Pounding Gu or Maurten on the trainer is going to be a major expense, so I am looking for homemade ride beverages or Gu-ish type things. Anyone have something they like?
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Drink mixes are a lot cheaper than gels and are the fastest way to get fuel into the blood.
Cytomax works fine for me at about 50g/200kCals per hour (1 bottle).
If you want to go really cheap you could mix maltodextrin powder with Gatorade. Seems like more hassle than it’s worth though.
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I use Clif gels at .70 cents a pop when bought in bulk, and scratch drink mix at less than a dollar a drink. Pretty reasonable. And I don’t use anything but some oatmeal or a granola bar pre ride if it’s only an hour ride.
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White bread and honey is easy, cheap, tasty, gets to work quickly.
If you have the time to cook them ahead, you could get into the whole rice cake thing, there are recipes on the Skratch Labs website. If you’re not going to take them outside then you don’t need to bother with wrapping them in paper, which I have found is more effort than making them! So they’re ideal for indoors.
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I love rice cakes as a snack about an hour before a ride or on a long ride outdoors. Feed Zone Portables has some great ones.
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+1 for Feedzone Portables. Have only used it a couple of times in the year I’ve had it (due to not much training time) but they are fairly quick and easy to make and taste awesome.
This has plenty of inspiration.
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Hi there,
I am experimenting with honey diluted in water with a splash of lemon and a pinch of salt. I decide the quantity of honey based on the duration of the ride.
I used to do the same with gels, but I wanted a cheaper/more natural alternative.
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Water with 1 t maple syrup and some salt ( a few shakes, 1/16t?)- works well for 90 min rides. Plus a few PB pretzels if longer.
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I made the GCN oat bars. Used only 100 gs of sugar instead of 200 because they have honey in them too. Good for longer rides.
Powdered Gatorade and maltodextrin.
Fig Newtons
PB&J sandwiches
Whole Dates
Bananas
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60g maltodextrine /l water works perfect for me. In races I ad 30g fructose additionaly. (and drink 1l/hour of it) It costs almost nothing and is as good as any gel, if you add coffein and salt.
Haribo or similar sweets.
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Y’all are awesome. I have eaten bread, stroopwafels, haribo, candied ginger, rice cakes, Gu, cookies, and others. Because of a recent podcast where Chad supported simple sugars during rides, I wanted to try more of that.
I’m going to try some combination of honey, lime juice, maple syrup, and maybe green tea and salt.
On longer rides, I do like rice cakes and Clif bars. Interestingly, Cytomax is the one thing that really makes my tummy unhappy.
The lemon is a good addition. I’ve been doing honey water the last few weeks and really enjoying it, actually. I just buy super bulk honey.
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I use powered Gatorade for rides and Infinit for races. Zero issues with Gatorade and it’s super cheap.
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This… Fig Bars from Costco/Sams super cheap ($10) for 36 packs of two bars.
And making a PB&Js are quick and easy.
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I posted this a while ago on how to make rice cakes
I’ve also been using fake maurten for the past 4 months with success and its dirt cheap
into a 500mL bottle;
30g maple syrup
60g maltodextrin from myprotein.com
sodium bicarbonate (like salt) around 500-750mg from amazon
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The rice cakes i’ve been doing:
Aborio rice
Grated apple
Almond butter
Cinnamon
Cheap, and seems to do the trick