When I did my sprint-tri I stuck to shot blox (taken on during the bike portion, I'm another one who can't run and chew at the same time. ) and gatorade.

It worked great for me, although gatorade has more sugar then I care for and when I'm racing sugar just isn't appealing. I did find something that I am interested in trying as an alternative. It's called Mona.Vie and comes in a bottle and in active gels. Have any of you tried it?

As far as gels go, I tend to stick to the citrus flavors like lemon, lime or orange that way my taste palette isn't expecting a whole lot and I'm not left with a weird after-taste. So far all of the hammer gel flavors I've tried have tasted pretty good though. Apple cinnamon was surprisingly tasty which seems strange to say about a gel, but it was.

If it's really hot, maybe have a separate bottle with water by your shoes in the transition area for T2 and grab that for the run. I found that I was thirsty before reaching the water-station.

HTH!