Discussion: Crank Sports eGel and eFuel

Has anybody tried this stuff?

I recall, Greg started a buzz about this stuff some time ago. I might be mistaken. Check with Greg...

It works, almost as good as GU, but a little to big to be consumed on a run in one shot, and they claim it is chiper per cal then GU, but I think it is just a marketting trick. I used it and went back to GU. Benefitial chemicals are good ;-)

Greg, did you try the eFuel at all? The liquid formulation and lack of simple sugars intrigues me. Carrying and mixing powders is a hassle, but the liquid format has possibilities?

No have not tried e-fuel yet, plus I have not trained for ROGAINE since Arizona, I lost interest in that sport

I've not done rogaines in a number of years now either, but still like to occassionally do longer trail runs where having an electrolyte drink helps. Haven't found one I really like yet, so still looking. Thanks for your insight.

Greg,

Where do buy GU? Any cheap places to go?

Thanks!

Greg doesn't know any cheap places... I know he gets it from www.campmor.com

You said it, z-man. And we know that's 'cause he is a high roller.

The elites around here swear by Vitargo, some energy drink i don't know anything about. But they bring it on most 2 hour+ runs.

The price for Gu has been stable for a while, Campmor has goog quantity discounts on Gu, if you buy more then 50. That what I do.

The best place I know is here:
http://www.trisports.com/gugel24pack.html

Price is 48/$43.20.

Enter SLOWTWITCH in the Coupon Code field on the Checkout page and you'll get extra 15% discount. Final price comes to $36.72 or 77 cents per one GU. I like these guys!
By the way, TriSports provides the SLOWTWITCH discount as a recognition of the Web site www.slowtwitch.com that is worth checking.

Nice, a TriSports.com plug that didn't come from my hat! I usually find good prices there on a variety of workout stuff. They aim to please...

Random tidbit: Seton (the TriSports.com founder/owner) is one of those guys who had a good idea and really ran with it. Maxed out something like 6 credit cards buying inventory and didn't tell his not-yet-wife about it. She forgave him after he made his first million. ;-)

I'm mostly interested in the differences at the chemical level. Crank Sports advertises that their eGel has significantly more energy and electrolytes than other brands such as Gu, Clifshot and PowerGel. Does this matter?

Putting prices aside for a second, what is important in an energy gel? I would only be using it for longer traditional Orienteering races (i.e. 70-100 minutes). Does it matter which gel I use?

In the interest of full disclosure, I am the President of Crank Sports and I have never used this site before. Our company found the site from our web logs that showed some traffic comming from this thread.

I took a moment to read through the discussion to see what you were talking about and decided to create a profile. I don't want to spam your forum or provide unwanted plugs, but I would be happy to try to answer any questions you may have. My guess is that there are plenty of experienced gel users here, but if you want my two cents just let me know.

Mike Mathewson

John, at this point you shell focus on your training, GU and e-fuel etc, are for long events when your body is running low on muscle fuel, AKA glycogen, it learned to store during long training hours. There are very little benefits of taking this staff on races less then 80 min, also GU has caffeine, and it may help to wake you up in the morning. I also use it during long runs, if they are longer than 100 min.

I would second with Greg except his note that caffeine from GU can wake you up. Well, unless you digest a box of GU. 20 mg in a regular GU (2x caffeine in GU Espresso Love) can't even compare with a cup of strong coffee (100-150 mg). I don't really care about a difference in chemicals or vitamins. Other supplements can take care of this. I make my choice based on taste and how easy I can swallow one during a high intensity excercise. I tried most of the popular gels (Clif Shot, Hammer Gel, PowerGel, Accel Gel, etc.). My choice in the order of preference:
1. Honey Stinger with Ginseng, Kola Nut & B Vitamins.
2. GU Berry
3. Carb-BOOM! Strawberry/Kiwi
By the way, I'll not take PowerGel even for free...

Couple years ago I rad a study about different effects on athlets on intake of caffeine from different sources. They stated, that caffeine from coffe drink doesnt provide effect that coffeine from pills does. Difference in endurance iprovement was about about 2 times.

From the annals (heh heh) of Will Smith, the cheapest food per calorie is...


(insert drumroll here)


mayonaise


(ta-daaa!)

Best of all you can grab convenient packets of it for free at most fast-food joints.

yak...

John,

while I agree with Greg that there is little to be gained from taking sport drinks or gels during events of less than 80 minutes, I think there is a benefit to be gained from using a sports drink prior to such races as it may help to preserve your muscle glycogen somewhat and/or allow you to dig a little deeper later in the race.

Also, for best recovery after any hard effort, you should rehydrate and get some carbs along with protein within the first 20-30 minutes after exercising. Aside from rehydrating, the protein is most important for repairing muscle damage but needs to be taken with a carb source. A decent sports drink should help.

