My take on this is the folks making packaged and flavored sugar delivery systems are going to be pushing the limits on how dense they can make their products related to how well riders can use them or even keep them down. 120+ an hour is still tough even for those that get paid to do it. Going higher .
This is made even harder in my focus discipline for 2024, XCM. I mean WHERE can you even get a chance to take in a gel? Is it going to be all carbs in a bladder? How will that impact hydration? For gravel races/epic rides, Iâve been doing electrolytes in my hydration pack and gels, chews, etc in a bento/jersey pockets. Still more opportunity to have a bite on gravel, but XCM? Itâs going to take some practice on the mechanics of riding XC and eating plus some course knowledge as to WHEN you have 20 seconds to eat.
I still do carbs in bottles and bladder for training, but I decided last year I had to separate fuel and hydration for races. The big reason for me was I had a couple of colder events where I just didnât need as much fluids, which either has me over-hydrating and needing to stop to pee, or under-fueling. And, if your stomach starts to go south, allows you to switch to just water/electrolytes for a little bit.
Cargo bibs with the leg pockets, larger gels so you need fewer, or flasks help, but you still need to have a time you can grab one. Just comes down to practice.
I really think we need to start understanding and evaluating the differences between professional / elite riders and their caloric requirements vs. us as recreational / competitive athletes.
We simply arenât going as hard for as long as the pros areâŠtherefore our caloric needs are going to be different.
I honestly canât even imagine needing 120g / hour on any race that I doâŠincluding long gravel races. Schitt, I could never get to 90g / hourâŠ
The cynical side of me just looks at a lot of this as a convenient cover storyâŠI really hope I am wrong about that, but the history of the sport indicates otherwise. History has prove that if it looks to good to be true, it probably isnât.
Itâs marketing. I worked with someone who really needed to lose weight, and was working out and riding like a maniac. His wife said he was having an affair with their multitude of workout gear, and yet âcouldnât lose weightâ.
He was gulping down high protein âenergy drinksâ. Pallets of them in his house. âItâs what the pros useâ so it has to be good for him. Right? Sad. No one could talk him out of his âpro drinkâ fixation. He kept saying he âfelt betterâ when he quaffed that junk.
Itâs âcapitalismâ, itâs marketing, itâs snake oil, itâs callously fooling people to think they need tons of sugars, tons chocolate (in many cases). âProteinâ and âenergyâ bars are usually just dolled up candy bars. They, sometimes, are actually used by âpro athletesâ who burn an absurd amount of calories, and CAN burn that crap off. Itâs sad that they have made sugar overdoses a necessity of human life. I LOATH the sports supplement industry. But they make BILLIONS (trillions?) of dollars and have a powerful lobbying group. (And those fruit and veggie pills are a symptom of the supplement mess. Those things are $40 a bottle! Eat some damn veggies!! Theyâre cheaper!! /rant)
No this is good, we have spirited conversations here and while we [mostly] use science to get faster, itâs good to see what the pointy end is doing and IF that correlates to what weâre doing or not doing for that matter.
@robcow No you are right on that WAY too often we think that buying a thing is how we get faster, but the real way you get faster is to 1) put in the work and 2) eat whatâs right for you as an individual. I earn my bike money by sitting at a desk which is so much different than most (but not all) pros. My fitness and diet may be influenced by findings but Iâd say that thereâs no one reading this thatâs going to be able to take a proâs plan and apply it to themselves 1:1. (Itâs not too different than who is the TR HV plan for? Well itâs a very small sliver of subscribers, so even though one can do the HV plan at home, one should really talk to someone before doing soâŠ)
Same goes for carb intake. Iâm not throwing down 550w for 6 hours, so itâs unlikely that Iâll ever need anywhere near 120g of carbs per hour for an XCM event.
Iâve learned so much (good and bad) from other forum members who are doing similar events, and their experiences. So keep the dialog coming!
Yeah, I had this issue last yearâŠI was trying to up my carb intake to 90g / hour (again, never got there) and I just could not lose my âwinter weightâ all yearâŠand I was putting in 250-300 mile weeks.
I reduced my intake this year (would guess to 40-60g / hour depending on the workout) and while i did manage to lose some more weight, I also did not quite achieve what used to be my normal race weight (by about 1kg).
I am not certain what my fueling strategy will be this yearâŠbut I did McGregor -6 today on just water (by accidentâŠthought it was a carb bottle that I grabbed from the fridge) and I had zero issues completing the workout strongly.
I mean I donât think this precludes any chance of riders doing illegal (or gray area) things as well. But I struggle to see how eating twice as much food during the hugely energy demanding races (and training) would have anything but huge performance benefits.
I was listening to an interview with a rider from the 90s/00s (maybe it was Sean Kelly) saying that they used to basically have dick measuring contests of who could eat or drink the least during training and racing. Cycling has for decades had a problem with lighter = faster and I think itâs good to get out there that this isnât necessarily always the case.
