I believe bulk supps sodium citrate came back with a significant product per unit weight deviation. As in, there was something like 20% 'something else' in there. The ones listed on that page all have reasonable food grade purity. (not like certified ultra-pure jargon rubber stamped this and that... but pure like "your product weight and amount of sodium you get per serving make mathematical sense and aren't off by a double digit percentage.")

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Dr. Alex Harrison | Founder & CEO | Sport Physiology & Performance PhD
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I remember when Osmo and Skratch first came out they were saying to not count the calories from their hydration mixes towards your carbohydrate fueling plans. Is that still the case, or has that thinking evolved as well? eg.: If I throw 2 scoops of Skratch in my bottle, does that 160 calories (38g carbs) count towards my hourly planned intake?

Yes, it definitely does count towards hourly intake rate calculations. Good question.

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Dr. Alex Harrison | Founder & CEO | Sport Physiology & Performance PhD
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📱 Check out our app → Saturday: Pro Fuel & Hydration, a performance nutrition coach in your pocket.
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so you're simply saying go to the store and buy the usual gatorade/powerade or whatever else I find there. Add in extra normal house sugar and maybe some extra salt and toss it into a bottle, shake her up a little and go slam the roads and most likely that is about the best thing I can create for the money? Something about that just doesn't work in my head since there are 500 million companies doing endurance nutrititon all with different gimmicks or ways to get you to the finish line.

Well, you can skip the trip to the store, use a non-disposable bottle from home, and make something with similar results that doesn't have food coloring to make it look purdy.

My go to move is to use coconut water as the base, add in sucrose (table sugar), maltodextrin, dextrose, fructose, sodium citrate, and a pinch of citric acid followed by some maple syrup if I happen to ask myself what Sanders would do.

All the different ingredients absorb at different rates into the body. Dextrose is less sweet than sugar, an maltodextrin even more so less sweet. So it's kinda nice not to have it be too nasty. Which I think the coconut water helps with too. It's still too sweet of course, and I have to wash it down with water in between gulps to help get the stuff off my teeth too.

Once the world actually gets that point, a lot of companies are going to A) go belly up B) make it more about the user experience.

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Dr. Alex Harrison | Founder & CEO | Sport Physiology & Performance PhD
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📱 Check out our app → Saturday: Pro Fuel & Hydration, a performance nutrition coach in your pocket.
Join us on YouTube → Saturday Morning | Ride & Run Faster and our growing Saturday User Hub

You got it. You can buy a lifetime supply of sodium citrate for 20 bucks. Use regular sugar and flavor with whatever you want.

The only thing that makes me upset about it is how much I used to spend on "Fuel" and how stupid I was for not noticing that it's mostly sugar and sodium citrate.

Try it. It works.

It's fuelled me for 1000+ hours of training at this point, through iron distances and two ultraman stage races. This is gonna sound like an ad, but I've no connection to Dr. Harrison other than using the Saturday app. Fueling according to its recommendations has helped me stay consistent and injury free over the last couple years, and I've leaned out without even trying--likely in part because I don't get home absolutely starving from long efforts. Recovering better than ever.

For what it's worth, for the swim and bike, I use Skratch hydration as my "base", since I like the flavours, add table sugar and salt as needed. For the run, I prefer to drink water for whatever reason, so I use maple syrup+salt in a flask as my fuel source. Easy, portable and pretty cheap when I see companies selling gels for 7 dollars a piece!

I still use Hammer Perpetuem for long events and training on the bike. I mix up a bottle with 2 scoops/hr of the time I expect to be racing or training and toss in some endurolyte powder if I expect it to be a hot one. I sip on it during that portion of the race. I usually move to gels on the run. Maurten's that are provided on the course. I used to carry Hammer flasks with their gel. I'm old school and don't change what works. It's funny you spoke about the old T shirts. I have an old one from when I was on the Powerbar performance team back in the 80-90's when Brian Maxwell still owned the company. I still wear it to races and I had one guy offer to buy it from me. Haha. Powerbars had so many useful hacks. If you lost an elbow pad on your bike you could always tape the golden foil wrapped Powerbar to replace it..

My pre race meal is Perpetuem too. 300-500 calories. It provides a good satiety value and is easily cleared without any GI issues. Hammer on!