Home Made Sports Drink

A few posts ago I mentioned that my favorite sports drink is no loner available (Conquest). I decided to try and make my own...and the test was going to be the 8 hours of running at Howl at the Moon. My drink has passed the test! I didn't break my old PR of 47.06 miles, but I did match it. I missed my ultimate goal of 50 miles, but that had to do with training more than sports drink selection (isn't that usually the case?). I need to tweak the flavors (a little weaker) and salt content a bit (add a bit more), but it worked for 8 hours.

Runners essentially need only three things in a sports drink: calories, electrolytes, and taste. If you're fond of electrolyte capsules, you don't even need sodium/potassium in your drink. I've had great success with Succeed! S-Caps so I wasn't worried too much about adding salts to my home-made brew. No drink will supply the amount of electrolytes most ultra runners need during a long run or race.

After reading several old ULTRA listserv posts about their experiments with making sports drinks, I decided the main ingredient had to be maltodextrin. If you look at food ingredients in sports drinks (and many other food classes), maltodextrin is often listed. It's a commonly used additive that is safe and inexpensive. For runners, the key is that it is easily digestible and contains quickly absorbed calories (it's broken down almost as quickly as glucose and provides the carbohydrates runners require). It doesn't upset the stomach like fructose often can. Another positive characteristic for home-brewers (BTW, it is used in beer manufacturing too!), maltodextrin is easily available (I found several sources on the web--mostly vitamin stores that sell it as a body building/weight gain aid). I bought mine for $14.99 as a 7-pound powder from All Star Health. The actual product was called "Carbo Gain" and was made by NOW Foods. There were lots of other web shops that looked fine too, but All Star had excellent ratings from past buyers and they offered good prices and fairly quick shipping. I'd buy from them again. One warning...7 pounds is a LOT of powder. They make a 2-pound tub as well.

With the main ingredient in hand, I now needed something to flavor the drink. I always liked the soft lemonade taste of Conquest so I thought I'd try to duplicate that as a starting point. I bought sugar-free Crystal Light lemonade powder in the "on the go" packs. I figured I'd need another flavor so I also purchased their sugar-free iced tea powder. The sugar-free versions keep you in control of the carbs/sugar mixture and also make the amount of powder needed small (the large amount of actual sugar is replaced with a tiny amount of aspartame). My powder needed to be easily added and dissolved in 20 oz water bottles. I would need to experiment with how strong/weak I wanted the drink to be, but at least I had the basic taste ingredients (and a few preservatives too).

Did I really need any salt? Probably not. I decided to make the lemonade with salt and the tea without. I used Morton's "Lite Salt" brand since it has a better mixture of sodium and potassium (they call it "lite" because it has less sodium than regular salt).

After experimenting with different mixtures (varying the amount of flavor, salt, and malto), I ended up with this easy mixture for each 20 oz water bottle:

Lemonade Flavor
1/2 pack of Crystal Light Lemonade (half strength)
Rounded 1/8 cup of maltodextrin powder
Couple pinches of salt (less than an 1/8 teaspoon)

Tea Flavor
1/2 pack of Crystal Light Regular Iced Tea (half strength)
Rounded 1/8 cup of maltodextrin powder
No salt

This is about 60 calories per 20 oz bottle. I could use more malto to get extra calories, but as is, the powder takes a few good shakes before it dissolves. I'm going to experiment with different flavored teas next time. The lemonade could be even a bit weaker (more diluted) and I might add a little more salt too. Otherwise, it worked out quite well. I still have LOTS of maltodexrtrin powder left...my 7 pound jug will give me 252 (1/8 cup) servings. Since I use a well rounded 1/8 cup per 20 oz bottle, I'll still get about 200 servings. That comes out to about 7-8 cents per 20 oz water bottle! So now I need a name for my new brew...I'm leaning toward "Ultra Quest." Any ideas?

47.06 at Howl

Overall 2008 Howl at the Moon results are here. Tom Marriage photos from Howl are here. Photo to left (from Shanin) is me with about 10 yards to go before 8:00 time is up! Tim on my left is completing over 51 miles. Tony ("Scarface") on my right is already finishing his 3rd or 4th beer (he was a volunteer, not a runner)!

I didn't get 50 miles and I didn't even set a new PR at Howl at the Moon yesterday. Oh well. I did tie my old PR (47.06 miles) so that's not too bad. My 47.06 miles was good enough for 20th (tie) place overall. It was a bit humid (we even got a touch of light rain), but in general the weather was pretty nice for the first 5-6 hours. In the afternoon, the sun came out and it got rather hot. Still, the temps weren't too bad (high of 80). I ran with Andrew ("Cable Guy") for almost the entire race. For the first 4-5 hours we just kept leap frogging each other as Andrew jogged the hills and I walked...then I'd pick it up on the downhill portions to catch him once again. It was nice running our own styles, but still staying together. I would have slowed down much earlier in the run if it weren't for the Cable Guy. For the last two hours, we just slogged along together doing the best we could in the increasing heat. I think we pushed each other to keep up as we both wanted to get close to 50 miles. We ended up with 14 full loops (14 x 3.29 miles=46.06) plus 2 half-mile out & backs (46.06 + 1=47.06 miles). Not a bad day of running. I'm still disappointed I didn't get 50 miles or a new PR, but that's the way it goes. I really want to take a year off from this race and do Pikes Peak Ascent & Marathon instead next August. Not sure I earned that "treat"--I may need to come back YET AGAIN in 2009 to try for 50 miles (or at least a new PR).

Even though I didn't reach my goal, I did survive another Howl. I'm injury free and feeling pretty good today...except for some very sore muscles. My home-made sports drink worked well (I had lemonade and tea versions). I'll share my simple recipe soon.

My up-to-date statistics for Howl at the Moon 8-Hour:

Total Races: 8
Low: 37.81 miles (2000)
High: 47.06 miles (2006, 2008)
Total Miles: 351.20
Average Miles: 43.90
Best Placing: 12th (2005)
Worst Placing: 44th (2000)

Congratulations to Tim ("TC") for finally breaking 50 miles. You'll be my inspiration for next year. Did I say "next year"? Also, a big shout out to two female buffalo--Christine (58 miles and a new course record) and Ellen (56 miles). And to top it off for the buffalo, Brian set a new walker division record with 41 miles! The buffalo cleaned up at the awards.

Howl at Moon Weather

The weather looks great for Howl at the Moon 8-Hour this Saturday. It's going to be really hot today and tomorrow (around 95), but by Saturday it is supposed to be a high of 76! We could be starting the race with temperatures in the mid-50s. That would be awesome. I've had too many years of running (and walking) in the oppressive heat and humidity at this darn race. It would be a nice change to have reasonable temps. My goal of 50 miles MIGHT be doable!!! I'm fine tuning my home-made sports drink (more on that tomorrow) and I'm loading my i-Pod with some new tunes. I haven't gotten in the long runs I've wanted over the last 2 weeks, but I've been running well and feeling healthy. It's almost time to lace up those shoes and go for it! Best of luck to all the Howl runners. This could be a record breaking year.