Goo

I've got a marathon to run in a few months, partly because I wanted something really stressful to distract me while we're preparing for our wedding, and partly because I'm vain and want to reduce the flab I'm carrying around with me. Although then I remember that I'm not a twelve year old child and therefore I should weigh more than eighty pounds.

However, perversely if the aim of this is weight reduction, today I went to the shops to buy some high energy foods.

Well, I say food. Sports goo exists on the border between 'food' and 'fuel' - a strange hinterland, the place where those bars made of plastic that astronauts are supposed to eat all hang out, along with isotonic drinks and strange things that look like delicious chewy sweets and turn out to be disgusting chewy sweets.

And sachets of goo.

Or gloop.

The vendors would probably prefer that I refer to Hammer GEL as 'Rapid Energy Fuel', and Accel Gel as 'Advanced Sports Gel', but goop is what it is. And please bear in mind that my friend Nick had much worse names for it than that.

But anyway, if you go running for a half marathon distance in the middle of nowhere, you want to travel light, rather than cart around a bag full of marmalade sandwiches with you, and although the consistency of gels is not the most wonderful thing you'll ever have in your mouth, they're portable and will lift you up if you're deep in a hole.

Last week I had an apple flavoured Hammer Gel - not too bad - but there were none left at the triathlon shop in Central this week. There were lots of Gu (the only brand brave enough to call a spade a spade, rather than describe their goo as 'an advanced sports food solution') but I've had their stuff before, and the effect of the caffeine in some of them - well, let's just say that it's hard to run quickly if you're doubled over with stomach cramps, desperately looking for a non-existent toilet out on the trail. What works for you may not work for me, etc.

So instead, two more Hammer Gels: a Vanilla and the vaguely pretentious sounding 'Montana Huckleberry', and an Accel Gel, which is also Vanilla, but from the packet feels slightly thicker and goopier than the Hammer Gels. The problem with the Hammer Gel I had last weekend was that I found it hard to squeeze all of it out of the packet - I'm not sure if it's easier when you use a thinner one (like SIS, which doesn't exist out here in Hong Kong) or a really thick one, like the Accel, which probably risks dehydrating you because there's so much more sugar in there and less water.

However, it should be raining this weekend so perhaps that will make it palatable and stop me suffering some hell of osmosis.

Speaking of palatability, it's odd that they're all sweet. There's various fruit based flavours, a few chocolates and the ever-present vanillas, but you never get a savoury gel. I don't know why. The people who should really be using these are the ultra-long-distance racers - the 24 hour bicycle soloists, the people running three marathons without stopping, the lunatic Iron Men who make up for their parents not buying them toys by spending money on carbon fibre wetsuits when they're all growed up. And those times that I've been in really long distance events, when it's four in the morning and there's still four more hours of hard work before I can take a break, the last thing I want is yet another vanilla flavoured squirt of gloop in my mouth.

Face it, what I want is a meat pie. Wrapped in bacon. With marmite spread on top. Yet you never get savoury sports gels, or beer flavoured sports drinks, or anything that doesn't appear to have been invented by somebody really into the idea of Spaaaaace Fooooooood in Spaaaaaace. Why is that? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm really interested to know. If anybody has the answer, I'd love to hear it.

In the meantime, goo for breakfast, goo for lunch, and a big bowl of ravioli for dinner. Life is great, isn't it?