Consumption of refined sugar at rest is physiologically different to consumption during exercise. Those wonderful GluT transporters which bring the sugar straight into your muscles while exercising. No insulin involved.
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As San Millan said (paraphrasing) – “Elite endurance athletes on high carb diets are the only people in the world without metabolic diseases. Diet isn’t the problem, inactivity is the problem.”
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I must be super slow this morning and need more coffee…can you explain further?
60mL has 54g of carbs, of which 53g are from sugars. That’s 88%…
If what you are saying is that maple syrup is sucrose, which is really 1:1 glucose to fructose then that means for every 60mL of syrup you have 27g of glucose, 27g fructose.
Add 40g of malto + 60mL of syrup should get you
Glucose (40+27): Fructose 27
67:27
I realize that’s not bang on the 2:1 but you can adjust as required,
OR am i waaaaaaay off this morning and need more espresso.
Nope! 
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Also I was looking for this online, all i could find was high fructose corn syrup, is this what you were using from grocery store?
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Google is good…but there is soooo much misinformation as well.
Understanding what has proven to work for other TR users is helpful.
I don’t worry much about glucose during exercise. It can be metabolized pretty much anywhere in the body, and it’s backfilling a fuel that’s being used anyway. 20g/hour is hardly anything unless you’re doing a z1 ride.
I do however worry greatly about fructose. Fructose is metabolized in the liver, and the process looks an awful lot like alcohol. There’s an epidemic of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and it’s highly likely to be a result of fructose in the diet. Maybe heavy exercise makes fructose ok? What about alcohol then (I don’t see anyone advocating it, rather the opposite…)? Regardless, I’d expect dose and frequency matters.
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Thanks Nate, what about a long endurance MTB ride 6+ hours.
Same thing.
One thing I’ve noticed is that cold racing makes this harder. I end up having to pee a ton as one bottle an hour is too much fluid.
I’ll probably just supplement with gels when it’s cold but I haven’t figured out the ratio yet.
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Cold weather is a tricky one, just experienced this again in my last race in October. You simply don’t get the amount of liquid into your body required for fairly high carb intake rates. When we go to 90-120g/h these days how is this supposed to work? There is sort of a disconnect between high carb intake rates and the recommendations for osmolarity of fluid. How do pros deal with this in the cold spring classics?
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100g of carbs? that’s equal to about 2.5 coke cans (330ml/12oz) right?
If useful, we made this really simple nutrition needs sheet to work out how much fuel are needed on race day using this calculator.
bw
alex
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I think they just eat solid food too.
But does this make a difference for the gut? You always hear carb intake should be in a isotonic solution. If a hypertonic solution is consumed the carbs will need water in the intestine which is withdrawn from the body. You dehydrate. Performance suffers. If this is true solid carb intake will not make a difference. In the intestine you need water for it.
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I have this exact question and I don’t know the answer.
If I drink a “perfect” isotonic solution but I have a gel already in my stomach how does this not get messed up?
In my opinion, I think going for the high carbs per hour and drinking to thirst = awesome performance.
I wouldn’t eat less carbs just to make sure what’s in my stomach is isotonic.
I would also try to find the combo of fluid/calories/solid food that doesn’t give me gut distress.
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I used corn starch, maple syrup and salt and easily got 100g in my bottle yesterday.
I usually put in a NUUN or Fizz electrolyte tablet to add some flavor and I like it with just one tab and the carbs.
I bought these for carbs in the 5kg package. Same site for fructose. It lasts a Loooooooong time.
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I thought 2:1 Glu/Fru offered maximal absorption as Fru has to go through the liver.
I’m surprised to see so many people fueling with highly processed carbs like maltodextrin and fructose powder.
Maple, raw sugar, and honey are essentially sucrose, 1:1. To get 2:1, I’ve been playing around with maple or organic raw sugar and organic brown rice syrup. The brow rice syrup is essentially maltose, which is two glucose molecules. It’s not delicious but seems like the cleanest option.
Health is my goal after all. If you don’t take care of you health, you won’t stay fast for decades. Getting fast is great but staying fast is what I want out of life.
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I dunno, but this sort of health issue is discussed quite a bit, and my understanding from all the discussion is… that during exercise it simply doesn’t matter.
There is another thread specifically covering honey etc. too, could be interesting for you?
Is there any benefit to fructose given the fact that it need to be converted to glucose before the body can use it. Why not go full glucose? Organic brown rice syrup seems to be the cleanest source (maltose). Maltodextrin is super processed and seems like garbage that a health conscious person should avoid.