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Dirt Rag Articles
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I’m a regular guy who likes to ride, race, and tinker with mountain bikes. I have also had the urge (since childhood) to take stuff apart to see how it works. Usually this behavior has helped me accumulate a good deal of worthless broken stuff. But one day while cycling with my buddy Dave, my curiosity turned to goop. Specifically Powergel, and GU.
Dave and I are the kind of guys that ride really hard. I don’t think there’s been an occasion where we decided to just take the next ride slow. Anyway, we usually down a few packets of Powergel or GU on every ride. At about a dollar a pop, it doesn’t take long until we realized the cost of all this. So one day on the trail, as I glanced at the ingredients of these parcels of fuel I thought, “There’s got to be a way to make this from scratch.”
Flashback to three months earlier.
I’m at the local farmer’s market buying Clover honey because of its reported benefits for combating allergy symptoms. I find a press release from the National Honey Board about a study showing positive results for use of honey as compared to other carbohydrate sources when used during competitive athletic training. That kind of stuck in my brain for a while.
Wavy lines flashback to present.
So one rainy day later, I was taking apart my Power Gel. The packages are labeled with a wealth of information. Listed are the ingredients on the pack, and the “Nutrition Facts” charts. In general, the important stuff in Power Gel is the 25g carbs, 45mg sodium, 35mg potassium, and the vitamins C and E. Yes, I know there is more to them than that, but I did say that that is the important stuff.
The United States Department of Agricultre does a good job of getting those nutrition facts into their database. They actually have every food in the U.S. online at usda.gov. You can peruse and compare the nutrition content of Peanut Butter Capt’n Crunch vs. Count Chocula if you like. My interest in their site was the abbreviated food database that I could download in a Microsoft Excel format. This document is the key to getting the nutritional content of any possible mixture of foods.
The first food item I looked up in the database was Honey. Surprise!—it has a bunch of good carbohydrates and vitamins in it. Honey alone is nutritionally very close to my goal of home-brew power goop, but it lacks a bit of sodium and potassium. So where can I get a good source of potassium? Mush up a banana, maybe nuts?
Suddenly I find that molasses has a ton of potassium. If you can find “Blackstrap” molasses it has even more! As for the sodium, I’ll just add some salt. So out of my research, here’s the recipe:
Home-brew power goop:
7 and 1/3 Tablespoons of Honey
3/4 teaspoons of Blackstrap Molasses
1/10 teaspoons (just shy of 1/8 tsp) of table salt
Be sure to mix everything together well, and it should make enough to fill a 5 serving GU flask.
This recipe works nicely. You may see some bubbles on the surface of this stuff, but that is just a natural occurrence of the molasses. One thing really nice is that neither honey nor molasses needs to be refrigerated, so you can keep it in your pocket all day, and even use it the following week. I probably wouldn’t go much past a week, but it should still be good.
The nutritional content approximates 25g carbs, 45mg sodium, 35mg potassium, with plenty of vitamins and minerals that you wouldn’t get with the store bought stuff. Another nice thing about the honey recipe is that it is all natural. Honey comes from bees that get nectar from flowers. Maybe you’ve passed a honeybee hive on a trail, and just maybe there was a bee in there making the honey that you are going to use on your next ride! Ok, that’s a stretch. Molasses is not actually any part of the four-legged mammal, but is refined from sugar cane. As Homer Simpson would say: “Mmmmm, suuuugggarrrrrr.” Salt comes usually from salt mines, but you could always buy “sea-salt” and use that. I suppose “sea salt” comes from the sea, but with truth in advertising at the current lows, who really knows.
My experiment did not end at just the plain ol’ goop. It was still raining out, so I thought back to something I read somewhere about a 4 to 1 carb to protein ratio. I guess that is supposed to be a good thing (Thanks Martha Stewart), so I made a recipe for that too.
Honey goop with a protein kick:
6 Tablespoons of Honey
5/8 teaspoons of Blackstrap Molasses
6 and 3/8 teaspoons of Soy Protein Isolate
1/16 teaspoons of salt
1-3 Tablespoons of water
Mix everything together in a cup, add water as needed to develop a nice ‘goopable’ consistency. Makes 5 servings.
I tried out some of this at the DINO 12-hour race, and it worked pretty well. The Soy protein gives it a nice kick. I wouldn’t leave this one in the sun for too long though. Not that I’ve had any moss growing in it, but I would probably try to keep this one fresh.
Well now that my work is done, and I’ve freed the masses from cookie cutter carb-gels I would like to say that this in not the end, but merely the beginning. Yes, because these are just my recipes, and like the open source code of Linux, they are open for improvement and personalization. I haven’t even started on anything with caffeine, but I imagine that you could substitute some espresso in for the water, or get wild with some ground up ginseng supplements.
There is also the issue of flavoring. Could normal coffee flavoring work, perhaps mix in some flavored Jell-O, or Kool-Aid mix. Or stay all natural and mix in some lemon or orange zest. How about a jalapeno or two? The possibilities are endless. For now I’m going to step aside and let the great mountain bike forum come up with improvements. Until then I’ll be dissecting that recovery powder stuff. Hmmmm, I wonder how that stuff compares to Cheez-its and Miller High-Life?
–Derek Nolek
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| Comment from mon on 2009-10-16 |
| Thank you for these wonderful recipes. Will try them out and possibly try some innovations. I don't care much about the taste as long as it does its purpose. |
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| Comment from ereck on 2009-10-15 |
| I have been making my own goop for about two years now. The honey or molasses will never spoil. Honey has anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties. Also, to make this taste better and add caffein just add pure cacao powder. Now you have chocolate goop! You can add lime juice if you prefer a citrus taste.
While we're on the topic of DIY. I also wanted to recommend trying coconut water to replace your sports drink. You can add lime juice to add more atioxidants to it. It has all the essentials of a sports drink. |
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| Comment from Mycle on 2009-07-19 |
| An alternative to Molasses is Maple syrup. Comes from trees instead of sugar. I call it tree sugar. So Energy needer use Maple syrup instead of Molasses. This will taste better! I have used Honey, Maple Syrup, Salt and Bananas in the past in my goop. |
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| Comment from Danl PDX on 2009-03-15 |
| The honey/molasses/salt mix helped a lot during a 4.5hr ride with 20mph wind/rain yesterday. The mix tastes great and the low cost is amazing. Thank you for posting those recipes! |
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| Comment from Energy needer on 2008-10-27 |
| is there anything to make it taste anywhere near good? i almost threw up!! |
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| Comment from Marshall on 2008-02-06 |
| Tried yours and it worked well but wanted to try something slightly different.
2 cups maltodextrin (Carbo Gain from Now Sports available at nutritiongeeks.com) 190 Cal per half cup = 760 Cal
1 tablespoon Brer Rabbit brand Molasses = 60 Cal, 25 mg of Sodium and 290 mg of Potassium
1 scoop of MetRx Protein plus Soy (I used vanilla) 65 Cal, 0.75 gm fat, 14 gm protein, 125 mg sodium, 200 mg Potassium
Add about 8 tablespoons of water, mix, put into 2 five serving gel flasks (makes 10 servings) add enough water to make the full 10 servings or it won't flow.
Each serving has 88 Cal, 15 mg Sodium, 49 mg Potassium, 1.4 grams of protein. This makes it comparable to the prepackaged stuff and significantly cheaper for the ingredients.
Happy Racing. |
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| Comment from Glenn Talaska on 2008-01-20 |
| Thanks for doing the research, I finished a batch with espresso, its strong but ok |
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