Fueling for endurance events - Part 3

In the second part of this series, I took a quick look at various energy gels out on the market and got an idea of what type of sugar they use, and how the ones commonly used (maltodextrin, glucose, and fructose) all differ from one another.

The problem with the commercial energy gels is the expense.  At typically over a buck per serving, and the suggested use rate of one every 15-20 minutes - it really doesn't take long for a long steady distance training session to end up costing 10 dollars or more.  For an occasional race, spending the money may be fine - but I've always been too cheap to always just fork over money for something I can do myself.  It's why I started doing my own car work.

Anyway, so that led to the question of how I can make my own energy gel.  When I googled, I came across this page, which I've found to be referenced many times in forums, blogs, and what-not.  Essentially, it has a recipe for using honey as an energy gel, with some blackstrap molasses thrown in for potassium, and a pinch of salt for the sodium.  A couple weeks ago I made the recipe, and had decent results with it - but I used it for an outdoor run and found it got very thick at cold temperatures.  When I'd squeeze some into my mouth, it was basically chewy.  Not unpleasant - but by far the most unpleasant aspect was trying to actually squeeze it out of the flask.  To combat that, all I could think of was adding water, but I wasn't sure about doing that to honey, since bacteria is in honey (just inactive due to low water content).

I also looked into honey to find out what kind of sugars it contains.  Based on the wikipedia entry, it has approximately equal ratios of fructose and glucose (about 38 and 31% respectively).  While some sources say that optimal fructose absorption occurs with a 1:1 ratio of those two sugars, that doesn't necessarily mean that optimal overall absorption of fuel is with that ratio.  Additionally, from what I've seen (and posted in the last section), the commercially available energy gels generally have significantly less fructose than glucose/maltodextrin.  So there might be some room for improvement.

Then, it occured to me that we are having a bit of a honeybee crisis in the US here, so the price of honey has actually gone up quite a bit.  So while using it as the base for an energy gel may still be cheaper than commercially available product, I started trying to think of another option.

Then it hit me - invert sugar!  Invert sugar is simply sugar (sucrose - which is one fructose and one glucose molecule bonded together) that has the sugar molecules separated via heat.  If you were to dissolve sugar into water and use that as an energy source, your body would have to break the sugar into its separate components first.  However, if that can be done ahead of time, you'd end up with an energy gel recipe that can be used more quickly by the body.  Furthermore, once sucrose is broken down - you have your equal ratio of fructose and glucose - so right away you are starting at a point very similar to honey.  And far cheaper as well.  Electrolytes could be added by adding salt for sodium, and some molasses for potassium.  You could also add in salt substitute (potassium chloride) as the potassium source as well - but the molasses adds a touch of flavor.

So in the end, I tried the following recipe:

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1 TBSP lemon juice (acid required to catalyse the reaction that breaks sucrose into fructose and glucose)
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp molasses (I would have gone with blackstrap, but didn't see any at the store)
• 1/4 tsp salt substitute
  
  Put water, sugar and acid in sauce pan.  Heat to simmering, cover, and let simmer for 20 minutes.  Pour into container, add salt, molasses, and salt substitute.

The resulting product is about 1 3/4 cups of viscous liquid that is pourable even at freezer temperatures.  Not surprisingly, very much like pancake syrup (since, really - thats all syrup is anyway).

Additionally, I tried looking for a source of maltodextrin.  All I came across was Carbogain, which is available at a local shop, but in a big-ass tub.  I may end up doing it, but at the time I didn't want to buy a huge quantity.  Anyway, I was looking for maltodextrin because that would provide a way to decrease the ratio of fructose.  Effectively, I could make my own C2MAX by adding maltodextrin until I had the fructose percentage down to 33%, while the maltodextrin and glucose would make up the remaining 66%.  It would also likely thicken the resulting product, but by how much I don't know.

For a nutritional analysis:
Calories: 1568 (1548 for two cups of sugar + 20  for 1 tsp molasses)
Carbs: 392g
Sodium: 1120 mg (1 tsp = 3g kosher salt)
Potassium: 700 mg (1/4 tsp salt substitute)

For the sake of convenience, each fluid ounce (4 fl oz = 1/2 cup) has:
112 Calories (28g carbs)
80 mg sodium
50 mg potassium

Although I feel like this is a start of an improvement over the honey-based recipe (for me, anyway), I have to acknowledge that article on active.com as the inspiration for this.  Also, the list on that page of other things that can be added - kool-aid for flavor, chia seeds, soy protein, etc - applies to the recipe above as well, and are also some good ideas.

EDIT:  See this post for what I believe will end up being my final base recipe I'll be using.