Where do I put my bike hydration? Part 3: Right up front.

 

Here's where things get interesting. In parts one and two of the bike hydration series, we covered water bottles mounted behind the saddle and bottles mounted to the downtube and seat tube. In part three, we'll cover hydration systems that mount a bottle on or around your aerobars.

First off, there are way too many systems to cover all of them individually, and there are some styles of front-end hydration system that have proven...unpopular. So I'll just leave those ones alone and focus on the two kinds that you're most likely to see and use. Also, the systems I'll cover here mostly require aerobars to be installed on your bike.

Horizontal bottles

Pictured above are three cages with mounts that will hold a standard water bottle between your aerobars, pointing forward. These three are made by Profile Design (HC Mount), XLAB (Torpedo Mini Mount) and Speedfil (Z4). In their simplest forms, as shown, you stick a water bottle in the cage and switch the bottle out when it's empty. This is supposed to be the most aerodynamically efficient way to carry a round bottle, because it's filling a space between your arms where airflow is typically turbulent, and because a forward-pointing bottle is presenting its smallest cross-section to the wind.

Additionally, when your water bottle is right in front of you, you can drink without sitting up out of the aero position or dropping an arm below you or behind you. Certainly it's a convenient place to reach, and having a bottle inches from your nose can be a good reminder to drink while you're riding.

The most common problem people run into with front-mounted bottle cages is the computer space problem. If there's a bottle taking up all your aerobar space, where do you put your bike computer? Speedfil has solved the problem (for Garmin Edge/Forerunner users) by integrating a Garmin mount into their bottle cage. You can see the Edge computer sitting on top of the rightmost bottle cage above. XLAB sells the Aero Computer Mount, which can be mounted onto the XLAB Torpedo Mount or it can be mounted above any standard stem cap.

Straws: drink like a kid again

On a related note, XLAB, Profile Design and Speedfil all make bottles with straws, designed to fit their respective aerobar-mounted cages. Each has some sort of hatch built in so you can refill the bottle while you're riding. The straw saves you the trouble of pulling the bottle out of the cage each time you want to drink. I've found that having a straw in front of me leads me to drink more frequently, and usually in smaller sips.

Vertical bottles

The second type of bottle (counting all horizontal bottles, strawed and otherwise as one type) is the vertical aero bottle. TorHans and Profile Design both make vertical bottles in 30oz and 20oz capacities: TorHans Aero20 and Aero30; Profile Design Aerodrink and Aqualite. The bottles look pretty similar. Basically, there's a thin, tall bottle with a straw sticking out the top and a covered hole through which you can pour your drink refills. Aerobar mounts are sold separately, specific to each brand.

Vertical bottles offer a potentially larger capacity than horizontal bottles. Profile Design actually makes a third model called the Aquacell, which has two chambers and holds a total of 40oz of liquid; but even the 30oz vertical bottles will hold more liquid than the horizontal systems. Also, because the bottle is shorter front-to-back, it's possible to fit a computer mount onto the aerobars around the bottle, or to mount the bottle to very short aerobars.

Advantages of the front mount

The aerobar-mounted hydration systems add less drag than bottles mounted to your seat tube or downtube, but the biggest advantage is the convenience of the location. If you use a system with a straw, it's even more convenient to drink from, though you're stuck with refilling the same bottle over and over instead of trading whole bottles from elsewhere on your bike.