Honing in on homemade fuel recipe

Several months ago I wrote part 3 of a fueling for endurance events series of posts, and in that post I listed a recipe that I came up with that was pretty decent, as it provided a 50/50 mixture of fructose and glucose, as it was essentially invert sugar.

Since that post I've refined the recipe a bit and came up with what I think will be my base recipe from here on out.  Instead of having a 50/50 mixture of fructose and glucose, this recipe provides 66% glucose and 33% fructose, which is the 2:1 ratio used in Powerbars C2MAX formulation.  Part of my reasoning for wanting this mixture is that the Powerbar Ironman Perform sports drink product is currently the one being used by Ironman during their events, and since all Powerbar products use C2MAX, coming up with my own approximation seemed like a good idea.

Base recipe
2 cups water
2 cups maltodextrin (Carbogain - can be obtained from a GNC or Performance Nutrition type store)
2 cups sugar
1 TBSP acid (lemon juice or lime juice)
1 TBSP vanilla

1) Bring water to a boil. Add acid and sugar. Cover, and let simmer for 20 minutes.
2) Add in the two cups of maltodextrin and the vanilla with immersion/stick blender. The malto is much like corn starch upon contact with water - it doesn't dissolve easily, so mixing in by hand is a pain in the ass, if it's even possible.
3) Mix in flavoring, and any electrolytes (NaCl or KCl) if desired.

Result is about 3.25 cups of product.

For flavoring, I've used 1/4 cup of coca successfully, as well as one of those flavor packets for a 20 oz bottle of water. The flavor packet ended up making the batch a bit sweeter due to the artificial sweetener contained within, so next time I may try 1/2 tsp of kool aid powder.

It took me several uses before honing in on how much to take, and how much water to take it with. However, once figured out - it's easy to make, versatile, and very portable and shelf stable. The first major test was a century ride where I used this syrup for fuel exclusively once my 2 x 24 oz bottles of gatorade wore out. I specifically remember being at mile 94 and my legs still felt strong - a major difference from previous centuries where I typically bonked around mile 80-85. So it definitely works.

The geek-out info

The calorie content:

2 cups of sugar equates to about 1548 calories, and 2 cups malto equates to about 760 calories - so about 2300 calories total in the batch.
2300 cal divided by 3.25 cups is about 710 calories per cup. One cup is 8 fluid ounces, so each fluid ounce is about 89 calories.

Ratio of glucose/fructose:
Table sugar is sucrose, and sucrose is made up of 1 glucose and 1 fructose molecule bonded together. Molecular weight of 342 g/mol
Maltodextrin is 100% glucose polymers. Molecular weight varies depending on chain length, but I just went with glucose - 180 g/mol
2 cups of table sugar is 400g, or 1.16 mols of sucrose. Since 1 molecule sucrose = 1 molecule glucose + 1 molecule fructose, the end result of creating invert sugar is 1.16 mols sucrose and 1.16 mols of glucose.
2 cups of maltodextrin is 200g, or 1.11 mols of glucose.
Glucose composition = 1.11 mols from malto + 1.16 mols from sugar = 2.27 moles glucose
Fructose composition = 1.16 mols from sugar.
So, glucose to fructose ratio is 2.27:1.16 - about 2:1.

Patriot Half - 6/16

This was the second year I've done the Patriot half iron.  Last year was my first time, and as I was building back up mileage from IT band issues, my primary goal was to finish without further aggravation of the IT band (which I did).  My splits for last year were:
Swim (1.2 miles): 43:06 (no wetsuit)
T1: 5 min
Bike (56 miles): 3:10:07
T2: 4:43
Run (13.1 miles): 2:20:48
Total: 6:23:42

I was pretty happy with those results, even though the run was about 30 minutes slower than my normal half marathon time at the time.  But that was to be somewhat expected - I stopped for walk breaks every 1/2 mile, had no gas left in the tank towards the end, and it was really hot - so I really struggled.

This time, I figured I was good for at least 20-25 minutes of improvement.  I had refined my swim to include better bilateral breathing, going to a two-beat instead of six-beat kick, and I'd be wearing a wetsuit.  My initial thinking was that between those three things plus just better fitness, it wasn't inconceivable to knock about 10 minutes off the swim. 

