Feb 17, 2024

I struggeled with my fueling during the race for basically forever. I used a combination of gels and Clif bars. That’s fine but it is also crazy sweet all the time. After a couple of hours I couldn’t get anything of it down anymore. Additionally Clif bars are huge and surprisingly hard to chew when all your blood is in your legs and you have to breathe like a maniac simulatniously.

But my main problem was always the sweetness thing. After a while in every ride I was craving some solid hearty food up to a point when I couldn’t get anything of my gels or bars down despite feeling hungry.

During the Bike Transalp I was insanely happy to see they had vegetable broth at the second nutrition stop of each stage. That somehow resetted my stomach and I could eat other stuff again. I suppose that’s a sign of missing salt. That observation also matches my salty cravings - why are there no “salt bars”, just sugar bars?

Two guys I met there were using Maurten as powder in their drinks. They swore by it. I never heard of it before, but I learned that this is kind of a big deal in cycling nowadays. I was always sceptical about powders in my drink because I feared this will just be even more sugar I take in and also reduce the amount of water I drink because it is “contaminated” with sugar. But after the great reviews I tried it after the Transalp and I bought a big box of it. I used it in a race in the Houffa Gravel. I used it on my longest ride so far where I was in the saddle for ten hours. And I have to say this is great. The amazing thing is that it is not as sweet as normal gels, despite containing even more sugar. Also it not only contains sugar, but also salt and other minerals. And when you take it as powder in your drink you don’t get a sugary sticky mouth. Will definately use it for my next races and see if I’ll keep liking it.

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