Listening to the science of getting faster and discussing caffeine use. And up to 6mg per kg of body weight! But I don’t hear any mention of how often it can be consumed? Is that through out the day, even or over so many hours?
At least one cup of tea for breakfast, one during the morning, one just after lunch, one in the afternoon, and then one when home after work.
I used to have another 2-3 later at night, but I’ve somehow lost my tolerance.
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You’re supposed to take it about 1 hour before exercise for performance enhancement. Take it as much as you want, but your body builds a tolerance so it will feel less effective with time. I’m sure there’s some fancy science behind what goes on, but essentially it lowers your RPE so that you can go harder longer
Couple of good Scientific Triathlon podcasts on the subject (details included in the show notes if you’re not bothered about listening to them):
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I’ve been trying caffeine tablets before TTs for the last couple of seasons. Probably (actually definitely) not, the tt I’ve done best in I forgot to take one though. The bottle warns against more than one. General coffee though although you can take as much as you want I probably need to get out of the habit of having a 2nd or even a 3rd cup during the day. I seemed to get better results when I just had one cup a day.
It would depend on your event, i have tablet form caffeine for ‘in event’ which from memory is 250mg per tablet, i’m 80kg’s so just over 3mg/kg and take one every 4 hours for an endurance event.
i’ve looked around and advice does vary but it’s definately not the sort of thing to be getting wrong, don’t jump in at the deep end if you don’t already have a resonable tolerance for caffeine.
Minimum effective dose would be best in my opinion
I’m super intrigued by thoughts on caffeine over longer events. Does anyone have any information (or experience) on what caffeine strategy has worked for 12hr+ rides? I do long distance time trials and have largely followed an approach of taking a shot when I’m in need of a morale boost but am left wondering if taking a dose early and maintaining for the event, and so never suffering the need for a boost, would work better.
Otherwise I tend to try (and fail) to drink 500ml of Beta Fuel/Maurten with 80g per hour, and to take a gel or bar to bring that up to 100g, accepting that I will rarely drink the full 500ml per hour - reason being that it’s in a Camelbak and my drinking discipline isn’t great when I can’t see what’s going down the hatch.
It’s been years since I’ve done this and I’ve forgotten most of the details, but:
I’ve done three 13hr events that all started at tiring hours (~2:00am and 6am)
No scientific basis for this.
So first off, I played around with how much caffeine I could take in about 5hrs before I started feeling buzzy/terrible. If you aren’t sure if you’ve reached this limit, you haven’t. It’s a distinct feeling. For me, it’s roughly 800mg in 5hrs.
Then, I took the half life of caffeine (5hrs) and did some math to figure out how I could have the equivalent of about 700mg caffeine ‘active’ in me over the course of the event. I don’t remember what the consumption rate was but I then intook that amount steadily. If I was doing an event that started more like 11am I would probably avoid caffeine until hour 4 or so, allowing me to take a higher dosage for the remainder.
Anyway, no idea if that’s optimal, but it worked for me, I avoided that bad caffeine feeling, and I felt alert. I love caffeine. I think it’s borderline comical that it’s even allowed in endurance sport as it’s an outride massive PED.
Not personally other than the 312 sportive but my mate has not long done 24h and 12h TTs back to back 
@PhilSJones
@rubberbullet @HLaB Caffine consumption and longer races.
I have ridder three 12hrs and a 24hr. (The most recent 12 and 24hr TTs this year - 3 weeks apart). Also quite a few 100s and 50s.
My baseline: I tend to drink two pots of brewed coffee a day. That totals 2lt and 8 scoops of coffee. Usually finishing them by 15:00.
For any race, be it 10m to 24hr, I will usually drink 3-4 cups of coffee beforehand (making a pot, drinking 2 cups at home, then one or two in the car). Then, about 15mins before the start I take a H5 Caffine gel (30mg)
For a 12hr or 24hr, I mix up my 750cc bottles with energy drink and add a H5 tablet, alternating between caffine and non-caffine tablets. (I either label the bottles or use red or black lids depending on the bottles I have available. Red being the caffine ones). I consume roughly 500cc an hour, so in any 3 hr session I will have consumed a drink with caffine in it. That is 75mg of caffine. (To be frank I have put a caffine tab in every bottle for some shorter races, and towards the end or a 12 or overnight deliberatrely picked the bottles with caffine in them.)
I also carry gels, chews and energy bars. I find gels are a real faff (have spilt several down my skinsuit) so I only use them when I want a caffine hit. Unfortunately H5 used to do a (I think) 100mg gel, (Around a single coffee) but now they are only 30mg which is pretty pathetic. However psychologically they help, it not actually be much of a stimulant.
I also tend to be consuming 100-110gms carbs an hour in total.
I make a point with my 750 bottles of consuming 1/3 each time every 30 mins. it frustrates me that some bottles (the wide neck ones) are hard to empty fully, but at least I know what I have drunk.
I hope this helps…
PS I was shocked to see that beta contains NO salt! I normally use H5 energy and mix it with either fructose or orange juice to get the 1:1 ratio. H5 contains salts. Adding (caffine or not), tablets adds to this mix. When I tried beta I was shocked to see it contained no potassiom or sodium at all!