Highcad

Check out Chris Froome's interview on "The Move" starting at 34:40 (link below) regarding training/in-race carb intake. Is this one of the biggest reasons today's Peleton is going so fast and so hard - w/out PED's (assumption made)?

work4bike

I saw that interview. I'm not up to attempting to consume 100 grams per hour.

Someone let me know how that goes

Highcad

Think it would be hard on a bike? - It's been reported that Kipchoge (current marathon world record holder) is taking in over 100g/hr during marathons, talk about gut distress.

https://runningmagazine.ca/health-nu...utrition-plan/

work4bike

I would think one would want to work up to that level relatively slowly, by say starting out with 50g/hr and it would definitely have to be accompanied by serious training.

Iride01 

That's 400 Calories per hour. Standard for todays pro cyclists I'd think. And probably has been for some time. For me 200 Calories per hour is more than enough. 150 Calories is my norm. Perhaps if I rode 4 or 5 days a week I might get my body conditioned to handle that amount.

Currently if I were to try and consume that many Calories/hour, then I'd have a queasy stomach and my performance would suffer. I don't really have a need to do better for the riding I do.

Highcad

Per Froome's interview referenced in the OP, 100g/hr is much more then they did at SKY when he was winning TDF (2013-2017).

wolfchild

Drinking 100 grams of pure sugar every hour doesn't sound very healthy, no matter how hard you ride or how active you are.

Highcad

I agree, but then neither does racing 100miles/day for 3 weeks or bombing down hills at 50mph - but they still do it. Gotta get that yellow jersey.

Calsun

On one of the rides in one stage of the Tour de France the riders averaged more than 35 mph for 5 hours. I doubt any non-pro rider is capable of anything like that amount of energy output.

Even on 10 hour rides over 120 miles my caloric needs were met with a pancakes breakfast and snacking on dried fruit and nuts and over a period of a week or longer my weight was the same at the end of the last day as it was at the start of the first day. Most Americans far exceed their caloric requirements and consume too much in the way of processed food carbs and animal protein which shows in the ill health and with life expectancy in decline.

People have far more access with the internet to data but few have the critical thinking needed to process that data and respond appropriately.

Highcad

Sounds a bit high mate. Can you provide the stage/year. But I agree, a non-pro is not capable of that energy output at that light weight.

GhostRider62

Stage 19 was just over 3 hours or maybe 3 1/2 hours with an average speed of 49.xy km/h. The fastest stage on record was just over 50 km/h in 1999 IIRC.

I agree with Calsun that too many eat too much simple carbs for good health, in general. Most of us just do not ride hard and long enough to need 100g/hr. I can do it with Skratch Superfuel but rarely do I ride hard enough to justify the expense.

tempocyclist

I've gone as high as 90g carbs / hour over a hard and fast (for me) four hour ride. I felt great the entire ride with hardly any energy drop.

It was tough to keep the calories going in at that rate though, as I just didn't feel like it towards the end. I think that was edging on my upper tolerance limit. I certainly didn't feel like consuming anything after the ride, whereas on fewer carbs I'm usually hungry for a good post-ride recovery meal.

I won't be going that high again, but certainly 50-70g / hour seems like it works well for me and isn't too hard to consume.

PeteHski

It’s all proportionate to your energy burn rate. The modern trend is to consume approx 50% of your energy burn during a long, competitive ride. For me that works out at around 50-60g of carbs/hour. So I’m not at all surprised to see pros taking on 100g +

The guys at TrainerRoad are pretty big on pushing your carb intake pretty hard and they advise slowly increasing your hourly intake as your gut requires conditioning. Taking on 100g per hour is not something most people could tolerate without significant training and probably only required for the very strongest riders.

I find it physically hard to consume more than 70g per hour and so that’s my upper limit. I never bonk or have gut issues just below that level of intake and usually finish hard century events pretty strongly.

MoAlpha

The numbers suggest that WT pros on a hard stage can use that much carbohydrate and more. Muscle uptake of glucose during strenuous exercise is mainly via an insulin-independent transport mechanism, bypassing the known ill-consequences of sugar consumption, but don't try this at home.

vespasianus

My wife, who does triathlons, starts to "practice" eating during long hikes and long all day bike rides, about one month before the event. I think she learned that from the local Tri-club, so I assume people have been doing this for a while.

