I’m am wondering about a good approach to get my body used to taking in more carbs/hour on rides. I mostly am riding indoors during the week for hour long sessions and saturday a good long ride. I don’t really fuel during my indoor hour long sessions but I work on it on weekends.
If I’m just slowly increase my carbs/hour on those weekend rides is that really enough. I’m not really trying to go way high but I just want to get more towards 100g/hour. I just know in the past in races I’ve overdone it and took in too much and them my stomach shuts down so I’m trying to make sure that does not happen
You just need to be consistent with your fueling (both frequency and type of fuel you’re using).
Fuel the work you’re doing, and find a brand that works for you. What have you used in the past?
Once you start consistently fueling your rides with something that works well for you, you’ll be able to increase the amounts you take in over time. Start somewhere low, around 60g/hour for a week or two, and then bump up to 80 before getting to 100.
Drink mix is the best way I’ve found to keep a solid flow of carbs going without an upset stomach. Some gels are far too thick/rich for me, and they need to be consumed with water, which at that point, makes me ask, why not drink the carbs to begin with?
@TooManyDogs yes there is a proven way to change the morphology of the gut so that it absorbs more. But its a little like crossing the Rubicon…so once you do it I’m not 100% sure you can return to the person you are now. But it does work, so here’s your rope:
Once or twice a week fuel your rides with 100% fructose. Make it a long ride. Try to consume at a rate that is a little bit more than you can handle.
Fructose acts to increase villus length and as villus length increases the rate at which they absorb also increases. After several weeks of doing this you should start to notice a material increase in the amount of carbohydrate you can consume on your rides. But, be advised, you will generally be able to absorb more calories faster.
I started out years ago with tailwind and would fuel mostly with that in bottles but blew up at Unbound from the heat and stomach bloat as I almost certainly just took in took in too many carbs that my system hadn’t been used to handling.
I switched to maurten drink mix and gels for a couple years. Gels were fine but the drink mix often didn’t mix well.
I often have an issue of not drinking enough which obviously is a problem if I stick to carbs in bottles exclusively.
So it’s sort of obvious part of my problem is consistency. I like using maple syrup and never second gels as both of those are easy to consume quickly. What I have been doing is having one more concentrated bottle of never second drink mix. So if I am out for 3 hour ride it would be 1oz maples syrup (26g)/hour, 1 never second gel (30g)/hour, and a bottle with 90g never second that I can take sips from and work up to taking 30g/hour from the bottle (1/3 of bottle). And of course drinking plain water. I probably could just start with the maple syrup and never second gels for a couple weeks (56g/hour) then start adding in a little drink mix.
I just have to be more strict than I have been in the past as I’ve had my stomach go south because I didn’t properly train it.