How do I stay hydrated on a TDA Tour? Will there be enough water to drink?

 

“As we cycle through these vast lands in the heat and sun, with our Camelbaks and water bottles full we know that if we run out of water we will have a source at the end of the day.” – from ‘The Water Shuffle‘ on our blog

As a participant on one of our tours, you can feel rest assured that there will always be enough water to drink. This is a relatively easy achievement for the support staff on our Touring and Adventure category tours where we stay mostly (if not entirely) in hotels each evening and where water is either filtered or we treat it using water purification chemicals. On our Expedition level tours, the search for water is more challenging and takes up a significantly larger amount of the staff’s time and energy. This video from the North American Epic is a great behind the scenes look at a ‘water chase day’ in remote northern Canada.

In a blog by Ryan Matthews, he explains in detail his efforts to keep our roadside lunch stocked with drinking water day after day as the tour travelled through drought-prone regions of Africa. “A lot of behind-the-scenes logistics goes into allowing cyclists to put their focus and energy on riding throughout the epic expedition-style tours that TDA Global Cycling is famous for. A reliable water supply can easily be taken for granted, whereas in some places it’s a formidable challenge…Wells, hand pumps, donkey carts, tankers, hoses, water stewards, jerrycans… they’re all just a sampling of elements that go into providing riders with a relaxing oasis for their daily lunch break!”

In the video below, Tour Leader Yanez Novoa gives us a tour of the support vehicles for the Tour d’Afrique and their large water storage tanks:

How Much Should I Carry During the Day?

Our advice has always been to carry more water than you think you will need. We recommend to come set up for a water capacity of 3 litres. That could be with water bottles, or a hydration pack, or extra reserve water in a handlebar bag or frame bag.

You will have opportunities to fill your bottles and containers each morning before the ride, and each day at our roadside lunch stop. Our support vehicles always have drinking water too – so don’t be shy to flag them down as they pass you on the route. Once you arrive to the end of the ride you can either source water from the hotel or campsite or local shops or from our water reserves on our camping-based tours in remote regions.

The key is to sip water throughout the day. Don’t wait until you get thirsty. You also need to remember that when you sweat you are losing salts along with the water from your body. So it’s important to replenish both. So electrolyte sports drinks and getting salt through the foods you eat at our roadside lunch help replenish you. On some tours we are able to provide an electrolyte drink that is available at breakfast and lunch, while on other tours participants can bring a small supply for the first days of their tour and buy local equivalents where possible along the way. Our staff also keep a supply of oral rehydration salts for the days that are particularly long and hot with a lot of sun exposure.

World Water Day

It is not lost on us that such easy access to drinking water for our participants is not the case for everyone in the world – far from it. The search for water is much more consequential for people living in the drought-prone regions. Today is World Water Day and so it is also an occasion to reflect on how lucky we are to have water from our taps at home and in our bottles as we ride. As Stephanie rightly pointed out in the The Water Shuffle, water is life. As TDA’s founder Henry Gold recommended previously on World Water Day, as a cyclist “take a minute and drink your clean water slowly, mindfully. Think how fortunate you are and think a bit also about those who are not. It may even make you a better cyclist.”