Cooking 101 (Home made gel)

When picking up my race kit for the Melbourne Half-Marathon in October I also purchased a box of PB Sports Gel at a sponsors stand. The boxes were going cheap, $35 from memory, which equated to $1.45 per 35 ml sachet. Cheap I thought. Well anyway during training after the Melbourne Half-Marathon for the Portland Marathon I experimented with the gels. I established that for me, they work. During the Marathon I never once felt like seizing up (hitting the wall). I've now only got two sachets left and the cheapest price I can get is $2.10 per sachet from Coles Supermarket. I thought running was suppose to be cheap. I came across this thread at the CoolRunning website relating to homemade gels and thought I'd give it go. Last week I purchased the ingredients - 900 g tin of Poly-Joule (pure glucose - 95% carbohydrate), Gastrolyte sachets and red cordial. I reckon I could substitute Gatorade or Staminade powder for the Gastrolyte sachets. Last Saturday I quickly tried one batch which didn't go too well - I couldn't get all the lumpy bits out - what was left I consumed on my Inaugural Brimbank Park run on the Sunday. I was then off to the CoolRunning forum seeking advice on how the hell all the stuff is mixed. So today, with time on my hands, I mixed four batches and all four are currently in the fridge which I'll check on tomorrow. The difficulty I had on Saturday trying to mix the powders with the cordial is that lumpy bits remained. The advice I got from the CR forum is 1. Microwave mix and/or power blend. Microwaving is the least messiest. Batch 1 : 3 scoops Poly-Joule, 1 scoop Gatorade, 2 scoops red cordial - nuke 15 secs, then stir. Batch 2 : 4 scoops Poly-Joule, 1 scoop Gatorade, 2 scoops red cordial - nuke 15 secs, then stir. Batch 3 : 5 scoops Poly-Joule, 1 scoop Gatorade, 2 scoops red cordial - nuke 15 secs, then stir. Batch 4 : 6 scoops Poly-Joule, 1 scoop Gatorade, 2 scoops red cordial - nuke 20 secs, then stir. Using the nuking method certainly assisted with the mixing. Batch 4 will certainly be the most viscous and batch 1 the least. Tomorrow I figure out which batch to stay with and may need some fine-tuning as regards the Gatorade ingredient (I'm suspecting more required). I also have to figure out the nutritional aspect as I want it to be similar to the PB Sports Gel I'm familiar with. All in all, this should save me a lot of money. Until next time, Chef Steve signing off.