Gels vs Real Food at Ultra Aid Stations
Use both. Your body absorbs carbohydrate from gels, drinks and ordinary food at similar rates, so the choice at an ultra aid station comes down to how hard you’re running, how long you’ve been out, and what your stomach will still accept. Gels suit the hard early hours and the long gaps between checkpoints; real food earns its place as the race gets slower, longer and hotter.
That’s the short version. The rest of this guide is about the part most gels-vs-real-food debates skip: what is actually on the table at a Malaysian checkpoint, how much carbohydrate it holds, and how to build a plan that uses it instead of fighting it.
Does your body care whether carbohydrate comes from a gel or a banana?
Not much, according to the lab work. In two matched trials from the University of Birmingham, well-trained cyclists rode for three hours while taking a glucose-fructose mix as a gel, a bar or a drink. Peak carbohydrate oxidation from the gel was 1.44 g a minute against 1.42 g for the drink (Pfeiffer et al., 2010a). The bar came in at 1.25 g a minute against 1.34 g, a difference that wasn’t statistically significant (Pfeiffer et al., 2010b).
Whole food holds up too. When 14 trained cyclists rode a 75 km time trial twice, once eating bananas and once drinking a 6% carbohydrate drink at the same carbohydrate dose, their finishing times and blood glucose were the same (Nieman et al., 2012).
So a piece of banana at a checkpoint isn’t a lesser fuel. The catch is what happens in your stomach when you’re working hard.
Where gels win: intensity and the gaps between checkpoints
When the pace is high, solid food costs you. Twelve cyclists did a 140-minute race simulation four times, taking 80 g of carbohydrate an hour as a drink, gels, bars or a mix. After the bars, peak power in the final test was about 4% lower than after gels, and nausea, stomach fullness and cramping were all worse. Gels and drinks performed about the same (Guillochon and Rowlands, 2017).
That study was on bikes, at a harder effort than most ultra runners hold. Still, it matches what elite ultra runners do. Three veteran 100-mile runners tracked their race intake across a season that included a Western States win. They averaged about 71 g of carbohydrate an hour, and 93% of their calories came from commercial products: gels, drinks and chews (Stellingwerff, 2016). When you’re racing near the front, a gel is the fastest way to swallow 20 to 25 g of carbohydrate without slowing down.
Gels also travel. On a mountain trail ultra, the stretch between two checkpoints can take two or three hours on the climbs. Whatever you eat in that gap, you carry. A handful of gels weighs less and keeps better in a sweaty vest than a bag of nasi lemak.
Where real food wins: hour five and beyond
Later in the race, two things change. You slow down, which makes your gut more forgiving, and sweet flavours start to feel unbearable. The International Society of Sports Nutrition’s position stand on ultra-marathon racing recommends 150 to 400 kcal an hour from a variety of calorie-dense foods, and points to the growing preference for savoury food in longer races (Tiller et al., 2019). Its suggested carbohydrate range, 30 to 50 g an hour, sits below the 60 to 90 g often quoted for marathons. Plenty of ultra runners take more, the elites above included, but the point stands: over a long day, total energy matters as much as sugar.
Real food also fills a gap gels don’t: protein, fat and salt in forms that feel like a meal. A cup of noodle soup at 2 am does something for morale that a tenth gel can’t.
And your gut can learn either. In a two-week gut-training trial, runners who practised with ordinary carbohydrate foods cut their gastrointestinal symptoms by 63%, about the same as the group that trained with gel discs (Costa et al., 2017). We cover how to set up that block in Why Your Stomach Fails During Ultras.
What does a Malaysian checkpoint table actually give you?
Less carbohydrate than it looks like. Here are typical checkpoint foods with approximate carbohydrate per serving, from standard food composition tables (USDA FoodData Central) and product labels. Portions at aid stations vary, so treat these as rough guides:
| Item | Typical serving | Approximate carbohydrate |
|---|---|---|
| Watermelon | One slice, about 150 g | 11 g |
| Banana | One medium | 27 g |
| Plain white rice | Half a cup cooked, about 80 g | 22 g |
| Boiled potato | One small, about 100 g | 20 g |
| Regular cola | One 150 ml cup | 16 g |
| Energy gel | One sachet | Usually 20 to 30 g; check the label |
Watermelon is the trap. It tastes like relief at a hot lowland checkpoint and it’s worth eating for the water and the mood, but a slice carries less than half a gel’s carbohydrate. Three slices and a couple of orange wedges feel like a meal and come to roughly 35 g. If that’s your whole plate at the halfway station, you’ve rehydrated and only half refuelled.
