I figured I would wait until the end of my race season to post a review about GU Energy Gels, a product which I won in the Team Running Free lottery. I raced a variety of distances this year from sprint all the way up to Ironman 70.3 and used the GU Energy Gels, along with Cliff Shot gels in all my races.
I won’t get into anything technical about branched chain amino acid blends or maltodextrin or anything like that, mainly because I don’t really understand any of that stuff! What I will say is that I found this product to be a great addition to my training and racing. I used the Lemon Sublime flavour exclusively and honestly found that I didn’t get tired of it. I also found the GU gels to be less sweet and sugary than my usual Cliff Shot gels. In both training and racing, I would alternate between GU gels and Cliff Shots and found a big difference in the taste and consistency. Where the Cliff shots were more sticky and sweet, the GU gels were smoother going down and didn’t leave you wanting to chug a bottle of water to get the sugar out of your mouth.
I also found the energy that the gels provided to be great. I would always take one gel about 20 minutes before the swim start and this really seemed to give me a good boost to start the race strong. In an Olympic distance race, I would take one GU gel about 15k into the bike and another around 35k into the bike. Just the two gels, along with a bottle of water, was all I needed to get through the race feeling strong.
Until this year, I had never tried any GU products. But, after using GU gels for the entire season, I will definitely continue to use them in training and racing. Overall, I think GU Energy gels are a great product and would definitely recommend them to other triathletes. One final comment I have about GU Energy Gels is that they tend to get quite thick in cooler weather which made the gel chewier. To be honest, I actually enjoyed the change in consistency and found it to be something different during a longer ride.
