Bike Aid Stations
They'll fit in the cages, so you can throw your bottles away and use the ones they give you. The only problem is that they tend to crush a little, and don't fit so great after you start drinking sometimes. What I do, though, is pull the whole top off the bottle and dump it into my water bottle while riding. You have to be pretty comfortable riding with no hands to do that, though. If you're not concerned about time, the best thing might be to pull over and refill. It'll only end up costing you maybe two minutes overall with all the refills.
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-Matt
Not fast enough.
Thanks, yeah I don't think I'd be able to refill them while riding. Now that I think about it I will most likely just stop. It's not like I'll need to refill at every station, maybe once or twice.
If you have areobars then you can use an areo bottle(fits between the areobars) - those can easily be refilled on the fly - no caps to open - just dump it in.
You should also see how the gatorade bottles fit in your cages. I don't have any issue. Then start the race with those - then you aren't tossing one of your water bottles at the exchange or having to stop to refill.
RV
It takes a long time to get good. - Scott Molina
Slow is smooth; smooth is fast. - Rich Strauss
The aerobar water bottles are definitely the easiest to refill so if you're like me and not very comfortable riding with no hands, I'd recommend investing in one. That's what I used for IM Arizona. Never drank out of a water bottle - just kept refilling my aerobar bottle. Just make sure you like what they're giving out. Water is pretty much the same everywhere, but sport drinks vary and after 112 miles on orange Gatorade I pretty much haven't been able to drink it since.
Ironman Arizona: 13:57:32
Olympic Distance PR: 2:50:21



The only tris I've ever done were sprints about 10 yrs ago, and I am going to do a HIM in 2 weeks. The race info says the bike aid stations (every 9mi) will have sport-top Gatorade and sport-top water.
So for this situation, or similar water bottle exchange scenarios, do you plan on discarding a water bottle? Stop and refill manually? Or start out with similar sport-top drinks? Do those things even fit in cages?
I will only have 2 cages on my bike, and will need 3-4 total bottles so that means refilling/exchanging both bottles once. And I'm not concerned about time.