Hydration vest on race day, yes or no?

Vladimirnapkin

I'm in the @STrooper camp on this one. I may carry water on long runs where there aren't fountains, but one of the things you're paying for at a race is for people to be standing around handing you cups of water. If you flub a hand-off, you can always stop and go back. Better yet, if you are worried about the hand-off, slow down and walk through the station. (making sure you don't run into another runner) That will cost you a few seconds at most.

I do like to carry a couple of my own gels in races because you never know what icky flavor they'll be passing out. It's also good to practice opening the gel and eating it as you approach the aid station. Then you wash it down with the water they hand to you.

Generally, people think they need more water than they do. Start a race well hydrated and you're usually okay unless it's a really long run or the weather is hot.

Djproulx

Lots of interesting points here. As I mentioned in my OP, my coach is very focused on trying to insure her athletes are managing their fuel intake during longer events. We look at fuel intake based on time, as opposed to mileage. Given her calculations of our energy burn rates during races, she ran calculations that produced the following hourly intakes for me (I'm 185lbs) : Calories: 255-300, water: 28-32 oz, 60-85 grams of carbs. plus xx grams of sodium (forget the number). The idea is to replace roughly half of what we burn hourly.

We then practice race day fueling on every long run (or bike ride) to see what works best for each person (gels, liquids, waffles, etc.) and to get us used to the fueling process. We often run either loops or multiple "out and back" segments in training, so we have stops available if fuel needs exceed the amount we're carrying. After each workout, we enter both our fuel intake(calories, carbs, electrolytes, liquid) as well as our comments about how we felt into our Training Peaks account of the workout. That way, we can see not only our HR and pace data, but also our fuel consumption and notes about how we felt during the runs. Over a 20 week training program, the historical data becomes very helpful. So whether I wear the vest on race day or not, I have a pretty good idea of what fuel intake amounts and timing works best for me and I can try to follow that plan on race day. I'd say this approach is overkill for shorter races, but it seems to work well for full marathon or longer duration events.

MNLittleFinn

@Djproulx that some cool/good info. You're giving me some good ideas for training, whether or not I end up carrying anything with me on race day or not.