kingston 

If I'm trying to ride a fast brevet I normally stick to a liquid diet of malto/whey mix and gatorade powder (different bottles). I also ride a lot of fasted 100k training rides which I think helps a lot on the longer rides. I always eat real food before I sleep, so unless I'm riding a 600k straight through, I'll eat at least one real meal.

Morimorimori

Won't work for me, unfortunately, as relying on fat means that you'll have to maintain a rather low average speed. Even more, it's not like you can switch to keto mode in a night, it's a long and painful process of adapting to the new diet - and your ability to employ glycogen for achieving peak performance suffers a blow during this transition. So it's like you have to change the way you ride and your eating habits, for the sake to ride a brevet every once in a while. Doesn't seem a good bargain to me..

And I really doubt that 5-10 brevets a year will cause me that much health problem I'm actually thinking of using mass gainer because most of carbo it contains are slow-burning curbo (not a simple sugars), thus much healthier (not more threat than in a bowl of pasta, at least)

There are other objections to claimed efficacy of keto diets. Here is a good take at it by Dylan Jhonson again:

jlippinbike

Your comments seem to indicate that you think I suggested you consider going on a ketogenic diet and riding your UNSUPPORTED ultra-distance cycling events in a state of ketosis. But that's not what I suggested at all. Fat adapted means that your metabolism can switch from the fed state to the the unfed state without starving. Said another way, a fat adapted athlete can burn calories from the food they have recently eaten and when that runs out the body will burn stored body fat for energy. A person who is not fat adapted cannot easily burn stored body fat when the food recently eaten runs out. The main culprit behind being not-fat-adapted is a condition called insulin resistance. When you have insulin in your blood after running out of food it prevents your body from burning stored body fat.
A keto diet can certainly get you past insulin resistance. And if you practice a ketogenic diet and maintain it all the time, then you will be fat adapted. However, you don't have to practice a keto diet nor practice it all the time in order to be fat adapted. Who cares if your body is in a state of ketosis and running on ketones? I certainly don't. What matters is whether your body can switch from the fed state into the unfed state burning stored body fat UNTIL YOU GET TO A CONVENIENCE STORE THAT WILL SELL YOU SOME MORE FOOD. Keep in mind that randonneuring is UNSUPPORTED distance riding. It's not like Tour de France rides that are fully supported. And those riders don't push all that hard for the vast majority of their stages. They loaf through their rides in a pack being fully supported and then rise to the occasion in the mountains or at the sprint finish of a stage.
I've always thought of randonneuring to be kind of like the old tortoise and the hare story. Racing cyclists are the hare whereas randonneurs are more like the tortoise. The tortoise will usually come out ahead in a randonneuring event. Riding a rando event at a level just below your FTP level will probably make you a first finisher assuming you have a pretty high FTP. Rando riders who want to excel strive to raise their FTP levels. That is what will raise your average speed during the ride.
I won't say you need to be fat adapted to be successful at randonneuring. But you will have to micromanage your carb intake all along the ride in order to finish quickly. And since the rides are UNSUPPORTED, this micromanagement process often times gets very difficult.
It's unfortunate that guys like Dylan Johnson and GNC focus on the keto diet rather than merely being fat adapted. I typically don't listen to Dylan Johnson since he lets the "science" studies dictate his videos more than he should. There are a lot of studies out there that should exist, but don't. And as a result they don't help make Dylan Johnson's videos more helpful to the listeners.
The big hassle when it comes to fat adaptation is insulin resistance. It's a chronic condition. And if you have it, then it is hard to reverse it. That take time. You mentioned it takes time to get into ketosis via a keto diet. That's nothing compared to overcoming insulin resistance. If you suffer from insulin resistance you may be fit, but you are not healthy. And some will argue that health is the most important thing to have in life. Strive to get healthy. The heck with randonneuring.

GhostRider62

I think my post to which you responded was not written well. Let me try being less obtuse.

1. Nobody can ride Tempo for a 600k. Such an output is not sustainable (76-90% of FTP)

2. Nobody could eat enough food to supply the glycogen to ride at Tempo over the course of a long brevet

Rather than "slow" carbohydrates that you mention in your first post, you want the opposite. You want to swallow and to have whatever you are eating to exit your stomach and then quickly get into your bloodstream.

To expand on point 1. Of course output over a long event drops but if you start off in the Tempo pace, you will burn thru your glycogen stores AND develop fatigue much quicker than if you start in low zone 2 and only getting into zone 3 aka Tempo if climbing or sharing pace with a larger group where you can sit and draft most of the time. Tempo is a pretty hard pace and a fast speed. Ultimately, you will recover faster and be quicker over the 1218 Km if you think like a turtle and not a hare. The best way to ride fast is to stop very little and just ride steady. Time your control stops. On the rare brevets that I ride for time, I try to keep a control to 3 minutes total.

