Originally Posted by 'nother
Great, thanks for that. The article seems to advocate a mixture of dextrose (glucose) + maltodextrine, which is interesting and useful: I found that a mixture of Hammer's HEED + other sports drink (I use Gookinaid which is mostly glucose + a little fructose + maltodextrine) to be a pretty good combination. However, the article is geared towards bodybuilding and rapid absorption...don't we want to slow the uptake (at least a little) for endurance activities such as cycling?
I don't see why you would want to slow down absorption of energy? Even at endurace-paces on the bike, you're still burning through 500-600 cal/hr or twice the maximum-rate of absorption.
Many people worry about insulin-spikes and low blood-sugar, but that doesn't affect performance because it's not a true indicator of the levels of muscle-glycogen. That's the real key to endurance, how much carbs you actually have inside the muscles, not how much is floating around in the blood-stream. What a lot of people don't realize is that when the insulin lowers your blood-sugar, where does that glucose go? Into your muscle-cells! Exactly where you want it!
As for spreading out calorie on endurance, you can do that by pacing the sips from your bottles and the numbers of gels eaten per hour. But the intake ends up at the same rate of maximum-absorption by your digestion system anyway, eating more than that just has it sitting in your belly.