For the bike, this time around I had actually put in solid training over the winter, so I knew I'd be in a much better position.  My thinking was that I could take 10-15 minutes off there.

For the run, I was figuring about a 20 minute gain.  After having recently discovered a nutrition regimen to keep the fuel stores topped off, in addition to just being able to run faster - I had high hopes of major improvement there.

So all told, I was thinking probably about 30 minutes better than last year.  And from where, who knows - maybe something would just click and I'd be able to knock off something more like 45 minutes.

Oh, the other thing to mention - this time I had number 345.  Sounds irrelevant now, but it needs to be mentioned.

The Swim

Our wave was number 6, and each wave was separated by 4 minutes, so we were 20 minutes behind the lead wave.  The water was nice, which means a tad cool initially, but perfectly comfortable after about 30 seconds.  However, it was choppy, with the wind coming in towards the shore.  Normally in swim starts I tend to stay towards the back, because I am often slower on the swim, and I'd otherwise have a bunch of people crawling over me.  This time, though, I had a pretty good idea that I'd be at least in the middle of the pack, if not towards the front.  My swim form is one thing I'm actually really proud of and not afraid to admit that (I think) I'm pretty damn awesome at.  I'm not quite as smooth as this guy, but to the laymen, I'm pretty damn close.  Anyhow, I allowed myself to be towards the front of the swim start.  

Keeping in mind my tendency to start fast, I started a bit slow to help stay smooth and relaxed.  A few hundred yards into the swim, I realized that there wasn't many people nearby.  Either I had gotten wildly off course (possible, but not probable that I was that off course), I had put distance between myself and the other people in my wave (yellow caps), or I had already fallen woefully behind.  I wasn't sure what the situation was, but I did some sighting and verified I was pretty much on course, so that was good.  Before too long, though - maybe around the 1/4 or 1/3 mile mark, I bumped into someone who was wearing a color cap (dark green) from the wave before us.  Although this person was probably the slowest in his age group, the fact that I was already bumping into groups that started 4 minutes before me was a good sign.  Or, at least, I took it as a good sign.  By the time we reach the first turn (1/2 mile), I had already passed a few dark greenies, as well as a white (the wave before the dark green) or two, so I knew I was probably in pretty good shape.  At that point, it was just a matter of keeping the head down, and swimming smooth and relaxed.

At least once, I realized that I slipped into my old six beat (or whatever it is) kick.  Not sure how that slipped in there - probably the distraction of swimming with others made me pay less attention to form and that was what ended up slipping through the cracks.

On the way back, we at least had some waves at our back, and the field had thinned out a bit - or at least I thought.  On the flip side, the sighting seemed more difficult - on the way out there was good contrast between the dark background and the bright orange buoys, but on the way back, the sun was creeping over the trees to the left, and the beach in the background meant it was harder to determine at a quick glance where exactly to head.  I must have not made a full 90 degree turn, because a couple hundred yards after the turn, during a time when I could actually get a good visual, I realized I was swinging a bit wide.  So I turned a bit back to the course, straight towards a buoy.  As I came in closer, I started bumping into people now and again - I think I was hitting the middle of the pack of earlier waves by this time.  It became common enough that I stopped really paying much attention - if I bumped into someone, I didn't bother looking up anymore - I just moved to the side a tad and kept swimming.

Unfortunately, one of those 'people' ended up being a buoy.  Yup, I swam right into a buoy.  Oops!

The rest of the swim was rather uneventful.

T1
I've never cared much about transition times, nor put any real effort or thought into them.  My goal this time was to try out an IM-like transition by having a specific bag of T1 stuff, and a specific bag of T2 stuff.  Outside of that, my only other goal in T1 was to see how quickly I could get my wetsuit off.  I managed to get it off decently fast - but in retrospect I probably should have started unzipping and rolling it down off the torso while running from the beach to the bike rack.  I'll have to keep that in mind @ LP.  The other thing I did was put my Garmin in my T1 bag because I didn't want to leave it on the bike where someone might steal it.  That was another thing that in retrospect I should probably do differently @ LP - either put it on the bike (realistically no one there will want a silly Garmin 305), or if I have room, in the bike pouch that sits behind the headset of the bike.  Finally, getting my HR strap, shirt and race number on took time as well.  I didn't want to pin my race number to my shirt before hand because I didn't want the pin to rip the fabric while putting the jersey on.  So I'll have to figure out an alternative to that.  Then, lastly, there was the HR strap.  Although I don't use the Garmin during the swim portions of the race, I may toy around with keeping it on during the swim anyway, figuring the wetsuit will keep it in place and prevent it from slipping.