To expand on point 2. Studies have shown that endurance athletes can absorb 4500-6000 calories at the most over a 24 hour period. If you eat more than what you can absorb, what happens to the excess? Beyond the distance of 300k, in my opinion, learning what to eat, when to eat, how much, etc. is one of the most important if not THE most important skill/attribute of a successful super randonneur. The only way to know if your powder works is to try it on a long brevet. Personally, I can't go more than 24 hours on powders. I do not know what is normal. In your situation trying to get as much sleep as possible, I would slam a big meal at a control before sleeping and digest it and possibly do powder while riding.

GhostRider62

False. False. False.

I used 70-80% fat in 2015 and I was standing on the bridge into Brest in 22 hours.

You are getting very good tips from many randonneurs.

It is impossible to fuel a Grand Randonnee with food, you must burn a lot of fat. 2.5 times your basal metabolic rate is the limit to how much food you can absorb a day. So, burning fat a lot of fat is essential.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw0341

Tourist in MSN

You are getting a lot of advice, some of which is somewhat contradictory, and everyone is different. You are going to have to figure out what works for you. And you are going to have to figure out what rate to pace yourself at. And you are going to have to figure out how these vary for different distances, different weather (temperature, windage, precipitation, etc.), and different levels of difficulty (hills, etc.). And once you get it figured out, you will find that you have aged and what used to work needs to be modified.

Consider each ride a learning experience. Keeping records on what you consumed under what conditions and how that worked will help you in the future when you can look back and compare performance on different rides under different circumstances.

Good luck.

GhostRider62

Test your food and pacing on back to back 400km rides, they could be done from the comfort of your home if you are situated near good roads. If you can do modestly hilly PBP-like rolling terrain in 18 hours and feel not too suckily, your objective of sleeping 8 hours each night on PBP might be attainable. Just a thought. I did 200, 300, 400km in my training and felt it was more realistic and helpful in the learning curve than a 600k but if you can do a 1000/1200k before PBP, so such the better. The 400km was an official brevet and the 200k and almost a 300k were selfmade routes. GL!!

clasher

If I were going for maximum efficiency, I think I'd just be doing 60-80g of sugar an hour, plus a pinch of salt, or better yet sodium citrate. I've read that you can train your gut to handle higher amounts of carbs per hour, probably worth it if you're looking to increase your power output. I've managed to do 100g an hour on the trainer when I'm going at or close to ftp for that amount of time. Sugar is way easier to mix into bottles than maltodextrin, at least in my experience with both. I don't worry about protein at all and especially not when I'm riding. I don't think there's much value is wasting the body's energy digesting protein, I'd rather all the energy go into making the bike go faster. Have a protein/fat heavy meal at the end of the day for recovery. I've yet to run into any problems with the carb-heavy approach. I'm lucky that most of the time on brevets around here there's corner stores or groceries that have soft drinks and other good food so I don't bother with the sugar, but if I were doing a 12/24h TT I would be on the sugar for sure. I've also found that keeping a steady intake of carbs during the ride doesn't leave me ravenous at the end of a ride, so I can relax at the end and enjoy a good recovery meal instead of trying to wolf down an entire pizza or something.

adamrice 

What's interesting here is how different everyone's preferences are. I've tried fueling with straight maltodextrin and it did not sit well with me. Perhaps I would need to adapt to it. I've tried fueling with simple sugar, and while it did sit fine, I found myself feeling hungry—perhaps more quickly than if I hadn't had any fuel at all. I am convinced that I ride better on solid food. I like Clif bars in limited quantities, but after I've had five in one ride, I can't put another in my mouth—at that point, I need real food.

There was a guy who attempted to ride the TABR on liquid fuel alone—he shipped big bags of powder ahead to various post offices as drop points (you can see this in the movie Inspired to Ride). I get the impression he wound up resorting to solid food.

unterhausen

It needs some protein powder and salt to even have half a chance of working. Otherwise it won't be absorbed fast at all. That's why chocolate milk and reese's cups work okay, there is salt in the chocolate milk.

I ended up using less protein powder than a lot of people recommend. It's tricky to get the salt right too.

I suppose I should try it again, but it's a lot of work.

GhostRider62

One of the reasons I put my powder in single use containers is that if I used a large bag, I *think* stuff like sea salt settles and the dose uniformity goes wack.

I think it was Jason Lane who started TABR in 2014 using powder exclusively. Picking stuff up at a post office is a real crap shoot. I arrived at 5 pm to one city and the USPS had just closed. I figured what the heck, get a hotel room, rest up, and pick stuff up at 7-8 am. The post office did not open until 11 am or Noon, IIRC. During which time (3 am to Noon), a hellacious tailwind became the *****st headwind of my life.

