughout the week and winds up in daughter cars with little hope of traveling back inside the house for cleaning and replenishment.  It was clear that I needed to lay claim to my expanded need for hydration repositories.  With black Sharpie in hand, I made my mark “Dad Bottle.”

One more innovation needed to be added to the system which included rubber bands.  Unfortunately, for rear mounted bottle cages, there is a thing called “Bottle Ejection”.  You hit a bump, and your bottle is launched into the ditch or into your friends face.  I read online about the best way to avoid my bottles becoming projectiles.  Most favored spending $70 on these special bottle cages almost guaranteed to hold your bottles tight.  That would be $140 for two.  I opted for a few thick rubber bands that ran me $1.39.  The maiden 58-mile ride proved that my $1.39 was a wise, prudent and durable investment.  No loss of nutrition or injury to other riders occurred.