Drinking adequate amounts of water on long runs is an absolute must for me. My girlfriend can go for runs of over fifteen miles without drinking a drop. I don't know how she does it. If I take a long run in the morning without drinking adequate water, then late that night around 1:00am I will awake with a dull headache. The headache won't go away until late the next day, at the earliest. This happens if I don't drink adequate amounts of water during the run. I can drink some water and I'll still get a dull headache. Also, it doesn't help much if I drink copious amounts of water after the run. It seems I need to drink while on the run. If I don't drink while on the run, I can lose over five pounds just while on the road!

Since I routinely run over fifteen miles each Saturday, I've been spending lots of time (and a few dollars) trying to find the best way to carry water. One friend says he likes to just stop somewhere while running and buy some water. I guess I could do this: one of my favorite routes takes me on a trail to Silver Spring, and there are some places along the way where I could stop for water. But once I start running, I hate to stop. It's so hard to start up again! That's why I prefer to carry water.

The problem is that it's just hard to carry enough water. One website says you need 20 to 33 ounces of water per hour when running--a range that is, in my experience, roughly accurate. I sometimes run twenty miles on Saturday morning. At my poky pace this takes well over three hours, which means I need about 60 to 100 ounces of water. This is 4 to 6 1/2-pounds of water! It's a lot to carry.

I've learned a lot in the past few months about carrying water on the run, so I'm recording my thoughts here. It might help me in the future, and it might help you as I certainly couldn't find enough information on the Internet about all the water carrying options for runners.

Hand held water bottles

My first attempt at carrying water while running was quite simple: I just grabbed an old Aquafina bottle or, later, one of these Camelbak hard plastic bottles:

One of these bottles holds sixteen ounces of water. That's enough to tide you over on a hot day if you're taking a six mile run around the environs of the National Mall, but it's no good if you're going to be out for ten miles. There are a couple of nice things about these Camelbak bottles. They're made out of a very hard plastic. Even when the weather is hot, the water tastes fresh and pure. The other nice thing is the bite valve. You simply bite down on the blue top a bit and then suck, and water comes out. Inside the bottle there is a straw that reaches the bottom of the bottle, so you need not (indeed, must not) invert the bottle in order to get water out. Also, because the plastic is so hard, you can't squeeze the bottle. Instead, it's all driven by sucking action. If you don't like the inside straw, you can remove it and use it like a more ordinary water bottle.

The main disadvantage of an Aquafina bottle or a Camelbak water bottle is that you have to hold on to it. This gets rather tiresome. So my next purchase was a Fuel Belt water bottle with a little hand strap. (I can't find it around my house and I can't even find one online, so I'm not sure they're sold anymore. However, there are some similar ones on the Fuel Belt website.)

You thread the little hand strap on and then you don't need to really keep a strong grip on the bottle. Unlike the Camelbak bottle, this is made of soft plastic. That makes it squeezable. Because there is no straw inside the bottle, you have to invert it and squeeze or suck a bit in order to get the water out. Also, unlike the Camelbak, there is no bite valve. I always open and close the little top by pulling at it with my teeth. Honestly though you could probably just leave the valve open between sips; I doubt any water would slosh out of there.

The Fuel Belt bottle has two disadvantages. First, it's just so small. It only holds about seven ounces. You could tag team them and put one in each hand, though. The second disadvantage is that the soft plastic will transfer some of the plasticky taste to the water, especially if the water inside has been there for awhile or if it's a really hot day. The hand strap solution works well for really short runs though, although honestly when I take runs this short I just forgo the water altogether.

But as I was training for the National Marathon last winter, I knew that as my runs got longer the hand-held water bottle solutions would not cut it anymore. So I started looking into water carriers that sported more capacity.

Water backpacks

Camelbak 50-oz

There are lots of things out there that will help you carry water on your back. The first one I bought was the Camelbak Fairfax 50-ounce capacity backpack.

I bought this from Sunny Sports, an Internet shop in New York City. I recommend them--they have good prices and they ship fast.

Camelbak bags have an interesting design: the water goes into a flexible, inflatable plastic pouch. A long flexible straw with a bite valve brings the water to your mouth. The Fairfax is a relatively small bag which goes down to the middle of my back. It's got a little bit of capacity to carry some other things: I put my house keys in there, along with a RoadID, a SmarTrip fare card for the Washington Metro, and a debit card in case I need to buy something or if I need emergency cash. One could fit energy gels in there, but there's no way to reach them while you are running.

