About Carb Hack

I grew up in Wisconsin doing a lot of bike rides as a kid — but mostly rides that were short enough to just fill up a water bottle and call it good.

In college I studied biomedical engineering, started doing a lot of rock climbing, and spent more and more time in the mountains. A few years after graduating I moved to Boulder, where biking, running, and skiing became an even bigger part of my life.

I've always been frugal, had a mind for numbers, and been a bit skeptical of the status quo. It became obvious that modern sports nutrition made a huge difference for the kinds of rides and runs our friends were doing — but I had a hard time justifying how expensive gels and drink mixes could be. Weren't they basically just sugars and salts? When did sugar and salt get so expensive?

I started with some light research and a spreadsheet. It quickly confirmed what I suspected: you could make your own drinks and gels that were essentially identical to the popular expensive options for a fraction of the cost. But the spreadsheet got messy and complicated fast. I wanted a tool that let you quickly compare different products, see exactly what it would cost to recreate them with bulk ingredients, and add your own tweaks as you see fit.

That led me to build Carb Hack. My hope was to help other athletes save money, get outside more often, and be less constrained in their training and racing by the cost of fuel. As I built it, I was also surprised by how much fun I had using it — experimenting with different mixes, watching how the critical parameters shifted with each adjustment, and gaining a real understanding of what had previously been a black box.

I hope you enjoy it.