Bike
The bike portion was the meat of my whole experiment of the day - execution before fitness.  My plan was to down 2 x 24 oz of Gatorade in the 90 minutes coming out of the swim.  I wanted to replenish the energy stores, and having two pre-mixed bottles available was an easy way to accomplish hydration, energy and electrolytes all at once.

My initial HR, when I looked, was in the mid to high 150's.  While not necessarily excessive, I really wanted to get it down at least into the 140's, because I wanted to make sure I didn't go out too fast on the bike and have trashed legs on the run, and I wasn't sure a HR in the 150's would allow that.  It took a couple miles, but it did settle down, and eventually got into the 130's, which I was happy with.  Although somewhat hard to tell, it looked like I was cruising along around 17-18 mph, which I was also happy with.  However, I was getting passed a lot.  But at long as my HR was in check, thats mostly what I cared about.

I got through the first 24 oz bottle just as I was coming up to the first bottle exchange around mile 11 - actually having to down the last 6-8 oz or so upon seeing the exchange up ahead.  After I tossed my empty, they were calling 'WATER!' 'HEED!', and I called out for a water.  I had 8 oz of my homemade energy syrup with me, so my plan was to start using that for fuel (supplemented with electrolyte capsules I had with me) after my gatorade ran out.  Then, about 1/2 mile after the exchange, my bladder started feeling like it was filling up.  Damn.  I was 12 miles in, and I wasn't sure where there might be a porta-potty.

Over the course of the next couple miles, it kept building and it was obvious it wasn't a situation where you are on edge for a long period of time.  This was a problem, because I needed to fuel up with the other bottle of gatorade, but I didn't want to take on any more fluids than I had to.  I was starting to pin my hopes on having a porta-potty available at the half-way mark.

Execution wise, I stayed pretty true - keeping the HR between 130-140, and staying between 15-20 mph - depending on terrain.  I mostly made sure that I didn't burn matches - or that if I did, it was very brief with quick recovery.

As I was getting close to the halfway point, the other bottle exchange station became visible.  Since I had slowed my water intake, I didn't need anything at this point, but again, I heard: 'WATER!' 'HEED!'.   Just then I saw a lone porta-potty, pulled over like I was 1/8 mile from an exit on the other side of an 8 lane highway, and said 'porta-potty!' to which a volunteer replied 'I can't help you with that!'.

Ahh.. much better.

The second loop of the bike was more of the same.  It seemed a bit windier, though, and my HR got into the 140's more often, and it seemed like my speed dropped more often as well.  Once again, around the 1/3 to 1/2 way point of the second loop, the bladder was filling again.  At least this time I knew where to stop, so I was able to maintain decent water and fuel intake without too much fear.

The biggest issue with the second loop, though, was that the IT band on my left leg was starting to feel tight, and my right foot was developing a hotspot right near where where it's most recent injury was.  I was able to adjust where the pressure is applied on the right foot to alleviate some of the pressure from that hotspot, and that helped, but at that point it was already aggravated so it was still a bit cranky.  It started to occur to me that this may be an after-effect of the initial ankle injury I had a few months ago on the inside of my ankle - to help alleviate pain from that I may have inadvertantly trained my foot to roll a bit to the outside, which may have ended up contributing to the issue on the outside of the foot that was to develop.  Something I'll have to pay attention to on future cycling workouts - distribution of pressure on the bottom of the foot.

The other thing I did during the bike loop was to make sure to occasionally breath deeply and rhythmically.  I found on my century ride during Memorial day that when I went for the run, my lungs felt.. compressed.  Like my chest cavity couldn't expand.  So I wanted to see if I could get into more of a habit of full breathing during the bike, and to see if that would help during the run.

