What effect do you notice after taking a gel?

I'm not really a huge fan of the thought of gels etc, but as I do my LSR first thing on a Sunday morning...and as I'm not good at eating first thing, I usually go out without breakfast. (Before my marathon I intend to do a few practice runs and eat something before I go out). This means I take a lucozade and some sweets out with me. Try not to eat the sweets unless its a particularly tough bit (did a hilly LSR this week and some of the hills were toughh!!)...but is it bad to be taking out the lucozade with me? I wouldn't do so unless it was a run of 15 miles plus, but I figure off no breakfast it's ok to take a sugary drink?

Brilliant ok, thank you

M.r Zuvai wrote (see)

LouiseG wrote (see)

I am pretty slow so my LSR can be 3 - 4 hours.  I don't like to eat too much before a run and I find gels quite useful as an easy to carry top up; I use Gu gels, but only take about half a sachet at a time, any more than that and it makes me nauseous.  No more than 3 in one day, for the same reason.  Can also cause a bit of stomach distress afterwards.  Regarding effect - about 10 mins or so after taking it I do feel a boost, suspect most of it is down to the caffeine.

i would have a think about the volume of gels you're using during training - the LSR is there to train your body to fuel from fat, and by taking gels you'll be limiting how much you're developing that process

yeah - wasn't going into that much detail but on training run more likely to use none or maybe just one.  Experimented once with 2.  Full marathon I used 2.5.

For marathon I took a half at the start then approx every 6k, theory being to have last half at 36k after which a bit pointless.  But I added chocolate into the mix and laughed off half a gel somewhere along the way.   I have the advantage of quite liking the vanilla and coffee flavours.  Most of the others are pretty revolting.