At the moment I have just been using table sugar 50-120g per hour. Want to get closer to the 1.8/1 glucose to fructose ratio. Maltodextrin seems expensive. Dextrose is cheaper. Is it fine to use dextrose? or is there a bigger performance benefit with maltodextrin?
First I must confess that I had the ratios backwards 
I was doing the reverse of recommended. (40g Gatorade + 80g of Malto + 1/4 tsp sodium citrate) This was for 1 hour training. No GI
Now I am switching it to the recommended 80g Gatorade + 40g Malto + 1/4 tsp SC. With my goal event less than a month out I am starting to tinker with what I can handle consistency wise.
@Dr_Alex_Harrison and anyone else that has experience for ~1L bottle what is the most grams you have had in a single bottle? I mixed up a batch of about 600g (400g Sucrose + 200g Malto + 1 TBSP SC) Which would last about 5 hours (Even though goal time is 4 hours). This is highly concentrated and I am thinking I may have to reduce it to 400g or approximately 100g/hour (~280 Sucrose + 120g Malto + 2.5tsp SC)
Thoughts?
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It sounds like you would almost be treating this ‘mega bottle’ like a large gel, rather than a ‘drink’.
SiS gels are 22grams carbs per 60ml, so you are almost twice as concentrated as those at 600g/liter.
I may have to give this a try, as I have found that after a few hours of drinking heavily sugared drinks I get really tired of them, and crave plain water. Having a ‘gel bottle’ and a ‘water bottle’ could really help with this. Also drinking plain water after the sugar is likely better for tooth health as well.
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This was my plan to have a carb bottle and have 1 or 2 plain water
This is my favorite strategy for self-supported endurance events. I’ve attempted 700g in a 975mL bottle. It worked okay. I have utterly no idea what concentrations I was consuming throughout the ride though because I refilled it on several stops.
I prefer not going over about 450g/L if I’m going to attempt to “drink” it. Beyond that and you really have to treat it mentally like a “gel” or you’ll attempt to swallow and it’ll choke you.
Sounds like @redlude97 is doing similar with his 90g/200mL bottle.
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No idea on price, because I use sugar, personally.
Performance differences will be very very hard to measure, and impossible to perceive.
Gut tolerance differences will be hard to measure and hard to perceive.
That’s a complicated way to say, they’re pretty much the same.
FYI: Osmolarity (molecules/L) matters far less than carb concentration (g/L), which still matters less than carb intake rate (g/hr).
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This is what I use for refil…
Simple vacuum sealed packages. Bought for less than 30 euros in Lidl and is great to make small plackages which are easy and secure to carry.
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Some results from tonight’s workout.
I found that the liquid in the bottle had the consistency of syrup.
Since this is meant for a longer event I trying to make sure I consume some on regular intervals. In my case I guessed every 10 minutes. Some of these landed on VO2 Max intervals so I would just wait until the work was done before consuming.
Through the very scientific measurement of the almighty sip
I was able to consume 220g of carbs in 2 hours with no GI issues.
Results may vary for everyone please make sure to test on yourself do not take my n=1 observations for nothing more than an idiot’s experience
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Is my math right? A 2:1 Gatorade/Malto mixture is is about 92grams per 100grams of mixture?
What do you mean
It would mean that if you want 90g of carbs then you would do 60g of Gatorade and 30g of Malto. Then add water to required consistency
Ok thanks. I also wonder what the upper limits are in terms of processing. I have done 150g in an hour without much issue and I could do 80-100g without any ‘gut training’.
I think @IamLeven is referring to the presence of other ingredients and water content within powders. Maltodextrin often has 28-29g per 30g scoop, I believe. And Gatorade may have ~1g of “other stuff” (electrolytes, flavor, color, etc) per 23g serving. So to get 60g carbs from Gatorade it looks like roughly 63g product. If 28g carbs from 30g malto, then, I’d estimate about 95g carbs from 100g of mix.
If adding salt or sodium citrate, then yeah, 92g per 100g mixture sounds about right.
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I suspect minimal if any differences.
I sometimes add more table salt or sodium citrate just to combat sweetness as much as I do for hydration management. If my solution is below ~500mg sodium per 100g carbs, it’s too sweet for me (assuming 90% sugar and close to 1:1 gluc:fruc ratio as a result).
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This is a great suggestion. On my last Century I started with a 4hr 100g/hr bottle, but switched to gels and food for the second half. On a recon ride I tried zip lock bags of powder that leaked/spilled and made a gross sticky mess of my backside for the rest of the ride. It would be great to do one bottle mixing stop and then just refill water along the way. Do you have bags that you can rip open, or do you bring a knief with you?
