Triathlon Juice: Homemade Sports Drink Recipe

The prices of sports drinks aimed at triathletes are getting out of hand. For example, here's a 20-serving canister of Amino Vital for 42 bucks. That's two dollars for 16 oz. of fluid.

For a big (bird) triathlete like me, I try to drink at least 16 oz. of fluid every 5 miles, or about every 15-20 minutes. Right now, I am commuting about 60 miles a day. Doing some simple math (for all those non-retards out there), that's about 192 oz. of fluid per ride. If Amino Vital costs 2 dollar per 16 oz. swig, that comes out 24 dollars of Amino Vital per ride.

If you're keeping track so far, that's exactly $24 more than I have in my bank account. Clearly, I am in need of some other sports drink option, something other than the bank-busting (piece of crap) drinks that populate the market.

Here's my recipe for a homemade sports drink brew. I call it Triathlon Juice, in honor of Crunk Juice, the liquid-cocaine, rapper-invented, alcohol/caffeine drink that's making headlines for hospitalizing college students (who are otherwise innocent and well-meaning... yeah, right, blame it on the Crunk Juice). For the extra attuned pop-culture aficionados out there, Crunk Juice is also the name of a historically bad album by the easily spoofable Lil' John. hhhhhWWHHAAAT!!!?

Here's the recipe for Triathlon Juice:

• 16 oz. (2 cups) Orange Juice
• Two Scoops of Country Time lemonade (about 1/3 cup) ... or any powered drink mix
• A couple shakes of table salt
• optional: two tablespoons protein powder
• 48 oz. (6 cups) water

Mix all the ingredients together in a big bottle. Shake shake shake. Makes 64 oz.

That's it. It's cheap, easy to make, and it has as much (or more) nutrition than any sports drink you're gonna buy in the store. It has all your electrolytes, calories, water, and, optionally, a little kick of protein, which is all the rage in those expensive drink mixes. Each 16 oz. has approximately 100 calories.