No protein or carbs in mayonnaise though - so I'd skip the mayo packets post race....

There must be *some* protein in mayo. The best thing about it is you can make your own:

recipie

Put that old cordless drill in your closet to good use - stick a wisk in it! And according to the recipie, the odds of getting food poisoning from raw eggs is very low. Spread some on the back of a playng card for convenient carrying during a race. No more wasteful mylar packets with a 2Gy half-life.

Eddie is talking about real mayo, Clint about the stuff in the packets. The packet stuff may well be a petroleum product with no protein.

First we had G as a unit of weight. Now we have Gy as a unit of time, and a non-stable one at that, no doubt. What's next?

Actually, it was just quick glance at the nutrition label on a jar in the fridge - might not have been 'real' mayo...

Eddie! What a great idea! Mayonnaise really works!!! I decided to give it a try during today's long run. A can of 16 oz Hellmann's real mayo seemed to be too much and I filled one of my 8 oz Amphipod flasks. No energy gels today during 2+ hrs run - only real mayo. Result is unbelievable - my average HR dropped approx. 5 beats per minute without a decrease in speed. Legs felt great too. I need to figure out only what kind of drink I should use with mayo. Water doesn't feel good with mayo. I'm planning to take a 6-pack of Budweiser for my next long run. A Big Mac will not hurt too...

Perhaps mmathewson could provide samples of his product for attackpoint members to try? Maybe his company could sponsor the national team?

I think Gy is "giga-year".

yes!

Any recommendations for a good sports drink with carbs and protein for post-training/race? I have been drinking gatorade (from the powder) which is good for replenishing electrolytes. It has 13g of carbs per serving (all from sugars), and no protein. When I was in Norway we drank the Maxim protein drink, but I can't get that around here.

If mmathewson would like, he can supply the Billygoat. We'd be happy to distribute it as samples.

So Mike,
In 10 lines or less, why is e-Gel better than GU?
Wyatt

If mmathewson would like, he can supply the Billygoat. We'd be happy to distribute it as samples

Probably should point out to Mike that the Billygoat is one of the most prestigious of North American Orienteering events and attracts most of the top orienteers in the northeast. Though there don't seem to be many elite Canadians coming down this year?

Its unfortunate that the most prestigious North American Orienteering event attracts as many people as....your typical 5k local road race. :(

Adding couple GUs to mayo (per recipe above) would create explosive mix! Right mixture of protein, carbs, sodium, and caffein! Who would like to try it and report back the results?

Lol... mayo. Yech! I can't even imagine trying to consume that stuff from a gel flask when it's 30C out and you're sweating your butt off on some long leg.

The main ingredient in most every gel is Maltodextrin. It is a polymer of glucose and can come in different chain lengths. A cheap source of it is your local "U brew" type store where it's used to improve mouth feel of some types of beer and other beverages.

It is generally a good idea to avoid drinks and gels/supplements with significant amounts of fructose since it can cause stomach upset in some people.

Caffeine has many beneficial effects for athletes, and that's why the IOC limits the amount you're permitted to have flowing in your veins (though their levels are pretty generous especially if you're not a regular consumer of caffeinated products).

The whole "conserving glycogen" thing is a myth and has been well proven to be a myth in properly conducted scientific studies. The same studies, and related studies, also show that consuming glucose (or gels for that matter) during exercise does improve performance at a significant level if you take enough of it and start not too long after you've started your session/workout/race. The benefits become quite substantial in "endurance" events (though I don't agree with their definition of "'endurance" since I do longer AR stuff) over 2 hours long.

It's late and I have to get to bed, but Arnie Baker cycling used to have a handy little article on his website about maltodextrin.

I'll look it up for you.....

http://www.arniebakercycling.com/pubs/Free/Maltode...

Caffeine has many beneficial effects for athletes, and that's why the IOC limits the amount

It doesn't make sense to limit the use of substances with beneficial effects. Restricted substances are (or should be) those that have detrimental (harmful) effects when overused, to eliminate the temptation for athletes to use too much in order to get ahead.

Maltodextrin is essentially short starch chains. The thing that makes it interesting is that you can put a high concentration of it into your digestive tract, and it can pass into your bloodstream, then fall apart into glucose molecules. If you use a similar amount of a sugar solution, you'll have a proportionally higher concentration (more molecules for a given volume), and the rules of chemistry are such that you wind up pulling water from your bloodstream into your stomach.

So according to that Arnie Baker article, all you really need in a race between 1-2 hours is fluid and carbohydrates. I hate carrying things when I am running a race (especially fluids), so I have always preferred gels to sports drinks. Would it be possible to make a gel mixture of maltodextrin similar to the sports drink concoction that Arnie describes in that article? How many carbs would you recommend per hour (or kilometer) in an Orienteering race? The article mentioned that runners use 80 to 100 calories per mile, but I imagine it would be more in an Orienteering race since the intensity is a lot higher and you probably consume much more energy per mile. Maybe we could simply change it to 80-100 calories per kilometer for Orienteering races.

