Luckily for the roadside fans at the receiving end of flying bidons, the pro peloton uses mercifully few steel water bottles. And while I take on board what the good folks at Cycling Weekly are saying by recommending you switch from steel to plastic, they're heavy, so I've been thinking... why stop there? What about titanium?
Fortunately, a Black Friday deal at Camelbak has saved me from having to shell out £150 (plus shipping) on a pair of Camelbak Podium Titanium bottles. A similar deal is on offer from REI for those in the States wishing to shell out a small fortune on water bottles too this Black Friday. Now I only have to pay £150 - a bargain, right? Right!?
I have had my reservations about switching to titanium bottles in the past, but it's silly when you consider I've made the switch elsewhere in life. I've traded in each of my heavy steel bikes for a custom Sturdy Fiadh, and have swapped my sunglasses for a set of $400 POC Elicit Ti titanium sunglasses. All affordable upgrades I'm sure you can agree.
The beauty of a steel bottle is admittedly the reassuring heft of the things as you clunk them into your bottle cages (mine are titanium, by the way). But given a 700g weight addition from steel really helps with your handling by lowering your centre of gravity, why on earth would you swap to titanium?
Well, the reason I'm spending one hundred and fifty whole pounds of my hard-earned cycling journalist salary on two titanium water bottles comes down to taste.
The more I use titanium cups and bottles in my day-to-day life, the more I notice just how steel-y things taste when I don't. It's like I'm sipping my juice straight off a mechanic's workbench. Water isn't my favourite thing to drink anyway so anything I can do to avoid it tasting like a mouthful of coins the better. Long term it's probably better for the environment too, as titanium is better.
For more Black Friday deals, why not check out our Black Friday Bike Deals hub?
*Ok, this is satirical, I don't actually think you should fork out a tonne of money on titanium bottles. Spending £75 / $75 on a single bottle is, in our collective opinion, wild.
The aforementioned Cycling Weekly advice to switch to steel is fine, but in reality the plastic bottles you have in your cupboard are also fine. They don't weigh much, and while plastic usage is always good to reduce, continuing to use the ones you have will avoid unnecessarily sending your plastic bottles to landfill. Oh, and don't pretend to be a WorldTour pro and yeet each bidon into a hedge every time it's empty and you'll be grand.
