Picture race morning. You're at the start line of your goal event — a half marathon, a 70.3, a long ride you've trained months for. In your pocket are your gels. And the single biggest predictor of whether the next few hours go well isn't your fitness at this point. It's whether you've got your fuelling dialled in.

Get fuelling right and you hold your pace when others fade. Get it wrong — too little fuel, the wrong fuel, or a fuel your gut rebels against — and the fittest legs in the world can't save the day. The good news: fuelling is one of the most controllable variables in endurance sport. This guide pulls together everything from the FUELCODE series into one practical framework you can actually use.

We'll walk through fuelling in the order it actually happens — before the start, during the effort, and after you finish — answering the practical questions along the way: how much fuel you need, which gel fits which job, when to take it, and — the one that ties it all together — how to test it so race day holds no surprises. Let's start before the gun even goes off.

Before you start: the pre-race fuelling most people forget

Your fuelling doesn't begin at the start line — it begins a day or two earlier, at your kitchen table. The carbohydrate you bank before the gun goes off tops up your glycogen stores (your body's banked carbohydrate) so you start the event with a fuller tank. Skip this and you're playing catch-up from the first kilometre, no matter how good your in-race plan is.

There are two distinct windows here, and they use different amounts:

The days before (carbohydrate loading) — for long events only. For events lasting longer than about 90 minutes, athletes often "carb-load" in the 36–48 hours beforehand: research guidelines suggest around 10–12 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodyweight per day to maximise glycogen stores.^[2] Note this is scaled to your bodyweight — a 60kg runner and a 90kg runner need very different totals. For shorter events, loading isn't necessary; normal balanced eating is enough.

The hours before (your pre-event meal). A pre-event meal of roughly 1–4 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodyweight, eaten 1–4 hours before the start, helps stabilise blood glucose for the effort ahead.^[2] A useful rule of thumb: about 1 g/kg for each hour you have before the start — so a smaller, earlier-digesting amount if you're eating close to go-time, more if you've got several hours.

This is where natural honey earns its place as real food, not just a race-day gel. A few practical ways athletes use it:

• Honey on toast, 1–3 hours before you leave home. A classic pre-endurance breakfast — easily digested carbohydrate that tops up your tank before the start. Organic honey gives you the natural glucose-fructose blend on familiar, gentle-on-the-gut toast.
• Honey dissolved in your bottle (especially for cyclists). Stir honey into your water bottle for a carbohydrate-and-fluid source you can sip in the early kilometres. Dilute it well with water — a concentrated mix sits less comfortably and draws fluid into the gut. Test the concentration in training so it suits you.
• A gel or honey sachet, 15–30 minutes before the start. A natural carbohydrate top-up right before you go — handy on race morning when a full meal isn't practical. The single-ingredient Fir Honey sachet suits this well for a clean, caffeine-free pre-start lift; the Beetroot or Cocoa gel works if you also want a caffeine contribution timed to the start.

This matters especially for shorter events under an hour, where you may not need much (or any) fuel during the effort — but starting well-fuelled still makes a real difference. For a parkrun, a short crit, or a fast 10K, the smart move isn't mid-race fuelling — it's arriving at the line already topped up.

Question 1: How much fuel do you actually need?

Your body stores carbohydrate as glycogen — the fuel it banks inside your muscles and liver. The problem is the tank is small: enough for roughly 90 minutes to two hours of hard effort before it runs low. That's when you "hit the wall." Taking in carbohydrate during exercise tops up the tank so you can keep going.

Sports nutrition bodies like the American College of Sports Medicine give general intake guidelines based on how long you'll be out there:^[1]

• Up to ~1 hour: usually little or no fuel needed during the effort — your stored glycogen covers it. The key here is the pre-race fuelling above: start topped up.
• 1 to 2.5 hours: roughly 30–60 grams of carbohydrate per hour.
• Beyond 2.5 hours: up to around 90 grams per hour — but only if your gut is trained for it, and only from the right kind of carbohydrate (more on that next).

These are starting points, not rules — individual needs vary, and the right number for you is something you refine in training. But they give you a ballpark. As a rough orientation, a typical Nomad gel delivers carbohydrate in the range you'd build an hourly plan around, so a useful starting frame is one gel every 30–45 minutes on longer efforts, adjusted to your own tolerance and the guidance above.

In short: match your hourly carbohydrate to your event's duration — and treat these as guidelines to personalise, not prescriptions.

Question 2: Why the type of carbohydrate matters past 60 grams

Here's a detail that catches a lot of athletes out. Your gut absorbs glucose through one "doorway" — a transporter — and that doorway maxes out at about 60 grams per hour. Try to push more glucose through and the excess just sits in your gut, which is a recipe for the bloating and distress that ends races.^[1]

The fix is using two doorways at once. Glucose goes through one transporter; fructose goes through a different one. Combine them and you can absorb meaningfully more carbohydrate without overwhelming either pathway — which is exactly why glucose-fructose fuels are recommended once you go above 60 grams per hour. We covered the full science of this in Post 01.

This is where honey has a quiet natural advantage: it already contains both glucose and fructose, in roughly the ratio that suits this dual-doorway absorption — no synthetic blending required. Every Nomad gel is built on that honey base.

