Training & Nutrition - High-calorie energy drinks

I've recently started doing some endurance mountain bike races. It's kind of hard to navigate singletrack and eat a Powerbar, so I was looking for some liquid calories.

Gatorade and GU are great for 2-3 hour races, but for 6 hours or more...

I've looked at Spiz but it seems like it might be too much (or at least too expensive)

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Personally, I think ANY of the energy drinks, bars, gels are pretty much equal. On the other side of your intestines, they come across as glucose and fructose anyway (through active transport and diffusion).

The main limitation is that your body can only absorb about 250-300 cal/hour max anyway. If you're doing 6-hour events, you gotta start eating even before you get on the bike because you'll have depleted your glycogen stores by halfway (depends upon pace & intensity of course). The total intake for 6 hours would be about 1500 calories. Combined with 2500 stored glycogen calories, you'll have a total of 4000 calories. Running at a high-pace around your LT will give you at most a 20-25% rate of fat-burning, so you'd be getting another 650 cals from fat for a total of 4650 or so. That's barely gonna meet your energy requirements for a 6-hour event...

So... the bottom line is... eat whatever you want, just make sure you keep it coming from the start... and don't forget the water and electrolytes.

accelerade?

If cost is a factor then check this out:
http://arniebakercycling.com/pubs/Free/Maltodextrin%20Nutrition%20ABC.pdf
you can mix two cups of this into 24oz for 1,000 calories per bottle...should suffice. Anyway all the high end stuff uses this as the second ingredient and if you buy it like this then you can flavor to suit and save a bunch of money. You split a 100lbs sack ($100) four ways and have enough of it to last you a year.