With the holidays upon us, iRunFar.com and Clif Bar teamed up to spread joy to runners around the country. If you were one of the first 25 U.S. residents to leave a comment noting your favorite flavor of Clif Shot Bloks (or why you’d like to try Shot Bloks) and we’ll be sending you two packs of the brand new Mountain Berry flavor Shot Bloks. [Send us your shipped address if you are above my “And We’re Full” comment. You won!] We tried the new Mountain Berry Shot Bloks back in August and loved them. (FYI, the Mountain Berry flavor is a caffeine free variety of Shot Blok.)
If you won, not only will you be among the first to try the Mountain Berry flavor, (these bad boys aren’t even on the Clif website as we write this post) but you’ll get to try the new FastPak packaging before everyone else. Rarely is a packaging update as noteworthy as the introduction of the FastPak, but the FastPak is a huge improvement over the old packaging… which was not ideal, to say the least. Long gone is the overly voluminous, air-filled packaging with 6 Bloks glommed together. Now, the FastPak provides the 6 Bloks in a compact, linear arrangement that takes up no more room than is absolutely necessary. While the FastPak is about an inch wider than the old package, it’s less than one fourth the height and less deep, as well. We were going to conduct a volumetric comparison… but think that it’s fair enough to estimate that the FastPak takes up about half the space of old package. (Clif says its a third smaller.) This is great as it means you can fit twice as many Clif Shot Bloks in the same pocket.
Old v. New comparisonThe FastPak has another advantage aside from its more compact shape – its linear packaging! In the past, it was sometimes difficult to separate individual Blok before squeezing them through a small hole torn in a corner of the package. Now, you can simply tear one end open, squeeze the far end of the package, and pop them out one at a time into your mouth.
Keep your eyes open for Mountain Berry Clif Shot Bloks and the new FastPak packaging for all Shot Bloks at you favorite outdoor retailers!
Also keep your eyes open for Clif Shot Roks. The Shot Roks are the high protein counterpart to Shot Bloks. There are 10 Roks and 20 grams of protein per pack. There are also 4.5 grams of fat per pack. Both the protein and fat are excellent complimentary energy sources for long endurance endeavors. The shell of the Shot Rok has a pleasant crunch and the taste of the two flavors we tried weren’t overly sweet. The chocolate flavor tastes of chocolate with an after taste that reminds us of malt balls. The chocolate chip cookie dough is quite tasty. We haven’t tried the peanut butter variety yet.
Clif Shot Roks – Peanut Butter
