Refillable Soft Plastic Tubes

HydraPouch: RunColo Interviews HydraPouch

RunColo Interview Series. First, tell us about yourself as a runner/triathlete and your background as engineer?

It’s really my pleasure – thanks for the opportunity to tell you about our company and products. I’ve been running and racing pretty consistently since high school, which is over 30 years now, and did my first triathlon in 1987. Over the years I slowly worked my way up to marathons (I’ve done a bunch) and Ironman distance triathlons (I’m at four and counting). I’m a middle-of-the-pack runner and triathlete – I’ll never race in Boston or Kona – and I’m hoping for several more decades of endurance athletics. My engineering background is very diverse and almost as long, and includes mechanical, aerospace, nuclear, and software engineering. I’ve been fortunate to spend most of my career in new product development and to work with some exceptionally innovative companies and people.

How did come you come up the idea of the Hydrapouch?

I started thinking about it after a marathon in 2002 in Jamaica, where they handed out water in sealed soft plastic tubes. I wanted a portable container that was as comfortable to carry as those water tubes, and clean and easy to drink out of, but I wanted to be able to fill it from a paper cup and use it in any race. It wasn’t until 2007 that I came up with the idea for the coin-purse style opening and started serious development of the product.

Why was the product called “Hydra” which was a Greek mythology monster with nine heads and not “Hydro?”

Great question! We liked “hydra” because it’s the first part of hydrate or hydration, and that’s what the HydraPouch is all about. Plus it turns out that there is a soft, tubular shaped freshwater animal named Hydra, and I was hoping that’s what our name would evoke, but unfortunately almost nobody has ever heard of it.

The HydraPour was essential to make the HydraPouch work, did you design that system or was that project outsourced?

Interestingly, the HydraPouch was designed only to be filled from a paper cup, and that’s how the overwhelming majority of our customers use it. They fill it easily from a cup while running, carry their drinks in it well beyond the aid station, and can actually drink out of it instead of spilling all over themselves. The HydraPour design came well after the HydraPouch design. It is really for race directors who want to add a high-speed, self-serve option to their aid stations that can be used by anyone carrying any kind of refillable container. Of course it’s pretty cool when the two products are used together, but more often than not they’re used completely separately. The mechanical R&D for the HydraPour was done internally, and the industrial design and CAD work was outsourced.

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