As you probably already know, we generally advocate getting the majority of your energy from solid and semi-solid foods when you're sweating for longer periods, leaving your fluids for keeping you hydrated. I wrote a detailed take on how we see Precision Fuel & Hydration fitting into your wider fueling strategy and that's worth reading if you find it hard to juggle your hydration and fuel intakes when you're exercising hard.

Our approach to fueling means we’re always on the look out for new and exciting looking energy snacks that fit well with our hydration products during longer training sessions and races and not long ago we stumbled upon Go Bites from fellow British small business Go Faster Food, which is run by Kate Percy who wrote the book of the same name.

Go Bites are all-natural energy balls principally made up of dates and other dried fruit (raisins and apricots depending on the exact flavour you go for) with nuts, oils and refreshingly few other ingredients. They come nicely pre-packaged in packs of 3 which makes them great for sticking in your pocket when running or cycling.

They contain around 6-7g of carbs per ball (so around 19g of carbs per 3 pack) making them less dense gram for gram than more processed energy food like gels (as you’d expect) but still a viable source of calories when you’re out there putting in the hard miles.

Unlike most processed energy products they taste and feel much more ‘real’ - probably because they are real! I found myself looking forward to munching on them much more than I would a gel or something synthetic when I was out during a longer training day.

I had a few packs delivered to the office recently and they lived up to their name and went extremely fast! In fact I think they’d gone within 48 hours of arriving, such was their popularity as alternative nibbles with morning a coffee and that's not something that would have happened with most sports nutrition products.  

Dave also used some on his recent cycling trip across Holland and Belgium and said that he looked forward to the Go Bites more than any of the other products he had packed.

So, in all the Go Bites get a big thumbs up from us. Whilst they’re not going to replace standard energy gels and bars for all of us, all of the time - sometimes you do just need some super concentrated calories with minimal fibre when racing hard - they bridge the gap between real food and training nutritional very nicely indeed.