I usually do a mix of GU Roctane, gels, and stroopwafels for on bike nutrition. These items have worked great for me in the past except for one issue, when it gets below ~45* the gels get sonthink they hard to get out of the container and the wafels are so hard to chew.
What have you found to work well on these cooler rides?
Fig bars, Swedish fish, peanut butter pretzels!
I love Swedish fish! Unfortunately at those temps, they are pretty hard to chew.
Minnesotan here - SIS gels are naturally less thick than GU and I have found they remain less thick in the cold. When it gets too cold (feels like between 20f and 30f) I do not go out for more much more than an hour and just stick with warm water or maybe I will do a homemade sports drink with warm water so no advice there. Also, I am not setting any PRs in the winter so often I will take an insulated water bottle to keep my drink warm. Maybe you could try to keep some gels in an insulated water bottle?
Maybe more liquid calories vs solid foods
I use SiS gels also and they seem to work well at lower temps. But I will also put a lot of my stuff in my jersey pockets under my jacket so they stay warmer. It’s harder to get them out but I’m also not racing anyone or anything like that during winter so it’s not a huge deal.
I’ll have to give the SiS gels a go. Inside a waterbottle would be too hard to access, IMO.
My events are 70-100 miles between water stops, I’m already at my limit for liquid calories.
To be clear, I’m not worried about sub freezing temps, more so the 30-50 range where my Spring and Fall events take place. in those temps my Jersey tends to be my outer most layer yet.
Just makes it too hard to access while moving for me. Not eating isn’t an option on 150+ mile rides.
In my experience, the consistency of Maurten gels are unaffected by temperature. Just had three on a ride in 38 degree (F) weather and they weren’t any different than they were this summer in 90 degree temps.
Gotcha, yeah the SiS gels should solve the issue. They have more of a ‘melted jelly’ consistency rather than the ‘icing like’ consistency of the Gu gels. So they start out much thinner and I’ve never had an issue with them thickening too much to eat. The one thing to consider is that because they have more water in them they do take up a bit more volume than Gu’s so if space is already an issue then you might be pushing it but I find them significantly easier to consume, especially when going hard.
FWIW I like the Lemon-Lime and Raspberry flavors. The raspberry has extra salt in them.
Can stop but when there are cutoff times, stopping needs to be limited as much as possible.