12th April: Gelling pt1

When I started on this whole running malarky, I was introduced to the world of ‘fuelling’ in races and in particular the ‘delights’ of energy gels; the ubiquitous sticky sweet instant energy buzz elixir favoured by plenty of people whilst out on the hoof… I have tried a fair few different flavours and manufacturers and I certainly now know which ones work best for me, its just that for what they are, they seem to be quite an extravagance especially if you want to take a lot of them.

In the past I have tended to buy them by the bulk box of 30 which means they work out at around £1 a gel, so consuming them can prove to be a bit of a costly addition to a race as not every event has the luxury of a sponsored tie-in offering them for free… If you follow the instructions on a packet you are supposed to consume around 3 an hour for the duration of the race, which for the slower runners out there on a particularly fierce trail marathon can be around 7 hours, meaning 21 gels should be consumed, or an additional £21 in costs, or if you use caffeinated ones £30!

There is also the problem with litter: as each gel is individually wrapped and you tear the top to slurp out the sustenance… Whilst in a race, along the trail you cannot help but notice carelessly discarded tear-tops of gels and the empty screwed-up plastic pouches of a ‘dead’ gel as dropped by the more careless of the runners out there. As well as being a selfish act in littering the environment - because of the nature of the plastic it takes one helluva long time to bio-degrade - it is the equivalent of shitting all over an area of outstanding natural beauty and creates a headache for the organisers who have to remove all the dropped litter from their run routes. I must at this point give credit to Cliff who have cunningly designed their gel packets so the tear-tops never become detached from the gel pouch in a conscious and responsible effort by them to prevent littering - other manufacturers take note and follow!

The size of a gel is 60ml max - so roughly 60g in weight, and the main ingredient of these bad boys is SUGAR at around 20-25g, to give you that proper ‘Cornholio’ effect (gotta love Beavis and Butthead), and in particular one type of sugar: Maltodextrin. This product is readily available from sports supplement suppliers in bulk - so I acquired a sack of 5kg (11lb) which is enough to make just over 220 gels!.. and the price of this amount of the main ingredient, well its was the same as the retail cost for 10 of them.

Gels are not just sugar, but they also contain salts as well to replace those lost through sweat. The most common ones found in the gels are table salt (sodium chloride), dead sea salt (potassium chloride) and magnesium chloride… Again all of which are available from health food suppliers and sports supplement dealers. I also made the conscious choice to add caffeine in to the mix as well in the same quantity as those used elsewhere.

All well and good I hear you say, but how are you going to contain the gels?

I am eschewing the disposable culture and taking advantage of something that the ‘war on terror’ has forced upon us… With the rules about taking fluids onto airliners changed since, well you know when, you have to decant your liquids into clear containers, so there is now a market in re-usable silicone food-safe squeezy tubes, and they just happen to come in the 60ml size. Result! So I have taken delivery of 10 of these as I plan on making 10 gels at a time to avoid any freshness issues.

The beauty of DIY is you have total control, so you can choose your own flavour. I personally have opted for ‘summer berries’ for these batches - although you can have anything from roast chicken or bacon through to mint or liquorice and all points in between, so you really can make something you truly would enjoy to consume.

For the purpose of fairness I have also included the purchase of ‘drug dealing scales’ - ones that can measure as little as 0.01 of a gram as when you are using caffeine, you can’t be using too much of that stuff!

220 gels:

Maltodextrin        £12.29
Caffeine              £ 7.69
Flavouring          £  2.49
Salts                  £10.00
Containers          £20.00
Scales                £  6.00

Total for initial batch of 220 caffeinated gels

£ 58.47

The quantities bought means that I have copious amounts left over of caffeine, flavouring and salts, so for the next several batches of the unit cost is going to be:

£ 12.29

Which is purely for another sack of maltodextrin.

Now here comes the funky part: When you consider the bulk purchase of 220 caffeinated gels is going to be £350 or thereabouts, you are saving on the initial batch of 84% or £292 and subsequently 96.5% or £338 for a short amount of time spent in the kitchen mixing and pouring, which over the course of several marathons or other endurance events truly makes a huge difference.

Can't wait for the containers to arrive so I can get started on my concoction :)

Eat pies.
Drink beer.
Run far.