Eating on the fly | 80 kilometer MTB ride | Sunday
Heeeyho Readers! There goes the Sunday.
What a great Sunday after days swamp. Bad weather makes me want to invest in a trainer, but then I remember how boring it is to cycle at the gym and come back to my senses. No more spending; I have a bicycle project to finish.
Legs felt alright after Saturday's ride, so I planed one long ride for Sunday (today) aiming three things 1. train my body to eat while cycling 2. test my carbohydrate intake in grams 3. try a bunch of sugary stuff to see how the guts react. The results were interesting to say the least.
Where I live is generally windy -- perks of living by the sea, I guess. Today wasn't though, which is Godsend. That means no suffering against the gusts, what makes the training a hell lot more enjoyable, especially for mountain-biking.
I wanted to cycle from the sea to my Dad's ranch at the mountains. Distance is about 110 kilometers. Because taking a bus to return is kinda lame I aborted the mission -- 220km two way trips is too much for the mtb.
Training the guts
It's absolutely important for competitors to train the guts for long marathon races. Eating is crucial. More precisely, eating while cycling, because nobody's gonna stop do eat during a race. The only way to discover what works is by figuring it out on training days. Things to test:
- what to eat
- how much to eat
- discover how the body reacts to different snacks
Target today was at least 1g of carbohydrate per kg of body weight. I'm 1.85cm and weight 63 kilos, meaning at least 63 kilos of carbohydrates that I rounded to 70. Doesn't feel like to much... until we try to ingest that {sick}.
Planning is everything. I planned a 4-hour ride, the first hour food-free because breakfast counted. From the 1 hour mark I'd eat each half an hour until getting home, 3 hours total, 210g of carbohydrate in total.
In the end, the total intake was
- 750ml bottle of Maltodextrin = 96g
- 4x carbohydrate gels = 80g
- 1x peanut sweet snack 45g
- 1x can of coke 30g
- 1/2 salty snack 20g
- 1x small grape juice 24g
Total = 295g of carbohydrates or 85 grams per hour
How does it feel?
Awful.
Ok, I kinda exaggerated. It feels incredibly sugary, that's for sure. In terms of quantity it worked wonders. Legs felt strong throughout the whole ride and I could keep on going without feeling the bonk. The guts did take a while to settle when I got home, forcing me to wait an hour or so before feeling like eating lunch. For training days I'm definitely swapping one sugary snack for a sandwich or whatever. On races there's no much escape; gotta eat "junk".
Rural roads around here are super sandy which is great to train high cadence riding. I managed to catch a 17-kilometer KOM on the go. Fun. Fun.
Targets were hit and everything worked according to plan. Guts are fine now. Legs are ready to go again tomorrow.
Did you cycle this weekend? How was it?
Peace.
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~Love ya all,
Disclaimer: The author of this post is a convict broke backpacker, who has travelled more than 10.000 km hitchhiking and more than 5.000 km cycling. Following him may cause severe problems of wanderlust and inquietud. You've been warned.
Nice experiment!
I like sugary stuff. Not the gels, but chocolate nut bars are nice.
I mist be careful bot to eat too much. I have configured alerts in my garmin navigation for hydration (30 min) and eating (60 min). That surely does help me since I tend to forget to eat during longer rides.
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I like the nut bars too for normal rides. The ones I buy have 17g of carbohydrates. For competitions they don't work for me, too much fiber to digest when the body is busy with the effort. I'm becoming a huge fan of grape juice: 28g of carbohydrates in 100ml and also tastes great.
mrprofessor, it was nice to read here. Now I have references here about this food thing. Well, I went on this little ride https://strava.app.link/vJQ3O0gg4Ib and I don't think I ate enough. I had had a mug of milk with chocolate and a bread roll for breakfast at 8 am. I went by bike to practice Tai Chi, you can see it in my profile, the activity before the one I just shared with you. From there I started the ride and it was near the end that I stopped to buy a malt and a peanut bar (I only took one bite). I also made an intermediate stop and rested for a while on a visit I made. I did keep drinking water whenever I got thirsty.
Well, I'm going to follow you, because although my idea of cycling is not to compete or anything like that, it's just cyclotourism, I always like to read all about this sport.
😉
Awesome, I'm glad you found the info useful. Eating enough is what keeps us moving. Perhaps you won't need to eat as much as I do for the intensity of your rides, but you sure need to eat something. When I was cycletouring I used to stop to eat and rest, generally a sandwich or something else would do it.