One of the major challenges affecting my riding at the beginning of the summer was HYDRATION. I didn’t feel fully comfortable reaching for my water bottle as I biked up hills, and would end each ride with a parched throat. Not a good thing for performance or recovery! Luckily, getting a Camelbak saved the day. Now, my rides are much more pleasant and I can get a drink of water whenever I need it.
Problem: My Camelbak didn’t come with any instructions. Luckily, Dan used to have one, so he knew what to do!
Your Camelbak:
Set-Up:
Put the empty bladder into the backpack, and slide the straw through the feed and through the closest loop.
Savvy Tip: It is much easier to fill your Camelbak if the bladder is already in the backpack!
Move the switch on the bite valve to the ‘lock’ position.
Unscrew the cap, and hold the bladder as shown:
Fill with ice, water, or your drink of choice until it comes just below the cap.
Savvy Tip: Leave a little room for the cap to screw on, or water will come leaking out the sides!
Close up the pack, put on the backpack, and tighten the chest strap. Thread the straw back up through the loop on the opposite side, and unlock the bite valve.
This is the key step: blow into the bite valve until you don’t hear any bubbling. Once you do this, you should be able to easily get a drink by simply biting down on the valve!
Clean-Up:
To keep anything from growing in your Camelbak, drain the pack as soon as possible after your workout.
With the cap still on, blow into the straw to drive all the water out of it. Then, unscrew the cap and dump out whatever is left in your Camelbak. Blow through the straw again to make sure you got everything out, and hang it up to dry.
Savvy Tip: I suggest only keeping water and ice in your Camelbak because as long as you keep it dry when not in use, you won’t have to worry as much about bacteria growing! I still drink sports drinks, but I keep them in a water bottle in the cage on my bike frame instead.
If you use a sports drink or anything other than water (or you see something starting to grow!), you will need to use a cleaner on occasion in order to keep bacteria away. I haven’t needed to do this yet, but I know Kath recently posted about cleaning her Camelbak! Camelbak also sells special cleaners!
I loooove my CamelBak. I am the same way with just using it for ice and water, but I’ve found it the best thing for running and biking. I have a fuel belt as well but that rides up on my hips and I just don’t like the way it feels on. The only negative for me of the CamelBak is you have to take it off to get anything out of it that you’re keeping in there for fuel (ie GUs or jelly beans, etc). I got a SpiBelt for my half marathon to supplement the CamelBak and just put my fuel in there and had the best of both worlds.
One of the only reasons stopping me from purchasing a CamelBak is the cleaning of it.
I am bookmarking this for when I get a camel back for running next spring.