The 2026 Ironman Global Series serves Maurten gels and Precision Fuel & Hydration's PH1000 on course, which makes race-day hydration shopping a matching exercise rather than a browsing one. Since race day rewards only rehearsed products, the order list starts from what the course will pour and works backward. Matching the course covers most of the plan, and the rest is the tested backup an athlete brings along when the course presents something unfamiliar.
The Feed
The Feed solves the matching problem in one shipment by stocking both 2026 Ironman on-course brands, Maurten and Precision Fuel & Hydration, alongside Skratch Labs, Science in Sport, and Tailwind Nutrition, plus Mortal Hydration for anyone still on the 2024 and 2025 North American on-course formula. An athlete preparing for a summer 70.3 can order the PH1000, the course will serve, the Maurten gels stationed at aid tables, and the Skratch mix already proven on long rides as a single consolidated order, which replaces three separate storefronts and their separate delivery estimates with one tracking number to watch in the final weeks.
Shipping is the part of the offer that matters most during race week. Free standard delivery takes 1 to 5 business days, so an order placed at the start of race week still arrives with margin, and paid overnight options cover the tighter windows.
Two limits apply. The site does not display a guaranteed order-by date for a given race weekend, so the athlete has to run the delivery math personally. And the free tier covers only the contiguous US, pushing Alaska, Hawaii, and international racers toward paid options.
Precision Fuel & Hydration
For 2026, Ironman expanded its partnership with Precision Fuel & Hydration. It made PH1000 the official hydration drink across the global series, including the World Championship in Kona and the 70.3 Worlds in Nice. That changes what the brand's direct store represents. Since PH1000 is now the drink volunteers will hand up at every aid station on those courses, buying it from precisionhydration.com works as a rehearsal of the on-course protocol itself.
The product logic behind PH1000 is the sodium number. The mix contains 1,000mg of sodium per liter, roughly double that of a typical sports drink, and the company sells the same formula in 500mg and 1,500mg strengths for athletes whose sweat testing points higher or lower. The 13-piece Tryout Pack bundles tablets and gels across strengths. Thus, it lets an athlete run the full on-course protocol during training blocks before committing to boxes.
Anyone depending on the site's planning tools, including the free online sweat test, should confirm access before building a plan around them, since those pages have been intermittently unreachable. Pricing is at the premium end of the category, so expect to pay more per serving than at a grocery-store electrolyte aisle.
Maurten
The other half of the 2026 Ironman partnership belongs to Maurten, the official sports fuel, meaning Gel 100, the caffeinated Gel 100 CAF 100, and the chewable Solid are what athletes find on course. The brand has the same standing in road racing, where it has supplied multiple World Marathon Majors, and Sebastian Sawe sipped Drink Mix 320 on the bus to the start of the 2025 London Marathon before running 1:59.
The US retail store at retail-us.maurten.com sells the full range, and the products are also available at the Ironman Store and The Feed. The hydrogel design encapsulates carbohydrate in an alginate and pectin network, which is why athletes with sensitive stomachs train on it at carb loads that would otherwise cause trouble. The range sits at premium prices and is deliberately unflavored, a design choice some palates never accept.
Drink Mix 320 contains 80g of carbohydrate and 200mg of sodium per bottle, numbers worth knowing before deciding how much extra electrolyte the plan needs. Maurten's main US site has reliability problems, so the dedicated retail subdomain or a stocking retailer is the dependable route to an order.
Gatorade Endurance
Gatorade Endurance lost its Ironman position in 2024, when Mortal Hydration replaced it on North American courses. However, plenty of marathons and local races still pour it, and for those events, it remains the cheapest course-matching decision available. The store offers the canisters and little else, without single-serve sampling, strength tiers, or endurance-specific guidance. Hence, the athlete who needs more sodium than 620mg per bottle has to supplement from a specialty store.
Each bottle has 46g of carbohydrate and 620mg of sodium, and a 32-oz canister ordered from endurance.gatorade.com or through Amazon yields roughly 20 servings. The argument for buying it is arithmetic. An athlete racing an event that serves Gatorade Endurance can train on the course drink for the price of one canister, then take every aid station cup with a gut already adapted to it, and spend nothing on carried hydration at all. That removes both a cost line and a logistics line from the race plan.