The Fairfax works fairly well. The 50-ounce capacity is good for runs that are up to about two hours long. It has a little sternum strap that helps to take some of the weight off your shoulders. Even with that strap, though, I would say the biggest disadvantage to Camelbak backpacks is their weight. It really takes a bite out of your shoulders, especially on really long runs. Another issue with the Camelbak is that it tends to shift around on your back--it bounces and moves around, especially when it's full. My memory of this is worse from the wintertime, when I wear a light jacket (all I need is a light jacket, even if the temperature is 20 degrees or so, which is a typical Washington winter.) The Camelbak bouncing around back there makes some noise, and it rubs against the fabric of my jacket, which makes more noise. I don't usually listen to music when I run so I notice this sound and sometimes it irritates me a bit. (I like the quiet so much that I put a rubber band around my keys so they don't jingle.) I think this was worse in the wintertime, though. In the summer I just wear a technical t-shirt, and the Camelbak doesn't make so much noise when it rubs against that.

I'd say I just sort of get used to the little bit of bouncing after a mile or two and I just forget about it. Sometimes I will adjust the sternum strap a bit while I am running to shift the weight around. However, I would say that 50 ounces is the maximum that I would carry on my back. There are 70-ounce backpacks out there and I wouldn't recommend one of those. I think the bouncing would get to be too much with one of those, and the weight would be too much for my shoulders too. After a long run, my shoulders get to be sore even with this 50-ounce model.

The other disadvantage of the Camelbak is that it tends to make the water taste plasticky. I think this is just a consequence of the kind of flexible plastic that is needed for this sort of gizmo, so I doubt there is any way to fix this other than to drink a sports drink instead as that would mask the plastic taste. The plastic taste is not intolerable or even bad, but it is noticeable. The other solution is to keep your drink cold, as cold drinks tend to absorb the plastic taste less. I find that after an hour on the road, though, anything that was refrigerated will be warm. I haven't tried freezing any of my water though.

Camelbak 100 ounce

I said that I wouldn't recommend anything larger than 50-oz for a water backpack when running. I speak from experience. I once tried running with a 100 ounce Camelbak "bladder" (or, as the company more appetizingly calls them, a "reservoir.") This photo compares the 50-ounce model with the 100-ounce one.

I bought the bladder all by itself. I looked all over the Internet, but it seems there are few companies that make backpacks designed both for running and for such a large water reservoir. I think I did see one from GoLite. However I ultimately decided to just use my existing backpack which I purchased some time ago in preparation for a trip to Yosemite National Park:

This is a very well-designed bag. It already has a pouch in the back which is designed to hold a bladder up to 100 ounces in size. There is a little slit in the top of the bag with a beautiful blue water drop stitched onto it; you can thread your Camelbak hose through it. The hose then threads through little elastic holders on the strap, keeping it at the ready without flopping around too much. The bag also has a frame in the back, which lets the bag stand on its own. The frame keeps things in the bag from poking into your back, and it keeps your back from getting too sweaty too. I absolutely love this backpack and I hope it goes on many more adventures with me.

Unfortunately the bag won't go on any more runs with me. I thought the pack might work well because it has the straps around the waist and the sternum. I thought this would allow me to take the weight of the water and shift it onto my hips and my chest, just as any hiker does when she is using a well-designed bag.

The pack was an absolute disaster for running though. First, the weight of having 100 ounces of water on your back is substantial. Then, factor in that the full bladder will bounce and shift around a great deal, even when inside the bag. (The water is very heavy so I doubt this could be fixed by, say, fixing the water to the bag in some way or by stuffing the bag with Styrofoam peanuts or paper or something.) Also, the sternum and waist straps just do not work well when running. I could never find a good way to situate them.

I was dumb enough to try this setup for the first time when my girlfriend and I went for a long run together. I was absolutely miserable, though the brutal heat and foggy, stream-valley humidity did not help. After just a few miles I dumped a ton of water, which did help somewhat--but of course the whole point is having lots of water carrying capacity. Then I learned: don't try something new on a long run, especially if you're going with someone and you don't want to mess up her run!

All that said, I would recommend this setup for hiking. The waist strap works really well at walking speeds--it takes nearly all of the weight off your shoulders, which would otherwise start to ache, and puts it onto your hips, which can take lots of weight. The whole thing is just too bouncy for running. That's why I now say that a 50-ounce water backpack is the largest one I can recommend. I think 70-ounces would probably be too big and 100 ounces is a disaster for running.

Of course I tried the 100-ounce capacity model because I need lots of water for long runs! I have found a solution which works well for this, which I will write about below.

Camelbak Flow Meter

One good thing did come out of my experiment with the 100-ounce Camelbak: it came with a gizmo called a Camelbak Flow Meter. One disadvantage of the Camelbak is that while running you can't tell how much water you have left. The Flow Meter is a little LCD screen and a water-measuring gizmo that hooks into your Camelbak drinking hose.

