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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

The marathon trials for 1968 Olympics at Mexico City were held at high altitude (women were not allowed to race that far for many more years)

They drank cold coca-cola that was defizzed every five miles, which surprisingly has good fuel as sugar with caffeine

https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20827587/history-in-t...

2:30 marathon at 10,000 feet in August heat is pretty damn impressive given the poor shoe quality over 50 years ago.

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Coca cola was still a sports thing in the 90s to the point where I remember being told (maybe apocryphal) that one of the reasons Sampras threw up during the coretja match was he was drinking coke instead of Gatorade or water.

Coca Cola is still a thing among amateur endurance athletes (think cycling for days with minimal rest) and there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It's just water, plenty of sugar and some coffeine.

Water with lots of sugar is wrong, when your body needs water.

So drinking water and a sip of cola is fine, but drinking cola against thirst has side effects as you need water to process lots of sugar.

Elite distance runners don't really need much water during a typical marathon. The water serves more as a delivery mechanism for the carbohydrates and electrolytes which they actually need to maximize performance.

Consuming plain water during really long endurance events can cause hyponatremia. Not recommended. But for the short 10k and under running events that most of us do, it doesn't really matter much.

Are those the electrolytes that plants crave?

>It's just water, plenty of sugar and some coffeine.

And a ton of phosphoric acid.

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