Order Deadlines and Shipping Windows in Race Week
The shipping math deserves its own step, because most race-week failures are calendar failures rather than product failures. Standard delivery across these stores takes 1 to 5 business days, so the race order belongs at least a full week, and ideally closer to two, ahead of the gun. Skratch Labs and Tailwind Nutrition both set a $59 floor for free US shipping, so a small top-up order under that line either pays freight or waits. Orders under 1lb at The Feed route through USPS and add 1 to 2 days to the estimate, a detail that catches people ordering a few packets late. However, The Feed's FedEx 2Day and FedEx Overnight tiers exist for the athlete who discovers a gap on Tuesday before a Saturday start. Weekends do not count as business days in any of these windows, and a Thursday order on standard shipping can land after the race it was meant for.
Skratch Labs
Skratch Labs sells its Sport Hydration Drink Mix from a $1.95 single serving to a full bag. It makes it the store to test products in before committing to large quantities. The catalog adds sample packs and variety packs to that range, and free shipping applies to US orders over $59, though the hydration line includes no caffeinated option. So, caffeine staging requires a second product. An athlete can test 3 flavors through a training block for under $10 before buying race quantities.
The 2026 addition that matters for race planning is the Electrolyte Booster, a sodium-only add-in with no carbs, sweeteners, or flavor. The standard mix supplies 400mg of sodium per liter, matched to average sweat, and matching a measured sweat test takes manual Booster math here, where Precision's three tiers cover the same ground off the shelf. The Booster raises the sodium number for hot races or salty sweaters without changing the taste the gut already knows. So, the gut meets a familiar mix even while the formula adjusts to conditions.
Science in Sport
Beta Fuel, a high-carb range built on an 80g serving at a 1:0.8 maltodextrin-to-fructose ratio, is the reason to order from Science in Sport. A single packet of the gel version contains 40g of carbohydrate, among the highest single-gel loads sold, which matters for athletes who need to fuel past what any course provides. David Roche named the Beta Fuel gel one of his three favorite high-carb gels in his June 2026 piece on race cramping, a working endorsement from a coach who treats fueling volume as a form of cramp prevention.
The brand's certification record is the other reason to buy from it for a race. Every product is Informed Sport certified, which any athlete subject to drug testing should treat as a requirement rather than a bonus. The catalog also includes a caffeine gum at 100mg per piece with zero sugar, a tool for staging caffeine in the back half of a race without adding another gel to the pocket count.
US buyers should confirm stock and delivery timelines through the US site and through retailers before race week, since several US collection pages load inconsistently, and a stocking retailer may be the faster route to a deadline.
Tailwind Nutrition
Some race plans ignore the aid stations entirely, and Tailwind Nutrition exists for those. Endurance Fuel combines calories, electrolytes, and hydration in one drink, a property that made it an ultrarunning staple, and the store maintains a dedicated event-products category for race-oriented stock. For self-supported efforts and races over 6 hours, one product in every bottle removes a whole class of mid-race decisions.
Small formats keep the testing cost low. A caffeinated 4-pack costs $11.00, a standard 6-pack $16.50, and single servings start at $2.75, with the caffeinated variants supplying 35mg per serving for athletes who stage caffeine through a long day. Free US shipping starts at $59, the same floor as Skratch.
One sodium concentration fits all buyers, with no tiered strengths to match a sweat test, and the brand has no presence at marathon majors or on Ironman courses, so it is a self-carry choice rather than a course-matching one.
Course-Matched Bottles and the Carried Reserve
The order list resolves into one decision rule. Carry what the course will not pour, and take from aid stations only what training has already proven. A marathoner racing an event that serves Maurten and PH1000 trains on both for the final block, orders a small carried reserve of the same products, and adds nothing else. The same athlete at a race pouring Gatorade Endurance either trains on it or builds a fully carried plan from the testing tier, with a flask of Tailwind or pre-mixed Skratch replacing every cup the plan skips.
Cramping improves across a training block of practiced fueling rather than in a single race. The gut adapts in weeks, and shipping takes days, so the meaningful order is the one placed at the start of the final block. By then, the race-week purchase is a restock, a second bag of the same mix that those training weeks already proved.
Final Thoughts
Race-day hydration is a matching exercise, not a browsing one. Identify what the course will cover, Maurten and PH1000 across the 2026 Ironman series, then buy and rehearse it through a full training block from the stores above. Carry only the backups the gut has already adapted to, and place the order that matters at the start of that block rather than in race week. Mind the shipping windows, and the race-week purchase becomes a simple restock.
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