Discussion: this might be of interest.........

Interesting, but, it does not state what the sports drink was. There is a large range of different ones out there. I assume they would choose one which at least gave the same caloric intake as a half banana.
And I wonder about the statement that most athletes do not want to drink sports drinks... really?
And it says nothing about water intake, did they just eat bananas? Seems unlikely they were not drinking anything.
And then
"This type of research shows that you can have healthier carbohydrate sources before and after exercise that will support athletic performance just as well as a sports drink"
It does? I thought the study was about taking a sports drink DURING exercise, I saw nothing about before and after in the previous paragraph...
Gotta wonder about the people who report this stuff.................

Half a banana every 15 minutes over 2.5 - 3 hours! Must be trying to sell bananas. :-)

Bananas are a rich source of potassium and other nutrients, and are easy for cyclists, runners or hikers to carry.

Mmm, brown, squishy bananas after an hour of running with them.

Yeah, but what about the peels? Are they water-stop safe?

They play in the rain but they're not very good.

I've seen AP discussion threads get sidetracked before, but to go from the nutritional qualities of bananas to the consistently poor performance of a football team in Western Australia in the space of seven posts is a pretty good effort.

I'm practicing my current affair segueing technique so I can get a job hosting Today Tonight.

tRicky does AP like he navigates - lots of right-angles, backtracks and moments where you just have to stop, look around and wonder how the hell you got here.

What blegg said. Once I got to that part I closed the article.