Sports Drinks

I am a Gatorade guy. Always have been. I drink it exclusively on the bike. I am not a water guy. I almost never carry plain water on the bike. I am a Gatorade guy for a few different reasons:

• I like the taste. And if something tastes good, you will drink it, and that is important for staying hydrates on a summer ride
• Advertising has drilled into our brains about the Electrolytes Gatorade contains, but Gatorade also contains calories. Yes, it all sugar, but those are the type of quick calories you need on the bike. When cycling, you are burning anywhere from 600-900 calories an hour. If you are one a ride over about a couple of hours, you better be replacing those calories somehow unless you want to bonk. Water of course has no calories, and this is fine, but I like Gatorade because it helps me replace some of the calories I have burned for long distance riding.
• Gatorade is pretty much available everywhere. If you like Cytomax, good for you (personally, I don't). But I've never seen Cytomax sold in my local 7-11. And when you are doing a brevet or Cycle Oregon, I don't want to lug all the powder around with me so I can make my own drinks. I want something that is readily available.
• Based on the point above, since I can pretty much always get Gatorade, I don't have to worry about how it is going to affect my stomach. The last thing you want on a 100 mile ride is your sports drink and stomach going at it in the ultimate cage match seeing who is going to tap out first (usually that is me, the rider, tapping out)
  

I generally stick with the normal flavors. Orange is probably my favorite. Then Fruit Punch (red). Lemon Lime is fine and the Grape is actually really good. I can do other flavors though, except for the light blue one that looks like toilet water. Can't handle that.

While riding around Lake Winnebago today, I did face a situation I am finding more and more common. They had 32 oz "normal" Gatorade, 20 ounce G2 Gatorade and Powerade. For those that are not familiar, G2 is Gatorade's "low calorie" sports drink. OK, I get the low calorie craze, though at 75 calories per 12 fluid ounces, Gatorade really isn't that high calorie to begin with (soft drinks typically have 150 calories per 12 ounces). So Gatorade G2 doesn't meet criteria #2 above. So I ask what is the purpose of G2. If someone is that concerned about calories, go with water or Propel or something like that. But leave Gatorade alone.

The problem for stores, especially small convenience stores is that they have limited space in their refrigerated coolers, so they can't possibly stock every option these companies come up with. So in the case of this store, in 20 ounce bottles (which is the size I wanted to purchase), the only had the G2 and not the regular Gatorade. So in Gatorade's quest to capture more market share, they have effectively pushed out one product for another. Isn't that what they call a zero sum game?

I would hope that some of these companies start realizing that offering 4,562 different incarnations of your product isn't necessarily "better". Probably 10 of those products account for 90% of your sales. Drop the rest. All they do is serve to distract the consumer. General Motors has 9 brands and something like 100 models. Toyota has 2 brands and about 10 models. Who is the better company? Especially when you consider that most of the GM models are just knockoffs from one another.

Maybe there is a market for G2. But my advice to Gatorade would be to make sure that you don't forgot what product got you to where you are. And make sure everyone stocks that product.