Caring for your Camel - clean and watered

[Ian K]

Two tips to avoid nastiness in your camelbak:
1 - store it in the freezer, which stops germs growing. The rubber will not crack, I've done it with mine (after a friend told me this). If you leave a bit of water in, ready-made ice for when your fill up on hot days!
2 - buy a big bottle of sterilizing fluid for baby-bottles, MUCH cheaper than camelbak tablets, from any big supermarket, really easy to use and does the job fine. Dilute the fluid, leave your camel to soak for a while then rinse through. It's basically the same as pipe-clearing in a pub, so no twiddly costly brushes needed.

As for volumes of water needed / fill-ups, there's a big fast-flowing tap just outside the public toilets in Horton (at N end of car park, right side of road, just after the bridge) which I used last time to refill my camelbak. I got through almost 6 litres last race (just under one per hour). Since then though, I'm thinking that there is a lot of sense in keeping weight off your back and on the nice wheely thing which we take round with us - makes the bike slightly harder to carry, but maybe easier in the long run. Any views / experience on that? Working on getting fluid in-take down to more portable levels.

Ian K - Chester.

PS - Keith - thanks for fixing the forum! If you can read this, it has worked.

[oldtim]

Ian

Thanks for the tips on stopping the mold build up might get some complaints from the management about using the freezer but worth a try.

I have used 2 number 1.5 litre bladders for the last 2 races as it is half the 3 litre capacity of the bag and much lighter. I swap bladders, (it takes about 30 seconds if that), at Ribblehead when I meet my support crew last year I didn't drink it all but a fresh change of drink was much appreciated.

Cheers


Tim