Interestingly the LCD screen has no direct connection to the little propeller-sort of thing that is in the hose to actually measure the flow. I'm guessing the propeller has some sort of magnet on it that the LCD case senses, but I'm just guessing. Because the LCD screen doesn't have any wires or anything connecting it to the hose, you can easily snap the Flow Meter off the hose. That's quite helpful if, for instance, you're trying to get the Camelbak hose through an opening on your bag but it won't fit with the LCD screen on.

The Flow Meter will tell you how much water you have drank so far and how much is remaining in your reservoir. You can also have it tell you if you are drinking enough water to measure up to a goal you have set, or how many minutes you have until you hit empty, but I have never tried these fancy modes.

I recommend the Flow Meter; it's a great way to keep tabs on how much water is in your Camelbak. Right now it's installed in my 100-ounce bladder, which I won't use for running anymore. I might use that one for hiking though. I might get another Flow Meter and install it in my 50-ounce bladder. To install it, you have to cut the hose open and insert a little fitting. When you drink water, it causes a little gizmo to spin, which measures how much you drank. The screen will update, ounce by ounce, as you drink.

Camelbak fanny pack

After taking a long run with the Camelbak 50-ounce Fairfax, I didn't like the way it wears my shoulders out after a long run. I needed something with larger capacity than a handheld bottle, but something that went around my waist. I had heard of Fuel Belt, but I was hesitant to buy one mainly because I didn't want to futz around with all those little bottles. Also, the Fuel Belt looked really geeky.

So I decided to try a Camelbak fanny pack instead, with the now obviously odd belief that this somehow looked better than Fuel Belt.

It holds 45 ounces of water. I did not run one block in this thing. After taking just few halting steps it was immediately obvious that this thing was way too bouncy to run in. It's a huge bouncing bubble just above your butt. No good, no good. I ran around a small block, went right back home, and took this thing off and replaced it with the Camelbak 50-ounce backpack.

The fanny pack is so bouncy that I'm not even sure I'd recommend it for hiking. Maybe it would be okay for walking, though I guess it could make you look like a really pathetic tourist.

Fuel Belt

Well, it looked nutty, but after trying the Camelbak fanny pack I knew that the next thing I had to try was the Fuel Belt.

Fuel Belt carriers come in multiple waist sizes. Be sure you get the one that fits you, as they are a little adjustable by Velcro but this won't make up for getting the wrong size. Just measure your waist; knowing that you wear 30" jeans might not help you much because I've found that most apparel makers deploy vanity sizing--even in their mens' lines.

Fuel Belt makes different models that have different carrying capacity. All have bottles that carry about seven ounces of fluid (more on that later) but the number of bottles varies. It seems to me that the four-bottle model is the most common. I wanted a six-bottle model, but I could not find it anywhere in my local area. Instead I ordered one on the Internet.

Each bottle carries about seven ounces of fluid when filled to the very brim. There is a bit of false advertising here because Fuel Belt says its bottles hold eight ounces each. What's more, there are little lines etched into the side of the bottle, and the eight-ounce line is well below the top of the bottle. This suggests that the bottle holds well over eight ounces. In reality, the bottle has no more than six ounces of fluid when it's filled to the eight-ounce line, and certainly not much more than seven ounces when it is filled to the brim.

I first noticed this issue when I was filling my Fuel Belt water bottles with Powerade from a 20-ounce bottle. I had never before taken sports drink on a run--instead I just filled the bottles from the faucet, so I wouldn't have known exactly how much water I was putting into the bottles. Well, I figured that each Fuel Belt bottle holds eight ounces, so I should only be able to fill two and a half Fuel Belt bottles with each Powerade bottle. Instead, the single Powerade bottle completely filled three Fuel Belt bottles--with liquid in the Powerade bottle to spare. I figured this was either an overfilled Powerade bottle or undersized Fuel Belt bottles, or some combination. Some time with a measuring cup revealed that the Fuel Belt bottles are indeed undersized.

This false advertising in capacity is the Fuel Belt's biggest flaw. Otherwise, it is well-designed, with runners in mind. The design places the weight of the fluids where it belongs: on the hips, where it can easily be borne. The small bottles are essential to the design: unlike any Camelbak solution, the small bottles distribute the weight around your waist. That way the entire assemblage doesn't bounce around too much. I have noticed that the belt tends to bounce a bit more during the first couple hundred feet of a run. After that it sort of settles into place--either that, or I just don't notice it bouncing anymore.

My six-bottle Fuel Belt also has a little pouch. It's useful for carrying packs of GU Gel, or perhaps house keys. It holds about four packs of gel. The pouch is removable, and lately I have taken it off because I use sports drink rather than gels.

