After about the 1000th viewing of the Gatorade commercial during the Giro coverage I finally paid attention and noticed they were only comparing the performance improvement to plain water. Well, duh!
It made me wonder - have any of the sports potion/powder/chow makers have ever demonstrated improved performance versus something more challenging than water like a can of Coke or a handful of jelly beans?
My guess: the differences would be so small you’d need a huge study to see them
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I posted something in a similar vein recently. . .about just eating REAL food instead of paying huge samoleans for these specialty products. Its harder in the near term as the learning curve is quite steep to find efficient ways to replicate just grabbing a couple of scoops of some powder. . .
As far as bars, drinks, gels, etc. . .Those are necessary evils to me. . .They are conveniently packaged for consumption during training and racing. You just can’t stick a PB&J on your top tube like you can do with a Powerbar. . .So I use the commercial stuff for racing. . .which means I have to sort it out some in training as well. That said, I do all my off-season training these days on regular Gatorade and PB&Js.
The more exotic stuff just never made a whole hell of a lot of difference compared to smartly consuming real food. . .
On a slight tangent. . .at the race expo at a local race there was a guy there hawking an “energy” drink that had no carbohydrates in it. . .I just had to ask the guy about it. . .What a crock. I don’t care if some guy ran across the country on the stuff. . .he didn’t run that far without consuming carbohydrates. . .no carbs = no energy. . .But there were folks falling for this guys spiel. . .suckers. The drink was liquid caffeine stack with some other assorted exotic named substances. . .but no carbs, no fat, no protein. . . In other words, none of what your body is going to need come mile 50 or so of your IM bike leg. . .
THere was one of those kind of “sports drink” marketers (or is it marketeers?), at one of the races I attended. I asked them who in the world would want to drink their product if it had no carbohydrates…he said, “Diabetics”.
Most of the products on the market are good but like hass been said your body can get better use of real food but the commercial products are so easy and compared to real food. If an event offers a certain product during the event you need to try that product before the race or plan to provide your own suppliments.
REMEMBER IF THE PRODUCT UPSETS YOUR STOMACH OR YOU CAN’T TOLERATE THE TASTE IT IS WORTHLESS NO MATTER WHAT THE CLAMES ARE BEACUSE YOU CAN’T USE IT.
You just have to use different products and see what works for you.
like a can of Coke or a handful of jelly beans?
Lots of folks swear by Coke on the IM run. I like Gatorade/Cytomax/Gpush, etc. better myself. They all work and do what they are supposed to do.
Table sugar, water and a dash of salt would work in a pinch. But, Cytomax powder in the big tub works out to about 75 cents per bike bottle. That’s not gonna break the bank.