Calories

Time to dig in to (what was mostly) last year's uneaten stash of goodies.

Before I can dive head first into any new nutrition plans.. I've got some base miles to put on, and a few piles of "food" to go through. Once some of these supplies are depleted, I can get on with this year's plans.

You can see, I've got some recovery protein bars. I really like the builder bars. There are some fairly non-descript powerbars to fill out the mix. You can see a gel or two in there.. I lived on gels last year (during exercise). For reference, I probably had 12 gels during the Spirit of Racine 1/2 last year. Brand-wise, I'm fairly equal opportunity. I tend to like Clif stuff (except the gels) much more than the competitors. Gu, Carbboom and the like are nice gels. Many, many I have yet to try though.

I'm looking for the good bad and ugly on the Clif Bloks. I dig how you can evenly divide them out over an hour ( about 33 cals per blok ). And how they are so much less messy than shots. My non-scientific guess is, they take up more space per calories than a shot. The "less mess" factor may well be worth it. This year, I'm going to give them an honest try. I tried them on one ride last year. It was pointed out to me, that perhaps I hadn't eaten enough of them. Thus I couldn't tell if they weren't absorbing, or I just didn't eat enough.. I won't make that mistake this year.

Until then, does your basement stockpile look like this? It's hard to beat 70 cents per box. Eek gads! What reason # is this for doing Ironman? "burn calories so you don't waste last year's stockpile of energy bars." I will be the guy with the knife and fork taped to his top tube.