Tri247 is coming to you live from Stand E31 at the TCR Show in Sandown Park for the next two days. There's loads of new stuff to see here, some of it making its first appearance in the UK; blueseventy's Helix TST suit, 2XU's V1, the Ceepo carbon bikes and more besides. As we track stuff down in the halls we'll bring you our first impressions and pictures to whet your appetite. The TCR Show is open from 9am to 5:30pm on Saturday and 9am to 5pm on Sunday. Don't forget there's the For Goodness Shakes! Muscles of Steel 10k on Sunday and if you enter that you'll get free entry to the show as well.

If you do come along to the Show, drop by and say "Hello!", you never know who you might bump into on the stand! There are lots of freebies on the stand; Gatorade bottles, Tri247 car stickers, and you can enter the great prize raffle as well which we are helping Action Medical Research to promote.

There are already lots of interesting faces here at the show; we've spotted Dean Jackson on the blueseventy stand with Tim Moxey and ex-BTF Chief Executive, Norman Brook, is touring the halls with Simply Sports Media, a sports video streaming company that he's now working with. Chris Jones is here working with Simon Ward on the Gatorade seminars and we have him down for a slot on the sofa with Annie Emmerson...

On Sigma Sport's stand there's a little corner where 2XU have set up shop along with Richard Stannard and Emma Davis who, as well as being 2XU sponsored athletes, also work with Mike Trees on his Open Water Swim venture at Liquid Leisure and run their own Name on Kit business. Mike has just sponsored Tom Lowe with both 2XU kit and a Ceepo bike and they were preparing his kit so we took some snaps of the process. Don't forget that it's optional to have your kit correctly logoed-up in 2008 at European and World Championships but it will be mandatory from 2009 so now's a good time to think about getting it done before the season - we'll be covering this in a Tri247 editorial feature soon.

First up for a video interview with Annie was Scott Unsworth from Orca with their new product line including the Sonar suit and he was closely followed by Pete Slater from Science in Sport who has his arm in a sling following a spill off his bike - see the T-shirt picture below!. We'll have all the video up during the early part of next week.

We've just spent a bit of time lusting over the new Garmin Forerunner 405 - it's altogether a sleeker and more wrist-friendly unit and with the touch control bezel is so easy to operate that it makes things with buttons look positively archaic! (OK, it still has buttons but with everything these days going to an iPod-style interface you can see exactly where they are coming from!) It's stiil a few weeks from launch but at around £230-£250 depending on the configuration we think it will be a winner.

Here are few more shots of what's going on around the halls, we'll get to the specific product details in a little while - basically we've been interviewing visitors flat-out all day including Jan Sibbersen of Sailfish who was over for the day showing off the new suits.

3:30pm We've been talking to a couple of the nutrition companies about the way that things are going in the world of bars and gels. The new products all now seem to be using combinations of maltodextrin (long-chain carbs) with fructose (short-chain) to give a better delivery of energy. This is all backed by solid research so do take the time to check out the label on your favoured products and see if they are following the pack - you should be getting a 2:1 mix for the best results. Torq were here showing their new gels which come in some very funky and unusual flavours; strawberry/yoghurt, black cherry/yoghurt, orange/banana and a caffeinated forest fruit which packs in 89mg of caffeine derived from guarana. As with all the Torq product, it's all-natural and it slips down really easily without leaving your mouth feeling coaated in goop. The flavours are definitely interesting, there's obviously no dairy in the 'yoghurt' and the banana/orange is subtle - the Editor can't get the orange bit at all, and we'll be testing them in depth in a week or two.

PowerBar are the 500-pound gorilla in the energy food business, although that's on a worldwide basis rather than here in the UK where they probably rank third behind SiS and High5. They too have started to re-formulate their gels and bars with the new carbohydrate mix and have the scientific evidence that the mix works just as well with solids (their C2 bars) as well as it does with gels. The new formulation in the gels also packs in extra sodium as this not only helps with electrolyte replacement but is also important for the energy transfer process. By April all the old-style bars and gels should be replaced with the new dual-carbs versions and there will also be some new flavours including a cola flavoured bar... Again, we have some on test and we will report back in the next week or so.

One of the genuinely new product lines at the show is Orca's Heatseeker vest. This is designed to be worn under a wetsuit and provides an additional thermal layer for the torso. We can see that it could prove very popular for training in early or late season when the water temperature is getting down to that 'ice cream headache' level and you need a bit of extra protection for the core. It's not a flotation garment and the tight roll-neck collar means that it won't be suitable for racing in but it's a genuinely innovative product and costs a reasonable £30. Check your local Orca dealer in the next few weeks as stock starts to come in.