My coaches have been bringing up various samples of energy bars and gels for us to try. They said they would hate for us to drop a bunch of money and then discover we hate the product we bought, so samples. Yay for samples!

This morning, I decided to try the PowerBar PowerGel Vanilla flavor. I have had this in my possession for a couple weeks, but had not yet tried it. Since my husband was also curious about the taste, I wanted to make sure I tried it on one of my home-based runs. Also important, my coaches urged us to try them out near home just in case our stomachs reacted violently to any of them; it would be truly upsetting to be far from a bathroom and in dire need.

As I try the various products, I will tell you about them. Oh, sure, it’s not quite as dramatic as, say, Steve Don’t Eat It, but I am being a test subject for you. Because I care!

I opened my little packet of gel this morning, put it to my lips, and squeezed what is, I believe, the most disgusting, appalling, disconcerting-consistency substance into my mouth. Now, I had braced myself for the gel ooze consistency, but that does not mean I was really ready. It takes a lot of mental prep to eat Jello, and I guess, at 450a, I just had not prepped myself enough. Cold, Jello consistency aside, it was the taste that nearly had me puking in my kitchen this morning. I was hesitant about the vanilla flavor, and I was right. It tasted like sour vanilla yogurt blended together with sour cream. I have a hard enough time choking down yogurt (I can’t get past the “active cultures” part of active cultures), but mixing yogurt in with sour cream is just wrong.

I managed to swallow the small amount I had mistakenly squirted into my mouth. And, grabbed a bottle of G2 (on sale at Publix last week!), but the damage was done. I had that sour taste on my tongue and no pink drink was going to wash it away. So, I ran anyway.

Now it is probably purely coincidental, but I was only able to complete thirty minutes before my stomach was screaming and I had to return home to sit in the bathroom for a while. TMI, I know. I am trying to train my tummy to either wait until after my run or else be ready to pull that nonsense at 440 when I first get up. My tummy wasn’t ready at 440a today, so I probably cannot blame the sour gel for the tummy troubles.

I won’t write off the gels entirely. There are other flavors. I’ll have to try something that sounds less appalling, like tangerine.

While dressing for work, I said to sherlock, “BTW, I tried one of those gels this morning. It was the most vile, disgusting thing I have ever put into my mouth. On that ringing endorsement, it’s on the counter if you want to try it.”

He tried it. He did not like it, either.

I’ll do a review of the peanut butter PowerBar later. And, I have another brand of energy bar to sample still. I think that I’ll see if they have better flavors when I stop by Track Shack tomorrow to pick up my 15K racing packet. I will require fuel for that race. Hmmm… maybe I should buy something tonight to try out tomorrow morning.

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