After years of under-fueling have been doing a better job the last several months of increasing my carb intake for some upcoming races (70.3 and IM). When I did these races the previous year my numbers were about 60g/carbs an hour which is probably not enough.
After seeing a lot of hoopla around 1:0.8 ratio I had been testing with SIS Beta Fuel and Maurten gels of late. Been up to about 80g/carbs an hour with no real issues. SIS Beta Fuel is becoming hard to find lately so I have been exploring other products. To complicate things I am a heavy sweater (have had tests done) and I need to replace at least 1800mg of sodium per hour.
To the question…I have played around a little bit with maple syrup on training rides and I kinda like it. I have some upcoming test rides that I was thinking about trying it as my bike-only fueling and need some help. I have a 20oz XLab Aero TT bottle that I was going to put the maple syrup in and add some electrolytes (maybe break open some existing Salt Stick capsules I have or buy sodium citrate online).
I think I read that Maple Syrup doesn’t have that optimal fructose to glucose ratio so what would I need to add to it to get it there?
It’s hard to say what the glucose to fructose ratio is in maple syrup, and I’m guessing it varies a little depending on the type of syrup. But as one example, this website (The chemical composition of 80 pure maple syrup samples produced in North America - ScienceDirect) says “The sucrose content was found to range from 51.7 to 75.6%; glucose and fructose contents ranged from 0.00 to 9.59% and 0.00 to 3.95%.” Seeing as sucrose is one glucose and one fructose molecule, and the rest is presumably a little more glucose than fructose, that doesn’t seem too far off from optimal to me.
I’ve been using straight maple syrup in a flask instead of doing gels, and it’s worked great for me! And have you heard of UnTapped? They sell maple syrup gels, and maple syrup energy drinks.
Have you read the other threads here? They address a lot of what you’ll run into.
There’s a start!
ETA: I don’t intend to say “don’t start another thread” at all. Just mentioning that you might like those as resources if you hadn’t seen them yet.
Thank you Dr. Alex. I have been looking at as many threads as possible and watching your videos. I am learning a lot but there are parts of calculating ratios that I just can’t wrap my head around. Your app when it becomes available will likely be helpful for me.