Why drink when training for swimming? (Page 2)

Oh, I'm not saying it's a bad thing at all.  Just pointing out that if you don't bring something to drink it's not necessarily an indicator that your workouts are lacking either.

So you're basically telling me that I (and others who don't drink water) don't swim hard enough? 

I'd say that's assuming.

You'll forgive me if I have a problem with you assuming anything about what I do.

I completely agree with this and it's one of the first times I've seen condraticting advice here. Do you wear your fuelbelt if you run under an hour? No. Why then would a swim of less the one hour be any different? I just don't see the logic in the advice being given.

Actually, anything over 25 minutes running/biking/swimming, I bring water/sports drink.

Yes you may be able to go 45min to an hour without dying of dehydration, but I can pretty much guarantee that if you weigh yourself before and after, you'll have lost a fair amount of fluids and are deydrated towards the end of the workout.

Unless it's an IM swim, about the longest you'll go without water/fluids is closer to 30 minutes, than the 1 hour mark.

Personally, I'm going to keep training with fluids and staying hydrated through all of my workouts.  It seems to be working pretty well for me.   

Well a few things to touch on since I started this thread...

My actual swim time for my 2k workout swims is aprox 30min...when you include the rest time it's more like 40-42min total max time in the pool.  I know I'm swimming at a max speed on HARD swim days beacause I'm breaking PR's.  So swimming HARD is not the issue.

The issue is the benifit to my total training to prepare me for a race day situation.  I've been doing some online research and found that many swim TRI coaches recommend drinking sports drinks for workouts longer than 1 hour, anything less should just be water.  Regardless of weather or not I like it or not I know I'm taking in water on my swims.  So do I need to have a bottle of water at the end of the pool to hydrate myself?

I can tell you that I have tried it a few times and it just makes me feel like throwing up and causes stomach cramping when I drink.  This is a hinderance to my overall performance during a workout so I personally don't feel like drinking will help me achieve a better workout scenario.

It could be different for each of us since most of us are nothing alike and we all do our training a little differently it's really hard to answer my orginal question without disagreeing with each other.  But I really do like where this has gone and it has promoted a lot of good ideas...I look forward to "trying" the drink thing again to see if the stomach cramping issues will go away.  Thanks for the input!

If I could drink evry 10-15min on my runs I most certainly would.  Problem is that I absolutely HATE carrying water bottles and the one time I wore a Fuel Belt it had to be the single most irritating thing in the world. So I go without because I "have" to, not because it's the right thing to do.