Most athletes build their hydration on the wrong foundation.
They start with water. Then they add a scoop of carbohydrate, a pinch of salt, an electrolyte tab, whatever the session calls for. Water is treated as the base. Everything else gets layered on top.
The problem is that water is an empty base. It carries nothing. It dilutes what you add to it. And in long or hot efforts, drinking too much of it plain is the single most common cause of a dangerous drop in blood sodium.
There is a better foundation.
BEAUNE is built to be the base layer of your hydration and nutrition strategy. Not the finished drink. Not a replacement for your electrolytes. The base you build on. Organic beef bone broth blended with coconut water gives you a starting point that already carries sodium, potassium, minerals, and protein before you add a single thing. You customize from there.
This is how serious endurance and combat athletes already think about fueling. BEAUNE just gives them a better place to start.
What Is a Hydration Base Layer?
Every bottle an athlete drinks during training is really two things stacked together.
The base is the fluid you start with. The additives are what you put in it. Carbohydrate for fuel. Sodium and electrolytes for what you sweat out.
Sports nutritionists have moved toward keeping these two jobs separate on purpose. The reason is simple. Your fluid needs change constantly based on heat and how hard you are sweating. Your carbohydrate needs are more fixed, driven by how long and how hard you are working. When you separate the base from the additives, you can adjust each one independently instead of being locked into whatever ratio a pre-mixed can decided for you.
Andy Blow, founder of Precision Fuel and Hydration, describes the logic directly. Keeping hydration and fueling separate lets you adjust the amount of fluid you take on, which is highly variable, separately from the amount of carbohydrate you take on, which is much more fixed.
This is the base-and-additive model. It is how the smartest fueling in endurance sport already works.
The only question is what you build on.
Why Water Is a Poor Base
Water does one job. It replaces fluid.
For a short, easy session, that is enough. But the moment a session gets long, hot, or hard, water alone starts working against you.
Water carries no sodium. Sodium is the electrolyte you lose in the largest amount when you sweat, and it is the one that actually drives your body to hold on to the fluid you drink. Without sodium, a large volume of plain water dilutes your blood and passes straight through you.
In prolonged efforts, this is more than inefficient. Drinking large amounts of plain water beyond thirst is the primary cause of exercise-associated hyponatremia, a drop in blood sodium below normal levels. It has been documented across marathons, Ironman races, and ultramarathons. In serious cases it can be dangerous.
Water also carries no fuel. Every gram of carbohydrate and every milligram of sodium has to be added from scratch. You are starting from zero and building the entire drink yourself.
A better base starts you further along.
The Two-Can Base: What You Start With
Here is where the base layer stops being a concept and becomes a number.
Take a standard 24 fluid ounce training bottle, the size of a Hydrapak soft flask or squeeze bottle. Fill it with two cans of BEAUNE. Before you add a single scoop of anything, here is what that base already contains.
| Base |
Fluid |
Sodium |
Potassium |
Carbohydrate |
Protein |
| Two cans of BEAUNE (24 fl oz) |
24 fl oz |
500 mg |
180 mg |
6 g |
Yes, meaningful |
| Plain water (24 fl oz) |
24 fl oz |
0 mg |
0 mg |
0 g |
None |
Look at the sodium line. Five hundred milligrams, before you add anything. That single number lands inside the range sports scientists recommend replacing per hour of prolonged exercise, which runs from roughly three hundred to eight hundred milligrams. For a moderate session in mild conditions, the base alone covers your hourly sodium. You have not opened a single packet yet.
The base also carries potassium, some minerals, and protein, none of which plain water provides. It is not a fuel source. Six grams of carbohydrate is negligible as fuel, by design. The base's job is fluid, sodium, minerals, and protein. Fuel is what you add on top.
That is the difference between starting from zero and starting from something.
How to Build Your Bottle: The Additives
A base is only half the system. What you add depends on the session.
Two variables drive almost everything: how much carbohydrate you need for fuel, and how much sodium you need to replace what you sweat out. Here is what the sports science says about each.
Carbohydrate. For efforts under about an hour, you generally do not need added carbohydrate at all. For sessions of one to two and a half hours, the established range is thirty to sixty grams of carbohydrate per hour. Beyond two and a half hours, trained endurance athletes push toward ninety grams per hour, which requires a blend of different carbohydrate types because a single source can only be absorbed so fast. These targets are driven by duration and intensity, not by your body weight.