Any other suggestions for reusable sealable containers that people have had luck with for carrying mix?
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Small ziplock sandwich bags. Reusable. Minimize waste.
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And double bag. If I have a bag per bottle I will put those bags in another bag. I’ve found this method to work well enough in case a corner of the ziploc happens to open. I also make sure ALL of the air is squeezed out of each bag,
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A friend is telling me that you can have cyclic dextrin above 60g per hour with no need for fructose? If this is true why aren’t we just having 90-120g of cyclic dextrin? I tried doing a google search and couldn’t find any supporting evidence.
Edit, he’s taking scratch labs super fuel, just checked the ingredients, it has fructose.
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So I want to make my own gel and hydration mix. Firstly because of the costs and secondly because of the adjustability of the recipe. I took some references from here, others from reddit and the rest of the internet(I actually posted the same thread on reddit, lets see what I can learn)
For the gel I am considering for 25 servings:
- 320g Fructose/ 400g Maltodextrin/ 550g Water/ 10g Citric Acid/ 10g Citrus Aroma (True Orange/Lemon)/ 2.5g Caffeine/ 2g Salt
Process: heat water to almost boild, pour in rest of ingredients and stir untill combined
Which comes out for one serving to
- 51.6g/ 115 kcal/ 27g Carbs/ 26g Sugar/ 31mg Sodium/ 100mg Caffeine (I think I will make a batch with and a batch without caffeine)
For the hydration mix I am also considering 25 servings:
- 640g Fructose/ 800g Maltodextrin/ 10g Citric Acid/ 10g Citrus Aroma (True Orange/Lemon)/ 15g Salt/ 15g Morton Lite Salt / 7g Epsom Salt/ 1g CaCl
Which comes out for one serving to
- 60g/ 230 kcal/ 54g Carbs/ 52g Sugar/ 356mg Sodium/ 15mg Calcium/ 270mg Magnesium/ 25.5mg Chloride/ 150mg Potassium/ 109mg Sulfates
As a base I took the idea of the SIS Beta Fuel Maltodextrin to Fructose 1:0.8
and for electorlytes I took a Nuun Tab as reference.
Now my questions:
- How necessary do you see the citrus aroma if I already have citric acid in the gel?
- Where can I source caffeine? I saw it on pure bulk, but they only sell it to businesses, Is an option to buy pills and open them up to get to the powder?
- The gel will almost be pure sugar water, is it necessary to store it in the fridge or can it be at room temperature?
- Has anybody done any experimenting with SodaStream flavours for the gels? Or any other flavoring?
- Any input on the composition of gel and hydration mix; am I overlooking something?
- I seen some gels that use L-Carnitine and I have some meta studies that show (not 100% conclusive) that most likely L-Carnitine helps with recovery, so I am tempted to include something to get to 250mg in one serving, again does somebody has any experience?
- In these investigations I also stumbled over very expensive recovery shakes and I was thinking, this could also be somewhat easily reproducable with some vitamins and protein powder, does anybody make his own recovery shakes?
I’ve gone down the electrolyte rabbit hole here:
If I had to do it over again I would use sodium citrate (I use it now), and potassium would be the only other electrolyte I would consider adding. I don’t think there is good evidence that the remainder need to be replenished during exercise, even for extended periods of time. You need such small quantities of these, and have to buy so much that you end up with more than you will likely ever use.
Your magnesium numbers look odd - being higher than potassium seems strange.
My take on the electrolyte contents of many of the commercial offerings is that this is feature creep/checkbox based - meaning that they are selling really expensive salt/sugar, so adding these things makes it ‘better’. If their competitor has calcium, then they better have calcium too, as it is cheap, and they don’t want a ‘calcium gap’ to their competitor.
For Potassium there are some alternate salt-substitutes available that are pure KCL, rather than the half/half mix of Morton light salt.
For flavoring I have used true lemon/lime, and like those. I have tried some other ‘powdered fruit’, and found it terrible. Powdered gatorade is also reasonable for flavor. I have not used citric acid in anything so I can’t comment on if that is enough for flavor.
I would be very careful with caffeine powder - really just don’t do it. Getting math wrong could be quite dangerous, and measuring small amounts is hard.
I would also refrigerate this after making it. I usually pre-mix my gatorade+sugar mix and keep that in the fridge, and even there one bottle went ‘bad’ after it got neglected for a while.
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