Monday, October 22, 2012

A diabetic running gel, is this possible?

 Friday I was shopping at my local Walmart (yes I am white trash and I enjoy Walmart) and was picking up a few items for the weekend that I was out of.  The list consisted of camping snacks such as granola bars, gummy worms, and Quick Sticks.  Saturday was one of my busiest days every because I am not smart and over booked myself.  The day was to start with an 8:00am run with my www.insulindependence group, then at 9:00am a  yoga-dog obedience-cross training class , then a run home to change clothes pack up for camping and head out to do an orienteering event from 1:00pm till 4:30pm.  When I shop for diabetes crap at the store I always look around and see if there is any new product on the market I am not aware of, this usually takes a solid one minute because nothing changes in the world of diabetes, but this time I saw these fast acting glucose gel's next to the Quick Sticks.
 I picked up a box and this did not look like some sort of faux-diabetes wanna be product like the "sugar-free" candy in the diabetes section that has 41g of "sugar alcohol" in them.  This looked to be a real deal running gel for diabetics so I grabbed a box along with my Quick Sticks and headed home.
Once I got home and was planning my run details which usually include three honey stingers and a couple of Quick Sticks, I replaced the stingers with these "level life" things, willing to risk my life for diabetes experiments with myself for myself.   On the run at like mile two-ish I had one of these gels and let me tell all you runners this, these things are freakin good.  I mean not just another hammer gel, GU, or honey stinger where they are all thick and weird and stuff but this thing was the consistency of a think watery fluid and the flavor was way freakin good.  The runners out there reading this know what I mean when you get "gel burnout" and just the thought of certain flavors and brand almost make you throw up from just thinking about them, for me it is GU vanilla flavor.  I have had about a gazillion of those things back when they used to be the only game in town for gels and now I cringe when I see them at the store.  These things list dextro something another as its main ingredient and I have not heard of these things but looks like a little research is in order to find out why I am just now trying these diabetes running gels.  If you have not tried them I would 100% give them a try.  They are not as carb filled as your typical gel but the flavor and consistency is worth the price of having to Carry twice the gels.

4 comments:

  1. ...and according to their website they are gluten free for us GF T1 peeps :)

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  2. Hey Dave!

    I have met the guy behind this stuff - he seems pretty cool and lives with type 1 himself.

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  3. I echo what Scott said, I talked to the guy at Friends for Life over the summer and was impressed by him. I've tried the orange flavor but it was a little too ORANGE for my liking (I'm not a huge orange fan). But I'm hoping to find the caramel and strawberry banana ones because yum!!

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  4. I met the guy who's behind these at FFL (much like Karen) and not only was he cute and friendly (#1 in my books) but his gels were awesome!
    sadly... in Canadia-land nobody sends the good stuff up here.

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