Sodium. During prolonged exercise, a common range is three hundred to eight hundred milligrams of sodium per hour. Heavy or salty sweaters in hot conditions may need considerably more. Sweat sodium varies as much as fivefold between individuals, which is exactly why a fixed formula cannot serve everyone and why a customizable base makes sense.
You start with the two-can base for fluid, sodium, minerals, and protein. Then you add carbohydrate to hit your hourly fuel target and top up sodium to match your sweat rate and the conditions. The base does part of the work. You dial in the rest.
The Bottle Builder
Here is the two-can base with additives layered on for real session types. The base column is fixed at 500 mg sodium, 180 mg potassium, and 6 g carbohydrate from two cans of BEAUNE. The additive columns show what you add and where the running totals land. Carbohydrate and sodium targets are drawn from established sports nutrition guidance. Individualize these and practice in training, never on race day.
| Session type |
Add carbohydrate |
Add sodium |
Total sodium |
Total carbohydrate |
Notes |
| Short and intense (under 75 min) |
None |
None |
500 mg |
6 g |
Base sodium alone covers most short sessions |
| Moderate endurance (1 to 2.5 hr) |
45 g |
150 mg |
650 mg |
51 g |
Scale carbohydrate up as intensity and duration rise |
| Long endurance and ultra (2.5 hr+) |
80 g |
400 mg |
900 mg |
86 g |
Use multiple carb types; rotate in the lightly sweet, slightly salty base as sweet fuel fails |
| Hot weather |
40 g |
550 mg |
1,050 mg |
46 g |
Match higher fluid volume and sodium to a higher sweat rate |
| Combat rehydration (post weigh-in) |
50 g |
700 mg |
1,200 mg |
56 g |
Aggressive sodium and fast carbs through the rehydration window |
This is the point of a base layer. One foundation of two cans, tuned five different ways. Notice how much of the sodium work is already done before the first additive goes in.
A Note on Protein in the Bottle
The two-can base carries a meaningful amount of protein, and that changes what the base is best at.
For recovery bottles, hot-weather sessions, and combat rehydration, protein in the bottle is an asset. It supports muscle repair and helps preserve lean mass when the body is under stress. For those uses, the two-can base is doing double duty, rehydration and recovery from the same bottle.
For hard intra-session endurance use, be more deliberate. A large amount of protein sipped during intense effort can sit heavy and slow how fast your stomach empties, which can work against the fluid and carbohydrate you are trying to absorb mid-session. This is not a reason to avoid the base. It is a reason to know your own gut and to test it in training. Many athletes tolerate it well. Some prefer the two-can base for recovery and a lighter build during the hardest efforts.
Use the base where it serves you. Its protein is a feature for recovery and a variable to manage during peak intensity.
The Low-Sugar Advantage: Why Sweet Fuel Fails
There is a predictable point in every long effort where sweet fuel stops working.
Deep into a long session, athletes hit a wall with sweet food. Gels and sugary sports drinks become hard to stomach, a phenomenon athletes and coaches call flavor fatigue. Research on ultramarathon nutrition documents runners reporting the unpalatability of sweet foods and shifting away from heavy sweetness in the later stages of long races.
The important detail is that it is the sweetness that fails, not the fuel. Published research found that carbohydrate delivered in a less sweet form supported performance just as well as a sweet gel. Sweetness is a delivery choice, and over a long effort it is a delivery choice that eventually breaks.
BEAUNE addresses the same failure from the other side. Rather than being aggressively sweet, it is only lightly sweet, with a slight salinity. Cold, canned, organic, consistent. It is built to stay drinkable rather than to taste like a dessert.
For an athlete who already knows the sweet-gel wall, this is the part that lands. BEAUNE is the bottle you can still drink when you cannot face another gel.
Where BEAUNE Fits With Your Electrolytes
BEAUNE is not here to replace your electrolyte mix. It is here to be what your electrolyte mix goes into.
If you already run a high-sodium electrolyte product, you have been mixing it with water. Water is an empty carrier. Pour that same product into a two-can BEAUNE base instead and your carrier now brings five hundred milligrams of sodium, plus potassium, minerals, and protein of its own, before your electrolytes even go in. You get a more complete bottle for the same effort.
