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Field notes

From the bench and the hills.

Route reports with the fuel log attached, the arithmetic behind the doses, and the odd note on how a bag gets made. Long where it needs to be, short where it does not.

  1. 6 September 2026

    Alastair in a running vest with a soft flask, cloud filling the valleys below

    How much carbohydrate an hour, and why 2:1

    Sixty, ninety or a hundred and twenty grams an hour. Where those numbers come from, how to find yours, and why POWTREK GEL is built at a 2:1 maltodextrin to fructose ratio.

    Alastair McDowell

  2. 6 September 2026

    Alastair running on a tussock ridge with a soft flask in his vest

    Why POWTREK is a bag, not a sachet

    The sachet is the most convenient way to sell carbohydrate and the least sensible way to buy it. Here is the arithmetic that made me build the range the other way round.

    Alastair McDowell