Make your own Gels - Recipes

Krusty_Clown

Came across this page which features a couple of recipes for DIY gels. Anyone done anything similar? They work out at approximately 15c per portion, with similar benefits (calories, caffeine, etc).

Make your own energy gels

ike

Thanks Krusty good find - used to make my own version of Lucozade sport when doing LSR's last year, the cost of the ingredients worked out less than 2 bottles of Lucozade sport!

hunnymonster

Some of those look ok, don't they?

I've a friend who uses blocks of undissolved Jelly for energy on long cycles, cheap as chips and not as sticky as gels.

kdaly100

Having just completed my second marathon on the weekend in Cork and survived he heat I was wondering what the right order is to take Gels and isotonic drinks as I understand you should not take both at the same time but here is probably a correct order time interval.

Stiff this week but looking to Dublin iin October for a better time and less heat.

TFBubendorfer

kdaly100 wrote: »

Having just completed my second marathon on the weekend in Cork and survived he heat I was wondering what the right order is to take Gels and isotonic drinks as I understand you should not take both at the same time but here is probably a correct order time interval.

Congratulations on surviving Cork in the heat - no mean feat! As for the gels and drinks, personally I've never had any issues with mixing them, but the general recommendation is that you should not ingest them at the same time. It might put too much sugar into your stomach which would slow down digestion - the opposite effect of what you want.

Basically you're supposed to take one once the other one has left your stomach. The actual order does not matter. As for how long that takes, I don't know - I was never too bothered to find out.

In reality, everyone is different. Try it in training runs, and whatever works for you will be good on marathon day. Don't try anything you haven't used in training on race day.

kdaly100

Thanks TFBubendorfer that's what I sort of thought. Yes the heat was absolutely horrible. If it was the same again next year I would not go on the course tbh. Dublin will be cooler - I will be faster and hopefully lighter (current plan).

Thanks for the advice. On the course I was on my second of two gels and a good Samaritan gave me another gel which got me through the last 5 miles of hell :-)

Krusty_Clown

hunnymonster wrote: »

I've a friend who uses blocks of undissolved Jelly for energy on long cycles, cheap as chips and not as sticky as gels.

Good idea. Sounds a little bit like shot blocks, but being undisolved jelly, you'd need a lot of water with it, right? My mother used to give us undissolved jelly when we were kids! Bad mother, bad!

I like the idea of making your own gels, as at least you have an idea of what goes into it. I bought honeystingers before, tried one, and was nearly sick. Just didn't work for me. Anyone want a large bag of Honeystingers? SIS Isotonic gels are still unbeaten in my book.

Nightowl84

I found this website to be pretty good:

http://www.summitpost.org/article/239378/Home-Made-Power-Gels-Energy-for-Less.html

Haven't tried to make any but it would be interesting to test out.

hunnymonster

Krusty Clown, I'll buy the honeystingers off you. We use quite a few and when they're not tucked down my bra in 28C for a couple of hours, I quite like them. Get them off you Saturday? Let me know how much.

Krusty_Clown

Hi HM, I have a bag of around 18 of them, in different flavours, good till March 2010. You could have for them for say.... 10 Euro donation to charity?. Just not sure if I'll be there on Saturday, unless to cheer on team Boards from some vantage point. Which leg are you running?