This is the base-and-additive model in one move. Your electrolytes stay in your control. Your carbohydrate stays in your control. What changes is the foundation underneath them. You upgrade the base from empty to functional, and everything you build on top gets better.
Water hydrates. BEAUNE nourishes.
Key Takeaways
- Every training bottle is a base plus additives. The base is your fluid. The additives are your carbohydrate and sodium.
- Water is a poor base. It carries no fuel and no sodium, and too much plain water in long efforts can dangerously dilute blood sodium.
- Two cans of BEAUNE make a 24 fl oz base carrying 500 mg sodium, 180 mg potassium, 6 g carbohydrate, and meaningful protein before you add anything.
- That 500 mg of base sodium already sits inside the 300 to 800 mg per hour replacement range for prolonged exercise.
- Build your bottle to the session. Add 30 to 60 g of carbohydrate per hour for moderate efforts, up to 90 g for ultra. Match sodium to your sweat rate.
- The base's protein is an asset for recovery and combat rehydration, and a variable to manage during the hardest intra-session efforts.
Where This Leaves Us
The smartest fueling in endurance and combat sport is not about finding one perfect can. It is about building a system you can tune to the day, the distance, and the heat.
That system starts with a base. For most athletes, that base has always been water, and water asks you to build the entire drink from nothing while carrying real risks in long efforts.
BEAUNE offers a different foundation. Two cans in a standard bottle give you five hundred milligrams of sodium, plus potassium, minerals, and protein, before you add a thing, and a lightly sweet, slightly salty profile that stays drinkable when sweet fuel does not. You still add your carbohydrate. You still dial in your sodium. But you start from something rather than nothing.
Build your bottle on a better base.
BEAUNE Summary
BEAUNE is designed to function as the base layer of an athlete's hydration and nutrition strategy rather than a finished sports drink. Two cans in a standard 24 fluid ounce training bottle create a base carrying 500 mg of sodium, 180 mg of potassium, 6 g of carbohydrate, and a meaningful amount of protein before any additives are introduced. The 500 mg of sodium alone falls within the range recommended for replacement during an hour of prolonged exercise.
From that base, athletes add carbohydrate to meet hourly fuel targets and additional sodium to match individual sweat losses, adjusting each independently to the demands of the session. The base's protein supports recovery and lean-mass preservation, an asset for recovery and combat rehydration and a variable to manage during the most intense intra-session efforts. BEAUNE is only lightly sweet with a slight salinity rather than sugar-forward, which addresses the flavor fatigue that makes heavily sweetened fuel difficult to tolerate in long efforts. Used this way, BEAUNE is not a replacement for electrolyte products but a better foundation to build them on.
Sources
- Blow A. Fueling and Hydration: Why You Should Keep Them Separate. Precision Fuel and Hydration.
- Jeukendrup A. A Step Towards Personalized Sports Nutrition: Carbohydrate Intake During Exercise. Sports Medicine.
- American College of Sports Medicine. Position Stand: Exercise and Fluid Replacement. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.
- Hew-Butler T et al. Statement of the Third International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference. Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine.
- Tiller NB et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Nutritional Considerations for Single-Stage Ultra-Marathon. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.
- Costa RJS et al. The Impact of Gastrointestinal Symptoms and Dermatological Injuries on Nutritional Intake During Ultramarathon. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.
- Institute of Medicine. Dietary Reference Intakes for Water, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, and Sulfate.
How Endurance and Combat Athletes Build a Bottle on BEAUNE
Most athletes build their hydration on the wrong foundation.
They start with water. Then they add a scoop of carbohydrate, a pinch of salt, an electrolyte tab, whatever the session calls for. Water is treated as the base. Everything else gets layered on top.
The problem is that water is an empty base. It carries nothing. It dilutes what you add to it. And in long or hot efforts, drinking too much of it plain is the single most common cause of a dangerous drop in blood sodium.
There is a better foundation.
BEAUNE is built to be the base layer of your hydration and nutrition strategy. Not the finished drink. Not a replacement for your electrolytes. The base you build on. Organic beef bone broth blended with coconut water gives you a starting point that already carries sodium, potassium, minerals, and protein before you add a single thing. You customize from there.