One reason I hesitated to get the Fuel Belt is that I didn't want to futz around with all those little bottles. It can indeed be a bit tricky to get the bottle back into the belt when I am cruising along at 9 minutes a mile, a speed that this slow runner considers to be a good clip. However I've had enough practice, so I have never dropped a bottle. The trickiest thing is moving bottles around on the belt--I like to have the bottles that I am currently drinking from on the front of the belt and the empties on the side or back. This requires doing some switcheroo while running.

I think it is best to put empty bottles in the back just as soon as you can. On two recent runs I have carried around a full or nearly full Fuel Belt on the entire run because I was also carrying a Camelbak. The rear bottles bit into my back so much that they actually took out small chunks of skin. More precisely, it seems the bottles caused the elastic of my shorts to dig in to my skin more. I didn't notice this while running but I sure did feel the burn in the shower afterward. This healed in a couple of days, so it wasn't a big deal, but I realized this hadn't happened on previous runs because I would always shift empty bottles to the back of the belt just as soon as I had drained them, thus taking weight off the back of the belt.

Overall the Fuel Belt is my favorite water carrier, despite the undersized bottles.

What to drink

Previously I was rather skeptical of sports drink--what's wrong with water? I also did not want to transport sports drink. I live in the city and am proud to rely mostly on my feet and on public transportation to get around, so I have no interest in (essentially) hauling water from grocery stores. I think our civilization is taking a gigantic step backward when I see people hauling retail quantities of water in vehicles. I mean, isn't this why the Romans invented plumbing two thousand years ago?

But the summer heat and arriving home after running with dripping wet shorts caused me to rethink things a bit. Also, I have long noticed that it helps to have something that gives me an energy boost while running. Originally I tried prunes--they work pretty well; they're just sticky. Then I tried GU Gel, which also works pretty well. The main problem with GU is that it sits in your stomach right after you slurp it down. It just takes a minute or two for it to move out of your stomach. There's a bit of an oddly uncomfortable feeling while that's happening and it slows me down a bit. So I figured that instead of occasional calorie shots it might help to have sports drink that can give me continuous small calorie doses.

I still didn't want to haul flavored water from the grocery store. So I learned that Gatorade is sold in powdered form. This reminded me of the Kool-Aid packets from my childhood. However, none of the local grocery stores have the powdered Gatorade, and I was a bit surprised that the City Sports store did not have it either. So I ordered some from Powder Mix Direct. Then they told me there is a nationwide shortage of Gatorade powder and that my order would take an extra week or two to ship. It has now arrived:

One packet makes a gallon of Gatorade. I have yet to actually mix any of this stuff. I actually have had a hard time finding a suitable pitcher to mix it in, but a combination of one 2-quart pitcher, some old 2-quart Juicy Juice containers, and maybe some gallon milk jugs will solve this problem. Before I actually mix any of this, I'm working on depleting a store of Powerade bottles I stashed in my closet. I had hauled a cartful of it from Safeway. (Articles on the Internet say that Powerade is a bit sweeter than Gatorade and has a little less in the way of electrolytes; I don't much care which brand I drink so I bought the Powerade because it was a bit cheaper.)

After several short runs in the eight- to ten-mile range, one fourteen-mile run, and one twenty-mile run, I can say that the Powerade does seem to work pretty well for quenching thirst and for keeping my energy level a bit higher, all without taking in GU Gel. Another good thing about the Powerade is that the flavor masks any sort of plasticky smell that can come from a water bottle. I do have two complaints about sports drink though. First, it bathes my teeth in acid. My teeth get very sensitive if they're exposed to lots of acid (I eat a lot of fruit so I am familiar with this feeling) and downing a lot of sports drink definitely can cause this. Second, sports drink can leave your hands and mouth a bit sticky from the sugar, and it can leave a bit of an aftertaste in your mouth. In some ways the purity of plain water can't be beat.

The combination solution

When I run twenty miles in the hot summer heat, neither the 6-bottle Fuel Belt nor the 50-ounce Camelbak carries enough liquid to meet my needs for the whole run. I could of course stop along the way to refill a Camelbak or a Fuel Belt, but I hate stopping. So my solution is to carry both.

I probably look like a total nutcase wearing both of these things, but they get me through a twenty-mile run with fluid to spare. This is the biggest capacity Fuel Belt there is, and this is the largest Camelbak I can carry without experiencing too much swaying.

Since I started carrying so much more liquid on my runs, I feel a lot better late in the run and afterward. I don't get lightheaded and I don't get headaches afterward either. So consider taking fluid on your runs; it might help you.

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