How to Stay Hydrated When Running

Video Transcript

TIM BORLAND: Hi, my name's Tim Borland and today we're going to talk about how to stay hydrated while running. Now, before I even talk about while you're running, it's definitely important to be drinking and hydrating before you even start running or start working out. This is even a day or 2 before; hydration should kind of be an ongoing thing, just--because if you are on a deficit when you start running, it's really hard to get caught up while you're running. So make sure as you start running, you're already hydrated. Now, while you're running, at the very least, just having water is great. You can do a couple of things. You can identify places along your run. You can actually drop off a water bottle at different places. Pitch them in a bush or something somewhere. But if none of those work, then some great things to do are just to bring some different gadgets along the way. This is a belt that just has different cartridges. You can put drinks in here. This also works well. This is a water bottle with a hand hold in it, so you don't even have to hold it. It just, it's there and it sticks to your hand. Both of these are great for different purposes. If you're going for a really long run, you can use a camel back as well. Now, besides water, if you're out for a prolonged period of time, you want to start thinking about an electrolyte replacement drink of some sort, because you're going to be losing out your potassium, your magnesium, your sodium, and these are all really important replacements to have during your run. So find a drink, a flavor, whatever works for you, but have something that you can bring also to replenish while you're out through the run as well. So find something that works for you. Stick with it, stick with the drinks, stick with the process. It's really good to find one thing and just continue to do it over and over again because you'll get used to it. It becomes normal and it will be--it won't cause problems. And actually, using a new drink can actually cause cramping. So when you go into a race, if they have a drink of choice and you're not used to it, you can cramp from that drink. So try to be consistent in how you do these things.