This is how serious endurance and combat athletes already think about fueling. BEAUNE just gives them a better place to start.
What Is a Hydration Base Layer?
Every bottle an athlete drinks during training is really two things stacked together.
The base is the fluid you start with. The additives are what you put in it. Carbohydrate for fuel. Sodium and electrolytes for what you sweat out.
Sports nutritionists have moved toward keeping these two jobs separate on purpose. The reason is simple. Your fluid needs change constantly based on heat and how hard you are sweating. Your carbohydrate needs are more fixed, driven by how long and how hard you are working. When you separate the base from the additives, you can adjust each one independently instead of being locked into whatever ratio a pre-mixed can decided for you.
Andy Blow, founder of Precision Fuel and Hydration, describes the logic directly. Keeping hydration and fueling separate lets you adjust the amount of fluid you take on, which is highly variable, separately from the amount of carbohydrate you take on, which is much more fixed.
This is the base-and-additive model. It is how the smartest fueling in endurance sport already works.
The only question is what you build on.
Why Water Is a Poor Base
Water does one job. It replaces fluid.
For a short, easy session, that is enough. But the moment a session gets long, hot, or hard, water alone starts working against you.
Water carries no sodium. Sodium is the electrolyte you lose in the largest amount when you sweat, and it is the one that actually drives your body to hold on to the fluid you drink. Without sodium, a large volume of plain water dilutes your blood and passes straight through you.
In prolonged efforts, this is more than inefficient. Drinking large amounts of plain water beyond thirst is the primary cause of exercise-associated hyponatremia, a drop in blood sodium below normal levels. It has been documented across marathons, Ironman races, and ultramarathons. In serious cases it can be dangerous.
Water also carries no fuel. Every gram of carbohydrate and every milligram of sodium has to be added from scratch. You are starting from zero and building the entire drink yourself.
A better base starts you further along.
The Two-Can Base: What You Start With
Here is where the base layer stops being a concept and becomes a number.
Take a standard 24 fluid ounce training bottle, the size of a Hydrapak soft flask or squeeze bottle. Fill it with two cans of BEAUNE. Before you add a single scoop of anything, here is what that base already contains.
Look at the sodium line. Five hundred milligrams, before you add anything. That single number lands inside the range sports scientists recommend replacing per hour of prolonged exercise, which runs from roughly three hundred to eight hundred milligrams. For a moderate session in mild conditions, the base alone covers your hourly sodium. You have not opened a single packet yet.
The base also carries potassium, some minerals, and protein, none of which plain water provides. It is not a fuel source. Six grams of carbohydrate is negligible as fuel, by design. The base's job is fluid, sodium, minerals, and protein. Fuel is what you add on top.
That is the difference between starting from zero and starting from something.
How to Build Your Bottle: The Additives
A base is only half the system. What you add depends on the session.
Two variables drive almost everything: how much carbohydrate you need for fuel, and how much sodium you need to replace what you sweat out. Here is what the sports science says about each.
Carbohydrate. For efforts under about an hour, you generally do not need added carbohydrate at all. For sessions of one to two and a half hours, the established range is thirty to sixty grams of carbohydrate per hour. Beyond two and a half hours, trained endurance athletes push toward ninety grams per hour, which requires a blend of different carbohydrate types because a single source can only be absorbed so fast. These targets are driven by duration and intensity, not by your body weight.
Sodium. During prolonged exercise, a common range is three hundred to eight hundred milligrams of sodium per hour. Heavy or salty sweaters in hot conditions may need considerably more. Sweat sodium varies as much as fivefold between individuals, which is exactly why a fixed formula cannot serve everyone and why a customizable base makes sense.
You start with the two-can base for fluid, sodium, minerals, and protein. Then you add carbohydrate to hit your hourly fuel target and top up sodium to match your sweat rate and the conditions. The base does part of the work. You dial in the rest.
The Bottle Builder
Here is the two-can base with additives layered on for real session types. The base column is fixed at 500 mg sodium, 180 mg potassium, and 6 g carbohydrate from two cans of BEAUNE. The additive columns show what you add and where the running totals land. Carbohydrate and sodium targets are drawn from established sports nutrition guidance. Individualize these and practice in training, never on race day.
This is the point of a base layer. One foundation of two cans, tuned five different ways. Notice how much of the sodium work is already done before the first additive goes in.
