Hi all, I’ve been trying to figure out some good snacks to have whilst out training or for race day, to supplement gels. I’ve tried out rice krispie bars, rice cakes, Stryker rice bar, Waf-fuls, and god knows what else. They all have drawbacks for me ao looking for advice from the athletes in here 🙂 Currently trying some banana lunchbox loaves, which are really easy to eat, have 19g carbs but I’m a bit worried about fibre. Any recommendations?

I’ve been using PF90 gels successfully for the past few months and have managed to reverse engineer their formula (not difficult) into a home made equivalent that costs pennies to make and works just as well. Can share if anyone wants it.

Was out for long run today with pal who is doing IM Lanzarote in a few weeks. We were chatting about nutrition and he’s decided to go for a home made option for the bike leg. Basically putting in some Tate and Lyle into water bottles with a precision hydration salt tab. That way he can load up his carbs and also avoid relying on gels on race day (for the bike anyway), and save a small fortune to Maurten…. Wondered if anyone else had similar home made hacks?

The role of carbohydrates in endurance sport is now universally accepted as being an essential tool in not only race day but also to support training and recovery. It wasn't always so. Now with some pros seemingly taking in 120g per hour the game has shifted from the days when we were told the gut could only handle up to 60g per hour Carbs are the bodies go to fuel for moderate and high intensity exercise. We store carbs primarily as glycogen in muscle and liver tissue. In well trained athletes we have enough stores to last around 90mins to 2 hours of hard endurance work. Depends on the intensity but it is possible to 'bonk' when beyond 2 hours - trust me when I say its not fun when you are 50 miles from home! We don't just burn carbs and at lower levels of effort we do have a dual fuel system from fat stores so fo super long easier effort its a different picture. Race pace efforts though do rely heavily on carbs as the main fuel. The old 60g per hour was based in the fact that older sports nutrition products were single source sugars but moderrn science now gives us a plethora to choose from and recommendations now are 'up to' 90g. A caveat here is you have to practice the intake to allow your gut to be 'trained' to do its thing so having a race nutriton strategy needs built during training. What to ingest is highly personal but for most people a mix of fuel sources is likely to work best. Some products really do irritate some but others can hoover up anything with no ill effects. For day to day your intake can vary but typically for endurance we are looking at anywhere between 5 and 12g of carbs per kg of bodyweight per day. Matching intake to activity is good practice so basically on hard days you eat more. There are a couple of apps out there that can do this fo you - Fuellin being the best known. You can do a 'train low, compete high' protocol but if you have ever tried to do a v02 session straight out of bed in the morning you will know it isn't that smart. In simple terms you have to eat and drink enough to support your level of training.