WRT Maltodextrin, I am going to buy a small container from another source. Even heating and stirring into water, it was lumpy and lousy. Cyclic Dextrin goes into solution pretty easy but that junk is like 20 bucks a pound. It is the main sugar used in First Endurance EFS-Pro, which works for me but that stuff must have gold in it.

unterhausen

I was pretty happy with how carbo boom goes into solution. Not perfect by any means.

I packed my powder in sandwich bags. I still wasn't sure it was getting mixed properly. On a ride like TABR, I'm not sure how it would work because the bottles are pretty hard to clean without a dishwasher. I forget the longest ride I used powder on, I'm not sure if I used it on any 1200k's or not. I'm sure I used it on at least a couple of 600k's, because I used to pack bottles with powder in them for mixing later in my drop bags. Maybe I used it on Endless Mountains, I can't remember.

Carbonfiberboy 

What I found was that it worked best to take 1-2 swallows every 15' along with the same amount of water. That's with my 750 kCal/bottle mix. Every half hour worked, too. The exception being long climbs, where I often didn't take any on the climb, then like 6 swallows at the top. That worked because a descent was next. Instead of adding salt, I took 1-2 Endurolytes/hour, from a purse shoved up my shorts leg.

Richard Cranium

I'm not sure what advantage there is to be realized on a long distance bicycle ride in assuming a particular product or nutrient type is so critically important.

It is true that a sound understanding of nutrition can benefit a cyclist attempting to maintain a particularly high level of exercise performance for lengthy periods.

In my experience, cyclists who show intense interest on "popular" or other sport-diet specific products are not any more successful that cyclists who understand the individual nature of their needs. And more importantly, the unique nature or each ride and goal they approach. It is true that the harder you ride - the more difficult it is to fuel and hydrate successfully.

This means focusing your attention on the "ride." Understanding your exercise load, (pace) and carefully monitoring the timing and quantity of your fueling during the ride is the basis of long term endurance-exercise success.
In my experience, I would eat ordinary food on very long rides. (over 200k) However I often used nothing else but a carb/electrolyte drink on high intensity Century Rides.(sub five hr)

---

GhostRider62

I guess what to put down one's throat is of interest because so many get it wrong. Upset stomach, puking, and diarrhea.

For instance, I know I can drink 2/3 of a Red Ambulance. That is it, the rest goes into the trash. If I drink the whole thing, I suffer. So, by sharing that.....it might ring a bell with someone.

When I am long distance backpacking, bike touring, or long distance endurance cycling/racing, at about day 4 or 5, I can literally thrown anything down the hatch and it incinerates. Poof. More importantly, it is impossible to digest and process enough food when going hard 10-12+ hours a day and powder ain't going to cut it.

Carbonfiberboy 

Christoph Strasser famously used an all-liquid diet on RAAM. One of the riders who started with Hammer did two 508s back-to-back on an all-liquid diet (Perpetuem). I have a riding buddy who won the 508 on an all-liquid diet. Another riding buddy did PBP on an all-liquid diet. I did an 18.5 hour mountain 400k on an almost all-liquid diet - added one sandwich and one Hostess Fruit Pie, which is almost liquid. I've done many 10-15 hour event rides on an all-liquid diet. One has to get the concentration in the stomach just right. Osmolality is critical. One drinks small amounts frequently, holding the stomach continuously in the same digestive state. I've never thrown up or had diarrhea.

RAAM is an eating contest. With Strasser as evidence, it's not possible to get as many calories into the blood stream with anything but liquid foods.

downtube42

I was using Cytosport Cytomax for a while, and it mixed fine for me. I've switched to 5 lb bags of brewer's matodextrin because it's cheaper. I carry it in snack-sized baggies, add it to the bottle at stops, fill with tap water, invert and shake. From there it seems like road vibration takes care of things.

Just to be clear, I eat real food at stops; the malto is just to keep me stable between meals.

GhostRider62

With support and an acclimated stomach, I suppose liquid is doable. But think of say PBP. They say you need 35,000 calories, I calculated mine more like 25,000 last time, IIRC. Assume half of that is fat and half is consumption. 12,500 calories is 3,200 grams or 7 pounds of powder, not to say anything about the large volume of it. 35,000 calories is probably more like it. My bikes are very efficient and I am out there fewer days than the bulge of riders. Someone might need to carry 10 pounds of powder.

WRT OP's desire to sleep 8 hours each night on PBP, if you can have support handing you bottles even at every other control, you will save a lot of time vs getting food in the cafeterias, easily 5 hours to save. In 2015 riding unsupported, I wasted enough time getting food that had it been supported with bottles handed to me, it would have been sub 50 hours. OP has to think to do everything as efficient as possible and probably liquid fuel is a given .....a requirement.

