Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Gu Jet Blackberry Review

Jet Blackberry? What's that you ask? No it's not a new phone... it's something better! It's a new flavor of Gu Gel.

It has the same basic nutrition as any Gu flavor except that it has double the caffeine, much like the coveted Espresso Love. Caffeine is one of the most proven and most effective performance enhancing aids you can get so it would naturally make sense to add another double caffeine flavor to the Gu line up -- I suppose not all people like the taste of espresso after all. The standard Gu flavors have 20 mg of caffeine so one can assume this has 40 mg or slightly less than a half cup of coffee. It would also make it about
equal to Gu Roctane's caffeine dosage of 35 mg.

So enough with the boring science stuff... how does it taste? and does it work? It actually tastes quite good... subtle and not overpowering. I normally just use vanilla Gu since I generally don't like taking anything with a strong taste during my intense workouts or races. This seemed like something I could race with though I would still need to put it through an actual race to test it.

So does it work? As part of an informal test, I also used it on a recent trainer ride (nearly feet of snow on the ground in NYC as I type this) . I normally try to do my off season rides without any gel so I definitely could feel the difference of just taking "something." I took one Jet Blackberry gel before my ride and was able to ride one gear higher than I normally do without feeling like I was putting out any extra effort. I realize this is about as unscientific as it gets
but who cares... I thought it worked great. My normally slow and boring trainer ride actually felt a little more interesting as I was able to push harder and get my heart rate up a little higher. Next test will involve using it during a 10K race.

Until then, preliminary results are in and I think we have a winner. Give it a try, especially if you've been looking for an energy gel with extra caffeine and don't like the taste of coffee flavored gel.

2 comments:

  1. Tried it on a run this past weekend. Verdict: thumbs up! I typically like a caffeine boost for my morning runs, but I'm not fond of the GU Espresso taste. Jet Blackberry seems to do the trick.

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  2. I tried it for the first time today- 8 mile run. I liked the taste, it was like the tri-berry but a little crisper. The run was my best of the year, I can't say that was entirely attributable to the new Gu but at least it didn't hurt! This may be my go-to flavor when I'm not taking Roctane :)

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