Bike Water Bottle

From junior high sports onward, there are a few pieces of athletic advice that never seem to stop surfacing. Always stretch, make sure to have a wind-down period, and stay hydrated. From the beginning to the pro leagues, this advice comes up again and again and again. But out of all of those tips, which are all great, the one that's the most important to athletic success yet gets ignored time and time again is the importance of drinking a lot of water and staying hydrated while in the middle of any sort of sporting or exercise event.

It's extremely important for all athletes to stay hydrated, but those playing group sports with designed time-outs are more likely to keep up with it, since it's as easy as grabbing a seat on the bench for a second and pouring some Gatorade or water into a cup. For people like rock climbers or cyclists, who have to carry in and out their methods of hydration, drinking enough water gets a little trickier.

But there's no excuse to not throw a bike water bottle into a backpack before heading out on a ride. First of all, whatever time some over-enthusiastic bicyclist thinks will be saved with shaving off those ounces of weight will be added back one once the body is depleted and begging for water.

Second, there have been--don't laugh--great advances in the construction of a better bike water bottle. Environmentally friendly riders will delight at the newer biodegradable models, which are dishwasher-safe and don't have that same familiar nasty plastic taste that other bottles have. Even better, a number of the biodegradable models have been made in more durable forms, so that riders can delight at knowing their bottle won't crack if it falls off the bike, but won't take thousands of years to decompose in a landfill, either.

Choosing a good bike water bottle is also a matter of personal taste. For riders looking to cool their water by putting in ice cubes, one with a wider mouth or neck is a great idea, because it makes fitting cubed ice a lot easier. Riders who are known for manhandling their bottles more than the average rider might want to go with a screw-on top, which is more difficult to accidentally rip off while grabbing the water bottle than one of the flip-off tops.

Also important is considering, especially for long-distance rides, multiple bottles for hydration. Putting more than one cage on a bicycle's frame is easy, and not detrimental to balance and speed. That way, while one bike water bottle is almost empty, riders can delight in knowing that there's still enough water waiting for the second leg of the journey.