The format of the aid station matters too. At Malaysia Ultra-Trail by UTMB, run on the forest trails around Maxwell Hill in Taiping, the rules say food and drink at aid stations are to be consumed on site, no disposable cups, bowls or cutlery are handed out, and runners who want a hot meal should bring their own utensils. Bottles can be filled only with water or the sports drink provided, and runners must leave each station carrying enough food for the next stretch (Malaysia Ultra-Trail race regulations). In other words, the real food happens at the table and the gels happen in between. Other races run cup-free too, so read your own race’s rules before you plan.
A worked example: 50 km in about eight hours
Say you’re aiming for 60 g of carbohydrate an hour over an eight-hour trail 50K with five aid stations. That’s 480 g in total. A plan that mixes both formats might look like this:
- Hours 0 to 3, faster and cooler: mostly gels and sports drink. Two gels an hour at about 25 g each, plus a few mouthfuls of drink at each station, gets you close to 60 g.
- Each aid station from hour 3: eat a proper serving before you leave. A banana and half a cup of rice is about 50 g; a small potato and a cup of cola is about 35 g. Sit down for two minutes if you need to.
- Between stations after hour 3: one gel or a handful of chews every 45 minutes to keep the supply steady, since the food you ate at the table won’t carry you through a two-hour climb.
- Last two hours: whatever still goes down. Cola and gels often win here because chewing gets hard.
Run the arithmetic for your own race in our race fueling calculator, and check the hourly target in How Many Carbs Per Hour Do You Need for Running? If you’re planning drop-bag food, our ultra drop bag checklist covers what to pack.
Three mistakes we see at checkpoints
Taking gels with sports drink. A gel is concentrated sugar. Chasing it with more sugar makes a stronger mix in your stomach, which is a common route to cramping and nausea. Wash gels down with plain water.
Eating a full plate at once. A big meal at hour four, followed by an immediate climb, sits like a stone. Eat a moderate portion, then take something small with you, a rice ball or a banana, and finish it over the next 20 minutes of walking.
Trying the checkpoint menu for the first time on race day. If the race guide lists bananas, bread, rice and cola, eat bananas, bread, rice and cola on your long training runs. If it doesn’t list a menu, email the organiser and ask.
So which should you carry?
If you finish a 50K in under six hours, lean on gels and drinks, and treat checkpoint food as a top-up. If you’re out for eight hours or more, or running through the night, plan for real food at every station and use gels to bridge the gaps. Everyone else sits somewhere in between, and your long runs are where you find out where.
For the full picture of ultra fuelling, including fluid, sodium and caffeine, start from our ultra marathon nutrition guide.
References
- Pfeiffer B, Stellingwerff T, Zaltas E, Jeukendrup AE (2010a). CHO oxidation from a CHO gel compared with a drink during exercise. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 42(11), 2038-2045. doi:10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181e0efe6
- Pfeiffer B, Stellingwerff T, Zaltas E, Jeukendrup AE (2010b). Oxidation of solid versus liquid CHO sources during exercise. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 42(11), 2030-2037. doi:10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181e0efc9
- Nieman DC, Gillitt ND, Henson DA, et al. (2012). Bananas as an energy source during exercise: a metabolomics approach. PLoS One, 7(5), e37479. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037479
- Guillochon M, Rowlands DS (2017). Solid, gel, and liquid carbohydrate format effects on gut comfort and performance. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 27(3), 247-254. doi:10.1123/ijsnem.2016-0211
- Stellingwerff T (2016). Competition nutrition practices of elite ultramarathon runners. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 26(1), 93-99. doi:10.1123/ijsnem.2015-0030
- Tiller NB, Roberts JD, Beasley L, et al. (2019). International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: nutritional considerations for single-stage ultra-marathon training and racing. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 16(1), 50. doi:10.1186/s12970-019-0312-9
- Costa RJS, Miall A, Khoo A, et al. (2017). Gut-training: the impact of two weeks repetitive gut-challenge during exercise on gastrointestinal status, glucose availability, fuel kinetics, and running performance. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 42(5), 547-557. doi:10.1139/apnm-2016-0453
- Malaysia Ultra-Trail by UTMB. Race rules and regulations. malaysia.utmb.world
- U.S. Department of Agriculture. FoodData Central. fdc.nal.usda.gov
