It depends on what your aiming for. I assume you are marathon training. if you can plan your long runs with various water/drink /food stops. Either a long route that calls past home on several occasions so that you can get fresh supplies every 30 mins or so.
for my last marathon training i would normally take a couple of quid out and stop every hour and buy a lucozade sport drink or take a gel and buy a bottle of water, saves carrying any bottles etc.
It is best to train with whatever drink or gel will be supplied on the course. If doing FLM then it will be lucozade, get used to it before the race.
The gels will not help instantly and you should already have enough glycogen stores to do 1hr 30 or so of exercise, as you are depleting that it needs to be replaced, you should either train your body to go further by bunring your fat stores (but this takes time to train) or start feeding effectively from about 45 mins into the race, the gel will then be active before your glycogen stores are depleted.
if you dont like gels then jelly babies etc have similar qualities BUT you will need a few of them for the same value. they can be eaten one every 5 mins or so.