So the rule of thumb: below 60g/hr, most carbohydrate works; above it, you need a glucose-fructose mix — which honey provides naturally.

Question 3: Which Nomad gel for which job?

This is where the series comes together. Each Nomad variant suits a slightly different job. None is "better" than the others — they're tools for different situations, and the right one depends on your session and your preferences. Here's the field guide at a glance:

A practical way to use caffeine across the range: the Beetroot and Cocoa gels carry a caffeine contribution (from guarana and added caffeine respectively); the Fir, Pollen and Peanut gels are caffeine-free. Many athletes place the caffeinated options early or at a planned lift point, and use the caffeine-free ones for the steady stretches.

Question 4: When should you take them?

Timing turns a pile of gels into a plan. A simple, sound approach:

• Start fuelling before you feel empty. Don't wait for the wall — by then you're already behind. On efforts over 90 minutes, begin taking carbohydrate within the first 45–60 minutes.
• Space it evenly. A gel every 30–45 minutes on long efforts is a common rhythm — adjust to hit your hourly carbohydrate target and to what your gut tolerates.
• Time your caffeine deliberately. If you're using the Beetroot or Cocoa gel for its caffeine, place it where you want the lift — not all at once, and ideally tested in training so you know how you respond.
• Take fuel with a little water where you can. It helps absorption and gut comfort — especially relevant in Singapore's heat, where the gut is already under strain (see Post 07).

Put simply: start early, space evenly, place caffeine on purpose, and pair with water.

The one rule that makes all of this work: test it first

You can have the perfect plan on paper and still have it fall apart on race day — if the first time you try it is race day. This is the single most important principle in this entire series, and it's worth stating plainly: your gut is the limiting factor, and your gut is trainable and individual.

Two athletes can follow the identical fuelling plan and have completely different experiences, because gut tolerance varies enormously from person to person. The only way to find your plan is to test it — repeatedly, in training, in conditions like the ones you'll race in. The encouraging part: your gut adapts. The more you practise fuelling in training, the more it tolerates, which is why "train your gut" is a real strategy, not a slogan (the science is in Post 07).

A simple testing progression:

• Trial each gel on easy sessions first, to find what tastes good and sits well.
• Then test your full race-pace fuelling plan on a few long training sessions — same gels, same timing, same conditions you'll race in.
• Note what works and what doesn't, and adjust. By race day, your plan should be something you've already run several times.
• Never, ever debut a new fuel on race day. It's the most common avoidable fuelling mistake in endurance sport.

After you finish: the recovery window most age-groupers waste

Crossing the line isn't the end of fuelling — it's the start of recovery. The long effort you just finished has drained your glycogen stores, and how you refuel in the hours afterward shapes how you feel tomorrow and how well you back up for your next session. This is the "after" that completes the picture.

The priority after a long or hard effort is straightforward: replace the carbohydrate you burned. Research guidelines suggest aiming for roughly 1–1.2 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodyweight per hour in the first few hours after exercise, when your muscles are most receptive to topping up their stores.^[3] This matters most when you've got another session coming soon — a multi-day event, a hard week, or back-to-back training days.

You'll often hear a specific "3-to-1 carbohydrate-to-protein ratio" quoted as the magic recovery formula. It's worth being honest here: a 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis found that adding protein doesn't significantly speed up glycogen replacement when you're already eating enough carbohydrate.^[4] Protein has a real role — it supports muscle repair and adaptation, and it can help glycogen recovery when your carbohydrate intake is on the low side — but it isn't a strict ratio you need to hit. So: prioritise the carbohydrate first, include some protein for repair, and don't stress about precise ratios.

Where does this leave honey and the gels? A honey-based fuel can be part of that post-effort carbohydrate — honey on toast, or a gel with water if a meal isn't immediately practical — though most athletes will get their recovery nutrition primarily from a proper meal once their appetite returns. The Peanut gel's small protein contribution (covered honestly in Post 08) is a minor bonus here, not a recovery strategy in itself.

The short version of the whole before-during-after picture: top up your tank before, drip-feed carbohydrate during, and replace what you burned after. Honest, simple, and effective.

One last note on the bigger picture

Through this series we've been deliberately honest about what fuel can and can't do. Gels deliver carbohydrate — that's their real, valuable job. The extras (the polyphenols, the small protein contribution, the botanical caffeine) are genuine but modest, and we've been careful never to oversell them. As we covered in Post 09, the smartest nutrition approach is food-level and balanced, not mega-dosed and hyped. The same honesty applies to your whole fuelling strategy: get the fundamentals right — enough carbohydrate, the right type, well-timed, well-tested — and you've done the part that actually matters.

Putting it into practice

If you're ready to build and test your own strategy, the simplest starting point is the Nomad Honey Gel Starter Kit. It includes all five variants — Beetroot, Cocoa, Fir Honey, Pollen, and Peanut — so you can do exactly what this guide describes: test each one across your training, find which suits your gut and your sessions, and assemble a race-day plan you trust.

Start with easy sessions, build to race-pace long efforts, and let your own experience — not anyone's marketing — decide what goes in your pocket on race morning. That's the FUELCODE protocol: honest fuel, tested properly, fuelling a plan you built yourself.