Last Updated on 10 November 2021:
Most often the quickest win for my new clients is the way we look at nutrition. I’m an advocate for eating healthy as often as possible. Mostly this consists of a diet high in fruits and vegetables, grains, healthy fats, and lean or plant based proteins. Eating little processed foods, refined sugar, trans fats, and often just drinking water or some form of electrolyte mix is my go to advice.
Typically, the one time I deviate from this is when fueling a long intense ride; something that might mimic a sportive or gran fondo – or, in fact, be the event itself.
Covered in this blog
- Why fuel differently for long, more intense rides
- The science of fuelling for cycling
- Developing your gran fondo nutrition plan
- What to eat ~3 hours prior
- What to eat ~30 minutes prior
- What to eat per hour of training
- Why you should train with and test out your nutrition plan
Why fuel differently for long, more intense rides
This is simply thanks to the way your body supplies energy to your muscles over different intensities. When riding at a low intensity, if you have adapted your body to be fuelled efficiently by fat, your body might be solely fuelled by your fat stores. However, as you push the intensity up, your body starts to burn more carbohydrates as part of the fuel mix.
Given your body has limited stores of carbohydrates (stored in your body as glycogen), you will want to give it a helping hand by ingesting some more!
The science of fuelling for cycling
Mostly, our gut will process a maximum of 90 grams of carbohydrates in one hour, provided this mix is from two different sources; glucose/maltodextrin/starch (60g) and fructose (30g). There is some science that suggests, with adequate time to adapt the gut, we might be able to push this to 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour, something shown to be beneficial in a study of ultra endurance events and multi-day races.
There are four calories per gram of carbohydrate, so we know that you can ingest 360 calories per hour or 480 calories if you spend more time adapting your gut. If you’re using a power meter to measure and monitor your rides, you will know that, often, you might burn considerably more than this per hour, even on your longer rides.
Of course, your body has a large quantity of carbohydrate stored throughout your body. The normal range of glycogen stores is anything between 300g and 860g or 1200 to 3440 calories. The average tends to sit around 550g or 2200 calories; depending on numerous factors.
In the highly unlikely event that you start your training ride at full glycogen capacity, you have 2.5 hours burning 880 calories per hour. This might be on the higher side for you, but you can see the challenge you’re faced with when you’re having to fuel a long hard ride.
Of course, we can confuse the matter even further by including the amount of energy you can convert from your fat stores per hour. At lower intensities, you might be able to go the entire ride without eating, as your body will be capable of converting your fat stores to glycogen, but at this intensity the fuel your body is preferring is glycogen, so I recommend developing a nutrition plan focused on that.
Developing your gran fondo nutrition plan
Over this chapter I’ll break down my thoughts on how to fuel these types of rides. Remember that carbs are king on these types of ride, and, if you’re eating enough of them, you probably don’t need to worry about eating or supplementing protein. As you’ll see from some of the example recipes. Note that you might consider making twice as much of the oats, then you can eat one as your recovery meal too.
What to eat ~3 hours prior
Three hours prior to the start of your event or ride is your last chance to ensure you start with the most amount of glycogen in your system. However, you also want to minimise the risk of a sugar crash right before the start of your ride, so slow releasing carbs are what you need to focus on here.
Here’s a suggestion of what to eat around 3 hours before your long, intense training ride:
- 100-150 grams of oats
- Shake/smoothie made with:
- Plant based milk (soy, oat, or nut)
- Handful of greens (kale or spinach)
- Half a banana
- Handful of your favourite fruit (strawberries are great)
- Half tablespoon of seed or nut butter (get a good quality one)
- Blueberries to top (frozen work great if you’re cooking your oats)
Make the shake/smoothie, add it to the oats and either cook it or eat it raw. You can leave it in the fridge overnight for awesome overnight oats.
This simple to make and nutritious meal will pack at least 750 calories including at least; 125 grams carbs, 36 grams protein, and 18 grams of healthy fats. Remember to give your gut enough time to digest this, especially given protein and fat can take longer to digest than carbs, hence why I recommend this to be eaten around 3 hours before you start – apologies to those who now need to get up early to get this eaten!
What to eat ~30 minutes prior
With just 30 minutes to go until you start your ride or event, we are just looking to give your body a little boost, and potentially time a slight increase in blood sugar and caffeine levels with the start of your ride.
