General Fitness & Nutrition: hydrating when running necessary for me?

A friend of mine that did a lot of long distance running told me about a trick she used during training.  And, since she did a lot more running at longer distances (1 hour+) than I do, I'm inclined to take her advice.  I don't like carrying a bottle, and neither did she.  She used this method while training for a 25K and a half marathon.

She used to take one or two bottles of water (disposable, cheap, from grocery store in 24 packs) and drop them on her training course before she would run.  Takes 5 minutes to go out for a quick drive of the course you plan to run, drop a water bottle at 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 of the total distance.  The drive gives you a chance to take a quick survey of the course before you run (spot construction, downed powerlines, etc) and the bottles are cheap enough that if someone takes them its no big deal.  She would pick the bottle and drink it at her leisure while she ran (no need to stop), and then put it down someplace else for later retrieval.

Once she stretched and cooled down, she would go pick up her bottles so she wouldn't leave trash out in someone lawn.  Normally she would drop the bottle some place that was convenient to her running course.  Next to a fire hydrant (though, I thought that was risky if there were dogs in the neighborhood, if you know what I mean), street sign, or tree that was near the sidewalk or roadside whe would be running on.

I don't know how practical this system would be if you needed to go through this routine every time you go run.  But, its probably handy for those real long runs ont he weekend. 

Ross

I used to need a drink on every run when I first started training, but now I can do 5k quite comfortably without a drink.  I suppose it's what your body is used to.  If you feel you don't need a drink then I wouldn't worry about it.

Ceningolmo - I like the bottle trick

The problems with planting water bottles are:

1) do you trust strangers with your drinks

2) you will have to trash the drink somewhere, otherwise you're littering

3) you have to spend time to plant the water

4) if someone steals them then you're going to slow down by dehydration

 I like Camelbaks for anything over 2 hrs..

Have you thought about using a water carrier of some kind? 

 Are you really drinking 3-4 liters of water a day?  That's a lot!

I dunno how viable this is for you, but why not run in a park or on a college campus or something like that where there are water fountains available?

When I do long runs with my team, we do the same loop (six miles) a couple of times and take water from the water fountains on campus when we need it.  

Alternatively, you could park in the city somewhere and run a two or three mile (or whatever) loop and put water in your car. 

To echo other posts, for distance runs I carry a bottle only on runs more than one hour.  The only other time I bring water is during interval training because of the intensity of the workout.  The interval training is typically done on a track so I can set it down as opposed to running with it.

Hi,
i also noticed, i never needed to drink when i just run for 10k or 1 hour. But that's the limit.
Now i'm starting to run longer (1h30) OR when i didn't drunk enough during daytime, i feel thirsty during my run.
So, i also need to learn to drink during my training.

 greetings,  Nancy

As for planting bottles on long runs, this is what I would do last year when I was training for a marathon.

Say running for 3 hours (around 18 miles) - out and back - I would take 2 bottles, one juice, and one water.

I would carry one for 30 mins sipping occasionally, and stash in a hedge, then use the other for a bit and drop it off at about 1 hour in.

Then you have 30 mins out to the turn-around-point (which is a nice break of an hour without carrying bottles ;o)

Also, you have the thought of a bottle waiting for you at 2 hours, and another one at 2:30 which you can sip 'til you get home.

(Also good if one goes missing, but to be honest, I never even SEE anyone else for most of my runs, so very unlikely that anyone would find, and mess with, my bottle in the space of an hour or so - I trust people anyway)