Homemade Gatorade

Last weekend my husband ran his second marathon. He came in at just over 3 hours and 6 minutes. I'm super proud! He spent the past spring and summer training, which meant he went through a lot of sports drink. Even when waiting for his drink to go on sale, we still spent a lot of money. In order to save, I started buying the powder that you mix with water yourself. It worked, but only comes in a few flavors. Husband likes grape. Grape was not a choice. I decided that I could make him grape flavored myself and save even more money. The folks at Gatoraid have spent a lot of time and money perfecting their electrolite formula. There are many variations all over the internet. The following is what I came up with based on what I've read. I started with one packet of grape flavored Kool-Aid.

Add 1/2 cup of sugar. I poured all of the dry ingredients into a clean waterbottle so I could easily shake them together at the end.

Here's where I split a few hairs. Some recipes called for salt for the sodium. Some called for salt substitute for the potasium. My grocery store had lite salt which had 10% of your daily potasium needs instead of 19% in the salt substitute. However, the salt substitute was almost $6 instead of $1.50 for the lite salt. I went for the lite salt, but used the same amount, 1/4 tsp.

Some recipes called the baking soda optional and some completely left it out. You can't taste it, and it is good for you, so I included it. This is 1/16 of a tsp eyeballed as I don't have a 1/16th tsp spoon. Do any of you have any measuring devices that small?

I shook the dry ingredients together and used a funnel to add the last ingredient, 2 tbsp lemon juic to my container. You could use a pitcher, but I had this glass milk jug that I liked.

Finally, add 8 cups of water.

It certainly looked like grape Gatoraid. I personally thought it tasted better that the Gatoraid. It tasted more like a drink and less like a cough syrup.

One final note: Electrolyte imbalance is serious. I will not be giving this to my husband the day of or the day before his next marathon. I'd much rather spend a few dollars buying him a professionally made drink that I know will provide him with exactly the kind of electrolites he needs instead of accidentally making a mistake with my measurements and sending him to the hospital. I WILL be sennding this with him to work when he's outside on hot days or when he's training and having his shorter runs. After this marathon he didn't even want a sports drink anyway. He went for the water and chocolate milk.