Jughed

When I started riding back in the early 90's - there was a doctor that laid out the high carb plans, developed goo and similar in race supplements, called for mass carb loading...

Helped me well on my way to being T2.

As I researched T2 stuff later in life - found a series of youtube vids that happened to be by said goo doctor. He was lamenting on how many T2 athletes he created that now have all sorts of associated health issues.

Bodies can only tolerate so much - some less than others - extremes are not always a good thing.

GhostRider62

You bring up a valid concern for me. I've read many studies on the topic and my conclusion was to not start on the heavy carbs until 30-40 minutes into a long ride (4 hours or more) and to only replace the glycogen that I was using, relying on non-insulin mediated transports. How much time at an endurance pace does it take for GLUT4 to bring glucose into the muscle cell and the resultant glycogen ultimately oxidized ...? The question I never found an answer to was whether consuming an amount of carbs exceeding one's output from oxidation of glycogen would impact insulin response.


Two of the best ultra endurance athletes that I know said they prefer to run a little lean, meaning to err slightly on the low side. That is the conservative side of the question whereas the big drink dogma has us fueling up before rides, drinking 200-400 calories per hour on relatively short rides, and then tell us we need recovery drinks.


I don't know the answer but am surprised how many T2 diabetes are in the cycling community. (Tim Noakes is the Goo Doc, right?)

Jughed

Yep, that was his name.

Watching Froomie in the background right now - they train to take 100gms per hour, so they are subjecting themselves to this situation often. Race days, training days - probably for the better part of the year.

Like others have said, these guys can burn more that we can, require more & can process more. The avg joe will just be bloated with extra blood sugar and heavy insulin response. For some of us, that = bad outcome.

blaine

lol...I rode across North Carolina a couple years ago...it was the Cycle NC event...I stopped at all the rest stops, ate the bananas, drank the gatroade and snacked on the pb and j's...gained about 5# by the end of the week...

ZHVelo

Which is why he sucks now. Obviously he had injuries, but he never made it back to the top because he doesn't fuel enough compared to today's riders. Lantern Rouge covered this I think.

Carbonfiberboy 

If you have a power meter and upload your data, it's really easy to see how much to fuel during a ride. You want to go through about 1/2 of your kJ, measured in Calories, no more, and as much of that in carbs as possible. If you do that, you shouldn't be particularly hungry after a ride. I have a little something about every 15' on a long ride. If my HR drops for the power I'm putting out, I need to eat more.

MinnMan

Here's a perspective from Hammer Nutrition.

https://hammernutrition.com/blogs/en...ories-per-hour

Some key takeaways, which I have not independently verified.

1. Ideal intake is approximately 1 calorie/# body weight. At 4 calories/gram of carbohydrate, that would be 40 g/hour for a 160# rider.
2. For most people, the liver can only process about 60 g/hour carbohydrate into glycogen. Anything above that wouldn't be useful.

Maybe pro riders have more efficient livers.

PeteHski

That's roughly what I get through on a hard ride. From what I've read recently it would appear to be trainable i.e. you can train to increase carb intake, which is what the modern pros appear to be doing.

bbbean 

Carb tolerance varies widely. When I'm doing a hard workout or in a race, I can take 90 g/hr in my drink mix (fructose/maltodextrin mix) and a gel or two @30g/gel with no problem. No gut pain, plenty of energy. Some people have to train their guts, but if you race or train hard, all those extra carbs absolutely give you the fuel to do the work.

MinnMan

I'm not disputing your experience, but one point from the Hammer Nutrition article that I posted is that the liver only makes glycogen so fast, and therefore beyond a certain carb intake, there is an excess that isn't available to your muscles. The article asserts that this is 240 calories (60 grams carbs)/hour. Presumably there would also be some factor for total body mass, though.

My point, is that it's not simply a matter of training your gut, it also requires training your liver. PeteHski says that the liver is trainable in this way, but I defer to him on the research that backs that up.