Garmin bike data

T2
Coming off the bike, the legs felt pretty good.  I made the trod from the dismount line to the bike rack at a slow pace to allow my body to transition from being hunched over to getting into running position.  At the bike rack, I grabbed my fuel belt filled with water, took care of my bike stuff, threw on my running shoes and headed out.  Fortunately, stepping into the running shoes made my feet feel like they were on a cloud, so the hotspot from the cycling shoe didn't carry over - for which I was grateful!  Also, the IT band on the left knee didn't feel quite as tight either.  Good sign, but still early (as it turned out, neither of them gave a peep the rest of the day).

Run
My plan for the run was to simply do a slow, easy jog for the first three miles, at least.  If I felt up to it, I could increase the pace a bit, but that probably wouldn't be until mile 5 at least.  Everything felt great for the first mile as my legs got used to running, and the first mile came in just over 8 minutes and the HR felt steady and stable.  Unfortunately, even with Static Guard having been applied to my shirt the day before, the HR as registered on the Garmin was being erratic.  I have had this happen before, and usually it settles down around 2-2.5 miles, so I decided not to worry about it.

As the miles ticked by, the pace remained sub-8:30, but the HR was still being erratic - it would drive up, and then after fiddling with the chest strap, it would drop 20 or more BPM to a more normal range for my RPE.  As much as I like some of the shirts I run in - I may have to go back to the style I wore last year, when I never had any such problems.

Overall, the run was probably one of the best runs I've ever had, all things considered.  It certainly wasn't a half marathon PR, and I've run faster during some training runs - but the number of people I was passing was staggering.  I think I got passed twice in the first mile or so, and never again after that.  What I still can't quite figure out is how someone would be able to pass me during that first mile as easily as they were without having a better bike split than me.  The only reason I could come up with is that those two people may have been on relay teams - but even then I'd imagine the bike person on the relay would have been averaging a much faster pace than I on the bike - so how were they behind me?  Either that, or they went out really fast on the run and likely bonked later on.

The run was pretty much steady - take a sip of energy syrup every so often, wash down with water, pop an electrolyte capsule every 30 minutes or so.  I started running low on syrup around mile 8 or so, and decided to switch to using cola from the aid stations when possible.  I had also at this point decided I was feeling good enough to start putting in bouts of a faster pace every so often.  I still wasn't 100% sure I could maintain a faster pace for a whole 5 miles, so I didn't want to over do it - so instead I'd pick things up for a 1/4 mile or so, and then slow back down to 8:30-8:40 to let the body recover a bit.  Basically, start burning a few matches as I still had a number of them left.  As the miles got to 9, 10 and 11 - the distances of increased pace got longer.  At this point I wasn't really paying attention to the HR monitor because it was going crazy - bouncing between the 160's and the 190's.  At one point, it even went from 195 to the mid 150's.  Clearly, not reliable.

By the time I got to miles 12 and 13, I was pretty much steadily at a 7-7:30 pace, with the last mile being sub-7.

Crossing the finish line, the clock was showing a time of just over 6 hours.  Given that my wave started 20 minutes after the clock started, that put me at a total time of about 5:43.  This was a solid 40 minutes faster than last year - primarily all gained in the run.

Garmin run data

Final results from this year:

Swim: 36:20 (-6:46, using wetsuit)
T1: 5:20 (+0:20)
Bike: 3:12:18 (+2:11, but this includes appx 4-6 minutes of having to stop twice)
T2: 3:34 (-1:09)
Run: 1:46:21 (-34:27)
Total: 5:43:51


That race number of 345?  Reverse of the finish time of 5:43.  Just something that popped into mind on my ride back home.

Upon initial look, it would seem like I didn't change much of anything on the bike, and drastically improved on the run - and therefore one would conclude I need to work on the bike far more than the run.  While that may be true, the fact is that my bike time was very similar to last year, but the HR was about 10 bpm less on average, which made a world of difference in setting up the run.  Out of 595 finishers, I came in 135 on the swim, gave most of that away on the bike by placing 418, and gained much of it back in return on the run by placing 125, for a total placement of 244/595.  So yes, if I can get my bike time down that would be helpful - but this also shows the effect of not crushing the bike at the expense of the run, because the run is where many people end up burning out and racking up massive amounts of time by walking long stretches of time.

Update - 6/4 through 6/11

Been a while, but not a lot of activity until the past few days.

Last Monday and Tuesday I was travelling for work, and still extremely sore from the legs workout on Saturday.  I packed my running stuff with me just in case, but throughout the day on Monday I knew there was just no way it was going to happen.  So those ended up being recovery days.