I wonder if RAAM riders like Strasser change from one fluid to another. I get sick and tired of the same fluid and get to the point, the thought of it makes me want to ralph. Even with liquid, they cannot replace all the calories burned. They lose some fat.

unterhausen

The thought of going 7 days on malto gives me a little thrill of nausea, and I don't have to drink it. I don't see how you would do it on PBP, with stops every 100 miles. And every other one is difficult to get to, so either you have 2 teams of support or go 120 miles between refills on your feed.

GhostRider62

For support on PBP, you'd need two Rando-like drivers or 3 not abnormal people with the capability of napping in the car. I cannot imagine a support crew functioning amongst the bulge. For riders doing under 60 hours, the controls are empty with the exception of the overlapping return controls of Carhaix and Loudeac or Loudeac and Tintineac depending on pace. The support crew would have a very easy time seeing you come into the control because there might be 5 bikes total at the control or none. In addition, they could get in and out very quickly. OTOH, how would a support team see their rider in a sea of 1500-2000 riders.

There isn't anything better than a bowl of hot chocolate at sunrise when you're freezing to death. Would it taste as good if your team handed it to you?

Carbonfiberboy 

Yes, the liquid fuelers have a variety of fuels in the support van. They have everything in the support van except sleep and new legs. I think Strasser used mostly Ensure, which I can't even stand the taste of. Luckily, we're all different.

The PBP rider I mentioned who liquid-fueled did it with Ensure. He came to France with a suitcase full of Ensure. His wife drove support. I believe he went through the control and then cycled to a rendezvous which may not have been near the control on the route. He had a large bar bag for the Ensure. He slept in a hotel room she arranged for. He used Endure because it worked, it was what he'd always done, and thought his PBP experience would be best if that's what he did again. He was not a fast rider, but he had good endurance. He did PBP again with a new wife on a tandem. I don't know what he used that time, but the new wife was a racer girl, now a cross-fitter. Like so many of us, he doesn't ride anymore, Afib. They're still happily married. PBP was the last time she ever rode a Brooks - she was 6 months healing.

adamrice 

This is what trips me up about maltodextrin. From what I've read (and this is only something I've learned fairly recently, so bear with me), maltodextrin breaks down in your stomach into anywhere from 3 to 20 different sugar molecules, so by the time it gets to your intestines for absorption, the osmolality is higher than it appeared when you drank it, and is unpredictable. How do you get it right?

Carbonfiberboy 

Ignoring the science of it. or what there is of it . . .IME what works is starting on an empty stomach - I'm talking rando here - and taking in frequent small amounts. My malto is very concentrated, so I also need to drink plain water. I think the plain water is also important. The other thing which seems to be important is ingesting electrolytes in appropriate quantities, so that "appropriate" is why it shouldn't be in your water. Sometimes one needs more, sometimes less, and the same with water. I've helped a number of riders who were bonking from what I call "sloshy stomach," where the nutrients are not making it into the bloodstream though the belly is full. I give them two Endurolytes and make them drink water, lots of water. The stomach empties and off they go. So that's what doing it wrong feels like and that's the fix. I've also helped a number of riders who were starting to bonk, saying "Drink 6 big swallows" and handing them the food bottle. And off they go, it's pretty quick.

I drink on a schedule for maybe the first three hours. After that, I drink malto to hunger and water to thirst, though again, only small amounts at any one time other than passes where I drink a good bit. My only hard rule is that I have to pee every 3 hours or every control. If I don't have to, I take water and Endurolytes until I do. I do look at my food bottle and know my approximate burn, then adjust my drinking quantities to match my expectations, just in case I've screwed up from inattention. The reason I drink to hunger is that the most important thing is to not overeat and get said sloshy belly. Not the usual rec, but it works for me. The scientists can work backward and tell us why this works.

OH - responding to your question - the important thing is to get the stomach to empty into the intestine. Then you're fine, a zillion square feet of lining to move the calories across.

GhostRider62

My feeble understanding is some poorly understood combination of exercise intensity, heat, and osmolality will do two things.

1. Shut down the sphincter muscle to the gut (sloshy belly time)
2. Fluid will be drawn from your blood to dilute the mess in your stomach

So, I try not to eat anywhere near a climb and if I really chow down, I ride slower for a little while.

I look at body weight before and after a ride/event to assess adequacy of fluid intake. I never ever want to gain weight. If the event is like 400K or more, I am ok with up to 2% weight loss because most of that is glycogen depletion related; however, it is usually more like 1%.

The only time I had GI problems was PBP 2019 but I started the ride not well, I think it was the rabbit tartare I ate. But it was gone by the time I got to Brest

samkl 

That’s interesting. I always gain weight on long brevets, which I thought must be a result of things being sore and swollen. After PBP I gained something like 10lbs! But now I wonder if I’ve been eating/drinking wrong. Hmm. Might try your method.