This one is really simple, but often people tend to overthink it or get it wrong. Try not to eat anything other than carbs now, and they can be more sugary for a quicker release of energy; fruit is a great example, but anything you will eat during the ride is good here.
Here is my simple suggestion for what to eat 30 minutes prior to your long, more intense training ride:
- Banana
- Black coffee
It’s that simple!
What to eat per hour of training
Once you start riding, don’t worry about eating in the first hour. From hour one, and every 15 minutes thereafter, you’re going to be wanting to eat little and often. However, what you eat is a little more tricky.
Remember that you are aiming for 90 grams of carbohydrates – made up of 60g glucose/maltodextrin/starch and 30g fructose. You might be surprised how much food this actually is, especially per hour!
I often tell my clients to eat solid foods for the first half of the ride, then moving onto more sugary forms of food, finishing with energy taken in liquid form only. This is often the gut’s most preferred manner. Starting with an energy drink can make it more difficult to go back to solid foods later on, when your body is really craving just fast release energy. Of course, this will not be perfect, and this is one of the reasons you should test this out in training.
Here’s my recommendation for what types of food to fuel your ride with:
- First half of the ride; bars, jam sandwiches, and other solid food
- Second half of the ride; gels, candy or sweets, dried fruit
- Last push; energy drink
If you are buying anything from a store or using sports products; gels, candy/sweets, sports drinks, anything like that, it can be near impossible to identify which source of carbs your food falls into. If you can’t find out the breakdown of the food, you really have only two options for working out quantities and combinations; best guess or make your own.
Best guess
If you’re opting to best guess what manufacturers are putting in their products (the challenge being not the ingredients, but the quantity and the carbohydrate type), the best advice you will get here is in a chapter below; test this out in training! Write down a rough plan of what you’ll eat per hour that will meet the desired amount of carbs per hour, keep a diary of what you are eating per hour, how you felt, and any significant findings.
Make your own
There are plenty of recipes available online that will help you make your own products; from bars to drinks. Google is your friend here – try searching for a recipe based on your favourite ride snack and then either have a go making it – or use the info as part of best guessing what the original bar had. Another factor to watch out for is using fruit (including dried) in recipes. Most people assume that fructose is the sole carb type in fruit when, in fact, it’s an equal mix of glycogen and fructose. Just to make this a little more complicated!
For an affordable, easy to make, and tasty solution, here’s a recipe for the perfect cycling energy drink:
- Bulk purchased non-GMO maltodextrin powder (60 grams)
- Bulk purchased non-GMO fructose powder (30 grams)
- Pinch of salt
Note that this is A LOT of powder to add to a drink bottle so you might want to dissolve this into a dispenser and then fill your bottles. Just remember to work out how much you will drink per hour. A good place to start might be with one large bidon (710ml) of water per portion mentioned above. Again, noting that this quantity would be an ideal hourly amount to consume, so plan by how much fluid you might be capable of drinking.
You may have already spotted the biggest challenge here; how will you take this with you on a ride or at a sportive or gran fondo. In reality, unless you are riding circles around a base or have support, you probably won’t. In this situation, it will be important to research what aid stations have available and fuel with what they have. Thankfully, you might find it easier to identify the type of carb in sports drinks. Ultimately, this is a great way to save some money and learn a lot about how to personalise your gran fondo nutritional plan.
Why you should train with and test out your nutrition plan
If you’re aiming to get towards that 120g of carbs per hour amount, you simply don’t have a choice. You will need a solid 8-12 weeks to slowly increase the amount of food you are ingesting per hour. You’ll know if you get it wrong, your gut will tell you; it’ll be bloated, sore, you might even start to struggle breathing smoothly. There’s not really any danger, but it won’t be a pleasant riding experience, and you should always consult a professional before starting to fuel like this.
For those of you content with 90g carbs per hour – you’re probably wondering how you’ll even eat this much anyway – testing this out is the difference between your body using the potential energy you’ve eaten for fuel and your body trying to find a way to digest the food you’ve eaten. Sluggishness and gastrointestinal distress are two common symptoms with overeating, and, even though you shouldn’t need to adapt your gut to 90g carbs, your gut will struggle with this amount the first time, that’s even if you manage to eat that much; you will feel very full and most people dislike this sensation, especially when trying to ride fast.
Planning some similar rides into your gran fondo training plan will give you a great opportunity to test this, and many other event specific factors, ahead of the main day. Most of all, remember to enjoy this process and reach out if you need help.