Concentrations are an interesting thing. With polymers like maltodextrin, you can have many more glucose molecules (once it's broken into individual glucose molecules) than you can in a straight sucrose or glucose solution. It all has to do with osmotic pressure (those darned chemistry rules). You want a solution that is close to isotonic to your body's fluids, and in sports drinks I belive that number is considered to be a 5 to 6% sugar solution. Since sucrose is a disaccharide and glucose is a monosaccharide, you're pretty limited. But, with maltodextrin having chains in the 15 to 20 glucose molecule range (depending on the maltodextrin) you can have wayyy more in your water bottle before you hit the magic 5% to 6% mark.

The deal with calories intake is that for the typical person, you can't really absorb more than about 350 calories per hour (I think this is based on a typical 150 lb person). I would think that if you're using maltodextrin or glucose you can actually raise this number a bit since glucose can be absorbed through the digestive tract and into cells against a concentration gradient (and the phosphorylation of glucose once it enters the cell helps in the regard).

In orienteering, I don't think there are really that many events that are overly long. Muscle glycogen in a moderately trained person will last 90 -110 minutes (at least that's what it seems to be with me, though ymmv) at high intensity levels before you'll really notice you're running low on energy.

Water, is pretty key, however, and can be a limiting factor much sooner. Being properly hydrated before exercise is very key for good performance.

Can one make their own gels? Should be pretty straightforward to do. I am going to some experimenting with this soon and if I get something that is workable, I'll let you konw. In the meantime, it works very well to add a few scoops of maltodextrin to a water bottle with some orange juice in it (maltodextrin does not taste sweet and is pretty close to flavourless).

Remember that Arnie Baker is a high-end cycling coach and it's easy to carry a few water bottles on a bike, or some of this stuff in a camelbak.

to Eddie: an average 5 to 21 km local road race in the winter in NYC gets from 2400 to 4500 runners and a number of them use gels before, during, and after the race.(I think you should run one of those one day, you will get a kick out of this experience)

I'd hardly call a road race in the largest city in the country "typical" for the country as a whole. More of an anomaly. Are those gel consumers running for 90-110 minutes, thus depleting their muscle glycogen, or are they eating them because they think it will help their lack of training or simply because of hype?

90-110 minutes before you start to run low on glycogen? Then I guess I don't need anything. Maybe I'll try training instead.

I think later is more true, mostly because of hype and luck of knowledge, plus it gives them some edge :-) Still, come and run it, you do not have to eat GU; there are plenty of bananas to go around.

Me like banana! mook mook moook! :) Nice words on the relay, Greg. We should start a new AP thread about this, as there is quite alot of history with this OCIN relay bid already.

Eddie, what's the history? Inquiring minds want to know.

I think the 90-110 minutes is where you're definitely hit a wall of some kind w/o fuel. Even before that gels might help a bit, right?

The maltodextrin sounds like it'll dump glucose directly into the blood-stream, so wouldn't that help somewhat even before 90 minutes?

And the caffiene in the gels helps (somewhat) immediately, right? Not just after 90 minutes.

I think Sharon Crawford carries around some caffinated concoction (is it just cold strong coffee?) to consume in the hour or two before races... ? As a multiple-times world champion (in her age category) she probably knows a thing or two about training & racing...

You know, I tried to make my first-ever post to the USOF clubnet on this relay thing despite vowing to never post there. But, I flubbed it. It must have been divine intervention.

But, in any case -- it was a useful litmus test to finally see what issue was sufficient to induce me to attempt to make myself heard on that other forum.

I can only immagine the pandalerium that is going on there now. Might as well pull the pin...toss a grenade into a crowded room and then plead for everyone to remain calm.

I think that stuff Sharon drinks is some form of echtoplasm. Ghostbusters kind of stuff. Actually, it looks alot like that homemade mayonaise. Sharon is always way ahead of the curve.

Eddie.

Dude you got to chill on this mayonaise kick of yours. Haven't you heard of salmonella?

Relay? Am I missing something? Where is this other discussion taking place?

The relay news are on USOF clubnet, I got it from Boris via US-team e-mail listt, and Vlad posted my response on clubnet. I will start a new thread now

Has anyone checked Sharon's water bottle recently?? Her philosophy, at least back in the late 70s and early 80s, was to never wash it out. Something about upsetting the delicate chemical balance. Or maybe there was some added benefit she derived from the tendrils of whatever was growing inside it. Echtoplasm is as good a description of the contents as any other.

As I have memories of in depth discussions of this in the summer of '80 at the French 3-day and Swiss 5-day, I don't know if she was able to get it back through customs....

OK, never mind, I get Clubnet as a digest, and it all showed up this morning.