I haven’t done a product review for a while and I had a friend ask me about the products I used to power up before and during a run so I thought it would be a good time to talk about the products I have used.
Before I had to taper down my training for a while I was on fire training wise doing a fair amount of riding as well as running. At one point I was clocking up a good 100k
in riding a week and a fair few km in running so i found I was burning a lot of energy, getting half way through and running out of steam. It so happened at that time that BodyScience who I am an avid supporter of kindly sent me their new range of fuel bars and gels to try – perfect.
So one day on a ride when I was feeling really sluggish I decided I would try them both out together as the bar is a Performance Fuel Energy Bar and you are meant to eat one bar 15 mins before your run/ride – race and then either eat the bar 45 mins into session or in my case I chose to take the gel which advises you take 30-45 mins into exercise. The result was great – I was on fire and I was able to seriously push myself and felt a bit like a Duracell battery bunny and it gave me loads of energy.
BodyScience Fuel 01 and 02 review
Different things work for different people but on this occasion the bar and the gel worked well for me and have continued to do so.
The bars were a bit of a trial to eat as they are quite chewy – great flavour – vanilla nougat which I really liked. I couldn’t eat a whole one in one go so munched part way into my ride. One bar (40g) gives 21.8g of carbohydrate which was a good amount and they are reasonably low in fat, providing 638KJ.
The gels I had a bit of trouble with flavour wise – the flavour was lemon and lime and I didn’t like it all. I had trouble swallowing as the flavour really didn’t appeal to me but the end result was great energy wise so I guess you have to toss it up – which is more important flavour or effectiveness. I remember my friend and I running and we both were using the Powergel gels a long time ago and the only flavour our local store had was chocolate – we both nearly gagged trying to swallow the gel so the lemon and lime in this gel was not quite that bad.
Energy wise the gel provides 418KJ, slightly more carbs than the bar – 23.6g and no fat which is a huge bonus!
I often find the gels easier when you are on the go training as they are easy to rip the top off, squeeze into the mouth and keep pushing on so it comes down to preference and what you prefer to use.
I’ll be running a competition soon to win some of the gels so watch this space.
Happy Running/Riding 🙂
Tags: Body Science, carbohydrate fuel, energy gels, Product reviews, running aids