Wednesday I went to yoga and had one of my worst workouts.  I ate a light lunch, but before I headed out the door, I had some chocolate milk with protein powder.  It had been a long time since my stomach gave me issues that I thought I'd be able to handle it, but partway through the standing series, I just found I had no energy, and my stomach wasn't feeling all that great.  My legs were still heavily fatigued, even though they were much less sore.  So the combination compounded such that I had to sit on the 2nd set of a couple poses.  It felt like all blood was going to keeping me upright that there was nothing left for digestion, so what was in my stomach just sat there.  And in those situations, taking in more water just makes things worse - so it was a perfect storm of a bad situation.

On Thursday I went for a 10ish mile run.  For some dumb reason, it doesn't show up on my Garmin at all, and it's not in my logs (I've been slacking on updating immediately after a workout).  I must have deleted it unknowingly or something - very strange.  But the point is that it was 10 easy miles done at easy pace (around 8:40-8:45), and felt good throughout.  It was nice to get a decent distance in and start feeling like my old self.  I was a little surprised to feel some soreness afterwards - not used to feeling sore after 10 miles, but it has been a while since I've been able to run any distance, so it makes sense.  Had a brief scare the following morning when I was turning over in bed and felt a stab of pain on the outside of my right foot - but it didn't seem to materialize into much of anything, and I wasn't planning on running on it soon anyway.  I figured that 10 miler would be the last long run until the Patriot half the following weekend - so that'd give me about 7-8 days to heal up, minus one or two shorter runs I might do in the meantime.

On Friday I did the TrainerRoad Kearsarge workout.  I had been doing threshold workouts for the prior few weeks, so I thought I'd change it up and do an interval one, and this looked interesting.

The following day, about 12 hours later, I attempted the Brewer workout.  I figured this didn't look too bad - it's intensity factor was only rated at 0.84 while many of the other workouts I've done have been over 0.9, and most of it is right around FTP.  I also figured it looked like a good hill simulation as it gradually build up power.  I have to admit - I totally underestimated this one because it was a ball buster!  I could tell after the first interval that it was going to be tough, and after two, I could tell my legs were cooked and there was no way I'd be able to do all six.  Given that I couldn't keep up with the power numbers (and I've read that if you can't keep within certain percentages of intervals, you are not ready and should just stop and rest up), and that I also wanted to make sure I got another session of lunges and squats in - I decided to can the workout after about an hour.

On Sunday I did another long swim in the lake.  I could tell a huge difference in effort this time compared to last time - although I felt good the last time, on this day I really felt like I was swimming smoothly and with less resistance.  Last time I was kicking more than is necessary for having a wetsuit (something I realized last year, but forgot about), and I started out too fast.  On this swim, I started out slower, and as a result my breathing never got rushed.  And when it comes to swimming, where form is king and you have to be regimented about breathing - trying to avoid having rushed breathing is a huge, huge factor is staying relaxed.  I'm a little skeptical about the distance, though - first off, a friend who joined in the swim recorded almost 1/4 mile longer distance and second, the track makes it look like I did a bunch of dog legs and 90 degree turns.  At this point, I swim fairly darned straight, so the GPS tracking is still apparently a little glitchy.  As well as having it under the swim cap may be - with my head down in the water, it's probably prone to error and erratic readings, I figure.

This evening I did a brick session - giving Brewer another go, followed by a 6 mile run.  The trainer session still kicked my ass - I still couldn't maintain the higher power numbers, so I ended up settling for trying to stay around 300W for as long as I could once the target got to that range.  It would still be a much longer extended interval at that power (about 123% FTP) than I've done before, and it was getting the HR near 170.  Also, the description of the workout indicates that those sprint sections are to be out of the saddle, which I don't do on the trainer.  So if I could get my weight working for me, that probably would have helped.

The run felt really good - one of the best brick runs I've done.  I've noticed that brick runs after the trainer just aren't the same as brick runs coming off a real road bike ride for whatever reason - trainer brick runs are easier.  The entire 6 miles felt good, steady and strong.  This was encouraging, as I was trying to make sure I stayed well hydrated and fueled during the bike portion.  On most bike sessions, I've often not bothered with fueling during the workout because it is only 90 minutes in length - but in this case I wanted to see how my legs felt on a run after a pretty intense leg workout on the bike.

