Water, Feeding Stations, etc

I have been surprised by the response to the post about water bottles. Three days later I have had one phone call and three emails about it! Basically, what do you do if you can't drink bottled water. Apart from the rather facetious and obvious tip of just use tap water, all I can do is say what was done in the olden days - and don't slag off the olden days. What goes around, comes around.
When I started running road races, the only ones where water/drinking were allowed were the marathons. In the Scottish marathon, the first drink station was at 6 miles then they were at 9, 12, 15, 18, 21 and 23; sponge stations were at intermediate intervals of 10.5, 13.5, 16.5 etc. The organisers always provided water or orange squash at the drinks stations and sponges soaked in water in between - most runners sucked the sponges.
However all competitors were allowed to have their own drinks at the water points so long as they were properly sealed and approved by the medic at the race before the start. In the absence of commercially prepared drinks, most people used the old formula of one pint of 'diluting orange' with one tablespoon of sugar and one teaspoon of salt. This was divided up into smaller bottles and collected at various points on the course. (at the last Olympic Games to be held in the USA (1996) the official drinks supplier was Coca Cola. They invented a drink for the marathon and it was provided in powder form to be mixed by the athlete. I asked the US rep at a meeting in Manchester how the drink compared with the one that we used to mix and the reply was simply that ours was cheaper! In addition because of the USA Food and Drugs Act, they could not say that there was added salt!)
When Phil and I ran in the Boston marathon in 1977, we were offered water, orangeade, gatorade, root beer, real beer, orange slices and ice cubes! On another occasion a Springburn runner who was a qualified chemist mixed his own - on the principle that you needed lots of sodium ions he mixed lime juice with salt with the result that he was very, very sick at the first feeding station.
Nowadays you would not be allowed, I don't suppose, to mix your own and have it in sealed containers. The advice would be to stick to water or to some commercial potion that you have tried in the lead up to the race. The problem with orange juice is that it gets sticky and if you spill some you end up after about 20 miles getting irritated with it and spend too much energy trying to scrape it off!