Gear I Use: CamelBak: HYDRATE OR DIE!

So, I love this bottle. And its not just because it has the world's greatest motto on it, "Hydrate or Die!", but it is easy for me to drink a gallon of water a day.

A couple of years ago, Tom and I took the WFR, which was an amazing experience in and of itself, but one of the biggest things i took away from it is how many maladies are just directly related to poor hydration.

Unless your pee is CLEAR, ODORLESS and COPIOUS, you are dehydrated! Holy CRAP! Thats 90% of us. Headaches, clumsiness, heat stroke, malaise, poor performance, depression (yes, really, actual clinical DEPRESSION is affected by how much water you drink!) and on and on... My beautiful little nurse friend, Virginia, put it this way:

Imagine your vascular system is a set of pipes that can constrict. Now, dehydrate your blood a bit, so it is like sludge. To keep pressure in the system to push the sludge, the pipes have to constrict, because sludge doesn't flow as well. Now, you have a headache. So you drink some caffeine, which is a vaso dilator. Now you feel better, but in about a half an hour, you feel jittery and woozy. That's because there isn't enough pressure in the system. So your pipes constrict, or you go lay down. And then drink more caffeine. Are you sensing a pattern here?

One of the BIGGEST issues is with winter athletes, because we don't recognize that we are loosing and using fluids when we are cold. But you have to drink just as much!! This year, I am going to buy a Camelbak Sno Angel

to go under my instructor jacket. I wish I had a picture, but I wore my Isis pack on the outside of my jacket for the first month or so before Kurt had to pull me aside and tell me "you know, Kate, this isn't really... uniform." I argued it with him. It matches. It is Bridger Bowls' Colors! No dice.

So anyway, I use this great bottle, I actually have five of them, (so my kids each have their own, and I have two with me, one always has SOMETHING in it.) I fill it with ice, it has a straw, so I can sip without opening it or spilling it. I am sad to find out that the plastic has been discovered to leach into the water, which can be very dangerous! I hope that CamelBak comes up with a stainless Steel bottle, because there are few brands I am super loyal to, but CamelBak is one of them.

My Isis is an amazing thing, it is a women's fit backpack that has a 100ml capacity, and straps down tight, so I can carry enough stuff for a 26 mile hike, (rain jacket, emergency blanket, first aid kit, water filter, map, food for two days, sun screen, bug spray... hat, sunglasses, athletic tape, my wildflower book... yeah, its a lot!) and then I can strap it down tight and actually RUN with it. It's the best CamelBak I've ever had, and I've had several.