5/29 through 6/3

My last post was the century and 6 mile brick on 5/28.  I ended up taking Tuesday as a rest day because I was still fairly fatigued from the day before.  I debated going to yoga, but decided against it, planning to go Wednesday instead.

Then Wednesday rolled around and a last minute thing at work came up that meant I'd miss yoga on that day too.  Then I started thinking that I'd like to get an 8 mile run in - but by the time I was able to, it was dark out and I didn't want to chance rolling my ankle on a pothole or something stupid, so I decided to get up early Thursday morning before work.

Which I did, amazingly enough.  My plan was to do around 8 miles @ threshold pace.  Everything was going well until around mile 3.5, when I started noticing some discomfort in my right hamstring.  Since it was just discomfort, I kept going, but at mile 4 it got a lot worse, so I stopped.  Of course, I was on the dark side of the moon, so I still had to manage some way to get back home without making things worse.  I thought about continuing to run through it, but then realized I'd be pissed at myself if I further injured myself just for the sake of making sure I showed up to work on time.  So instead I hobbled back with a combination of walking and running.  It felt like either a very weird cramp, or a minor hamstring pull.  I'm still not sure which it was, but after icing it when I got home, and a day of sitting down and giving it rest, it was a lot better that evening.

Since I couldn't finish the run, that evening I decided to hit the bike and revisit Mary Austin, a workout I tried in the past but ended up bailing on the last interval.  This time I finished it, but still found it surprisingly difficult.  You'd think that if I can do 3 x 20 minutes @ FTP, this workout with some time under and some time over FTP would be a tad easier, but it wasn't.  I can only guess that the intervals right at FTP hit a comfortable steady state of exertion, whereas this one is changing things up every couple minutes, which keeps the body guessing.

On Friday I started thinking about the past few months.  I feel like I peaked in my long distance running endurance during Stu's 30k at the beginning of March.  After that, I've had successive soft tissue injuries for whatever reason - first it was rolling the ankle at the dog park, an injury which lingered for a few weeks, but I kept running on it for a while before finally taking a full week off.  However there were no long runs during that time because of the injury.  Then after that was healed, I did a long 17 mile run and hurt the same ankle, but on the outside.  That was feeling better about two weeks later, when I did an 11 mile run and blew it out again, requiring another two weeks of little/no running and certainly no long runs.  Since then I've been able to build up  'long run' distance to just over 8 miles by staying conservative - but all told in the end the past few months have been a major disappointment in terms of long runs.

While some of the injuries can be explained by my own stupidity (running 17 miles 48 hours after running 9 miles), I'm starting to think a large part is also the lack of leg strength work I've been doing.  All last summer as I was building up volume, I was hitting the P90X Legs & Back routine on a regular basis.  Over the winter, I did it more.  If I recall, I stopped when I got the bike trainer, thinking that my time was probably best spent on that rather than the strength training.  That may have been a bad assumption, because the strength training may be a critical component to my staying injury free.  Not entirely sure, just a theory for now.

So with that in mind, I decided to resume leg strength work.  After a short 3.5 mile run on Saturday - half the purpose was to exercise the dogs, but the other half was to just start accumulating some time pounding pavement - I did a series of lunges and squats.  I didn't go with the full P90X routine because I knew from past experience that if I've slacked from that and go back to the full thing, my legs are sore and useless for like a week.  So I just did some balance lunges, deadlift squats, single leg squats, calf raises, sneaky lunges step-forward lunges and step-back lunges.  Even with that workout load of about 15-20 minutes, the day after I'm pretty sore, and I'm glad I stopped when I did.  It'll allow me to recover faster and then a few days later I should be able to do another 15-20 minute session.

In an attempt to help get the blood flowing, I did a quick spin - the TR Geiger workout.  This is a 1 hr sweet spot intensity workout.  I didn't want to do anything too intense since my quads and glutes were already tight, and further tightening would start to go down the road of ITB issues.

Also, kind of an afterthought - it appears the hamstring has healed up - at least enough that I don't notice it when walking.  Yesterday during the short run, I felt it while walking, but I felt it more during the run.  At this point, depending on schedule and how things shake out, I may try for something like 10 miles easy on Monday or Tuesday.