drinking during practice? after practice?

If the workout is an hour or less I usually just go with water. An hour to 90 minutes is borderline and over 90 minutes i definitely have something to drink that has calories in it. Your liver glycogen can usually cover the hour workouts pretty easily and no resulting drop in blod glucose is felt. 60 to 90 minutes it depends on your state. The 6 am practices I have something to drink if it is hard as your stores can be pretty depleted if you don't eat breakfast. Although it isn't necessarily depleted. I have tried them all and I think the main thing is to get the carbohydrate calories in. The protein and amino acids are nice but make the drink harder to get down when exercising. For that reason I use gatorade powder inexpensive and univsersally available. For very long things I spike the gatorade with carbo pro for some extra calories. Endurox is a recovery drink and works well. But realize its main selling point is convenience, you can replicate it pretty easily by stirring a teasponn or so of sugar into a glass of milk. I have a tub of endurox that I use right now. Endurox and accelerade are definitely acquired tastes, anything with protein likely will be, at first you will want to drink them very cold.

Powdered Gatorade is the more economical approach- I mix 16 oz before workout and will have another 16 oz after. Morning- A bowl of cereal with one banana same drink scenario Evenings carbo loading like fishgrrl mentioned - plus a good rum and coke has plenty of sugar ;)

i sometimes drink water before practice, never during unless I accidentally swallow some, and I usually drink water after practice at a fountain or sometimes I leave a bottle in my car. I don't train far or hard enough to consume much water during practice. I guess if I were doing more than 6,000 a practice I might have a bottle on the deck. Many people I train with use bottles on the deck Ande

Accelerade and Endurox for me but sporadic throughout the year depending on the season (upcoming meets). Also, as a matter of lifestyle, I do not drink carbonated beverages. Usually a Powerade or Propel any time of day and sometimes during practices.

I bring an Evian bottle with me to my swims... Best, Chris

....sometimes I like a rum and coke; other times I'm in the mood for a beer, usually during a really hard kick set....;) Kidding aside, I've tried Endurox and I think it really works. They started adding artificial color, so I quit buying it. Now I just stick to water, but if it's a really long workout, I will keep a packet of Gu or PowerGel on the deck and have that with a few swigs of water.

Also... When I swim in the morning I have to have a piece of toast with peanutbutter. If I don't, I bonk. I've tried cereal or yogurt - no go. Has to be peanutbutter. If you can get up a little early and eat something with carbs and protein it might help.

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I eat a banana and drink a glass of juice and a glass of coffee before I leave for swimming (first thing in the AM.) Oh, and often a glass of water too. I start my workout well hydrated. If I can't get a banana, I do some other type of fruit, but I find I get hungry in the middle of a swim if I substitute the banana for something else. During swimming I drink a full quart of plain old H2O. (Always more than an hour, and rarely more than 80 mins.) If I don't, my mouth and throat get horribly dried out. (Colorado at 6000 feet is a very dry environment. If I'm on the road some place a little more humid, I find I only drink half the bottle, and at that, I take sips purely out of habit.) After the swim I get back home within a half hour or so from the time I get out of the pool. By then I am very hungry and thirsty, sometimes desperately so. I drink a ton of juice, another coffee and eat a full breakfast.

Water or Gatorade while swimming. On Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays, I hit the local brewery (Gordon Biersch) for dinner with a few of my friends. Two beers, and I am good for the bike ride home. :)