As for carbs consumed during training affecting your weight⊠I donât agree from my own anecdotal evidence. When I started riding higher volume I would come home from rides and just be ravenous and need to eat everything in the house or restaurant just to feel good again. But by upping my workout nutrition I could now come home, eat a normal-ish meal, and go about my day with my appetite in much better control. So (for me at least), eating more on rides probably caused me to eat even less than I used to.
People arenât robots, everyone finds what works for them. My 1.5-3 hour training are just fine on 40-60g/hour even though I have no issues consuming 90-120g/hour. I donât see better performance training while gulping more carbs on the bike.
I am not disputing that there are performance advantages to eating more carbsâŠthere clearly are. But when those performance advantages start to best times from some of the best-doped riders in history, it starts to reach the edges of credulity.
SureâŠI am simply offering my own anecdotal experience. It is certainly not meant as a sweeping claim. For me, eating significantly more carbs on the bike impacted my overall race weightâŠand as a classic ectomorph, that resulted in a larger belly than ânormalâ for me during the season.
Go longer and you will. I do 20-30g/h most of the time except for rides longer than 4h which I do 60-80. As long as I stick with drink + Gels + Maurten Solid, I can get down 90-100. Never tried more than that.
After a hard race, well fueled. I can gain up to 8lbs of water weight that will come down in 4-7 days. Crazy.
Sure, but youâre not a world tour cyclist. The OP doesnât say anything about how the average cyclist should be doing the same. Just that itâs what the pros are doing now since theyâre training/racing 25-30+ hours per week. I know Iâm definitely not taking in 120g/hr on any ride.
They take in that much cause thatâs how much they need. So it should be scaled down to whatever you need. I didnât notice the carb intake making much of a difference when I was under 10hr/wk but when Iâm up closer to 15 or so I start to notice it. Not a huge benefit during any one particular session but when I start to stack longer or hard days back to back is when I notice pushing the intake up toward 90 or 100g/hr to start to make a difference.
But that break point could be different for different people.
Iâm thinking this will likely be where I net out for this yearâŠanything 1.5 - 3 hours will get fueled at the lower numbers and anything longer than 3 will get 60+g / hour. Under 90â is water.
This is where Iâve ended up. I used to try all my carbs in a bottle but itâs just too weather dependent. If itâs coolish outside my body doesnât want 24oz per hour. Iâve switched to 40g carb in a bottle and just add on food/gels to get me somewhere about 80g/hr.
doping doesnât always completely outweigh the natural basics. If you doped but only slept 3 hours per night you probably wouldnât be as fast. Same if you dope but are constantly on the edge of starving yourself.
A lot of those times were done in much different circumstances. Longer stages back then being a big one
Lots of those Grand Tour winners from the biggest doping eras were huge in comparison todayâs leaders. Pogacar and Roglic weigh 145lb, Jonas is 135lb, Froome and Thomas are like 150ish. Meanwhile Lance was like 165, Indurain was the same or ~170. Doing 6.5+w/kg is way way more difficult when you weight that much.
Aero jerseys and such also cut the difference on some of the slightly shallower (still pretty steep) climbs compared to those baggy cotton jerseys of the past.
Iâm not saying that people now arenât doping or arenât in the gray area and maybe my view is just optimistic and I just donât really see the point in me stressing too much about it. But I think there are some pretty easy explanations for how current riders have made up a pretty significant chunk of the gap to those from 20+ years ago.
But this thread doesnât need to turn into another âare they or are they notâ thing.
So is something like the Garmin/Wahoo calories burned data field something to use as a tracking point? Eat 100 cal (or carb equivalent) for every 200 burned? I think thatâs how Garmin Smart eat works.
Iâm one of those people that has no issue whatsoever consuming 100g/hour, and am probably going to move to 120g/hour for longer and harder workouts this year primarily geared at being prepped for Leadville. Even on my easier workouts, Iâm still burning more than I can take in. (No, Iâm not fueling like that for a short Z2 ride.) But itâs made a difference for me on long days.
Where I have to watch myself is off the bike. If Iâm doing 100-120g an hour, it doesnât give me free license to stuff my face with carbs the rest of the day and I can put on weight if Iâm not careful. I do have to constantly try to get enough protein though.
So I came in too hot, again. But this discussion bleeds over into the guy that rides his Peloton a couple days a week, and at that, doesnât ride the âscary stuffâ. Too many seem to be easy prey for the sugar pushers out there. Even when I was pushing the miles as hard as I could, and knock off the longest routs on Zwift, I usually used a gel, and always mixed the âelectrolytesâ (sugar) at half strength. That and a banana and tons of water, and I was doing very well. I never bonked. But food is fuel. The idea that people should know what they are putting in the tank doesnât sound as sexy as doing what âthe prosâ do. And so many of the pros are like a supersonic plane, burning tons of fuel and very efficiently, and the average Peloton warrior is so not thatâŠ
Opening it up to everyone, might help regulars, proles keep their lives and weight in check. With that, Iâm outâŠ
(I over-fueled during the pandemic on IPAâs and stouts. I need to burn off the fatđ€·đ»ââïž)
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/rant)