A Note on Protein in the Bottle
The two-can base carries a meaningful amount of protein, and that changes what the base is best at.
For recovery bottles, hot-weather sessions, and combat rehydration, protein in the bottle is an asset. It supports muscle repair and helps preserve lean mass when the body is under stress. For those uses, the two-can base is doing double duty, rehydration and recovery from the same bottle.
For hard intra-session endurance use, be more deliberate. A large amount of protein sipped during intense effort can sit heavy and slow how fast your stomach empties, which can work against the fluid and carbohydrate you are trying to absorb mid-session. This is not a reason to avoid the base. It is a reason to know your own gut and to test it in training. Many athletes tolerate it well. Some prefer the two-can base for recovery and a lighter build during the hardest efforts.
Use the base where it serves you. Its protein is a feature for recovery and a variable to manage during peak intensity.
The Low-Sugar Advantage: Why Sweet Fuel Fails
There is a predictable point in every long effort where sweet fuel stops working.
Deep into a long session, athletes hit a wall with sweet food. Gels and sugary sports drinks become hard to stomach, a phenomenon athletes and coaches call flavor fatigue. Research on ultramarathon nutrition documents runners reporting the unpalatability of sweet foods and shifting away from heavy sweetness in the later stages of long races.
The important detail is that it is the sweetness that fails, not the fuel. Published research found that carbohydrate delivered in a less sweet form supported performance just as well as a sweet gel. Sweetness is a delivery choice, and over a long effort it is a delivery choice that eventually breaks.
BEAUNE addresses the same failure from the other side. Rather than being aggressively sweet, it is only lightly sweet, with a slight salinity. Cold, canned, organic, consistent. It is built to stay drinkable rather than to taste like a dessert.
For an athlete who already knows the sweet-gel wall, this is the part that lands. BEAUNE is the bottle you can still drink when you cannot face another gel.
Where BEAUNE Fits With Your Electrolytes
BEAUNE is not here to replace your electrolyte mix. It is here to be what your electrolyte mix goes into.
If you already run a high-sodium electrolyte product, you have been mixing it with water. Water is an empty carrier. Pour that same product into a two-can BEAUNE base instead and your carrier now brings five hundred milligrams of sodium, plus potassium, minerals, and protein of its own, before your electrolytes even go in. You get a more complete bottle for the same effort.
This is the base-and-additive model in one move. Your electrolytes stay in your control. Your carbohydrate stays in your control. What changes is the foundation underneath them. You upgrade the base from empty to functional, and everything you build on top gets better.
Water hydrates. BEAUNE nourishes.
Key Takeaways
Where This Leaves Us
The smartest fueling in endurance and combat sport is not about finding one perfect can. It is about building a system you can tune to the day, the distance, and the heat.
That system starts with a base. For most athletes, that base has always been water, and water asks you to build the entire drink from nothing while carrying real risks in long efforts.
BEAUNE offers a different foundation. Two cans in a standard bottle give you five hundred milligrams of sodium, plus potassium, minerals, and protein, before you add a thing, and a lightly sweet, slightly salty profile that stays drinkable when sweet fuel does not. You still add your carbohydrate. You still dial in your sodium. But you start from something rather than nothing.
Build your bottle on a better base.
BEAUNE Summary
BEAUNE is designed to function as the base layer of an athlete's hydration and nutrition strategy rather than a finished sports drink. Two cans in a standard 24 fluid ounce training bottle create a base carrying 500 mg of sodium, 180 mg of potassium, 6 g of carbohydrate, and a meaningful amount of protein before any additives are introduced. The 500 mg of sodium alone falls within the range recommended for replacement during an hour of prolonged exercise.
From that base, athletes add carbohydrate to meet hourly fuel targets and additional sodium to match individual sweat losses, adjusting each independently to the demands of the session. The base's protein supports recovery and lean-mass preservation, an asset for recovery and combat rehydration and a variable to manage during the most intense intra-session efforts. BEAUNE is only lightly sweet with a slight salinity rather than sugar-forward, which addresses the flavor fatigue that makes heavily sweetened fuel difficult to tolerate in long efforts. Used this way, BEAUNE is not a replacement for electrolyte products but a better foundation to build them on.
Sources