Do you need to fuel for 1 hour workouts?

If you’re failing workouts or crushing workouts it could be multiple things, (sleep, stress, recent training history, poorly set FTP, etc.) so you have to know that everything was fine except for the nutrition to know that it was the nutrition that caused the issue. But if you at least make sure you have a snack before and a good meal afterward, you should be fine. I mean, most workouts fall between regular meals and snacks anyway. Don’t stress about it.

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Ive always got a Carb drink for a workout and for a high intensity one I usually have a banana too for anything around 1h + . I don’t know what physical effect it actually has but psychologicaly it breaks up the ride and gets me through a set/ interval knowing I have a bite of that in the recovery.

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Correct, but uptake differs depending on load. Hence why I wrote “If the session is an hour of intensity”.

For high intensity sessions it’s more important with pre workout nutrition.

I’ve taken to fully fuelling every ride (matching calories roughly to the estimate) with 90g/hr (cheap drinkmix) + snacks after. Takes nutrition out of the equation, spreads out the carb intake a bit, and leaves no justification for extra cupboard foraging because of a workout :upside_down_face: Just normal meals/diet outside of the workouts, as if I weren’t exercising, simple. But then I’m just doing 1-2hrs with not the greatest of FTPs so :man_shrugging:

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Nothing better than an ice cold Coca-Cola half way through a hard ride.

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I’m p/b Dr Pepper and potatoes. I downed a 1L Dr Pepper during a bikepacking race after a dehydrated stretch and it brought me back to life. I’ve also been known to pick up a large order of french fries if the opportunity presents itself. I’m 60% sure the reason I favor long, hard days in the saddle is the food rewards.

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My experience is that struggling because of things like poor sleep, mental stress, carrying previous workout fatigue, general life fatigue, incoming sickness, etc. is felt right from the beginning of the workout (and often with a tired feeling even before the workout).

Acute lack of carbs is the feeling of going from feeling (fairly) good but perceived rate of exertion increases disproportionally during the workout. But you do need to have a grasp on how a certain type of intervals feels to make that judgement call.

Of course there is the more permanent lack of carbs (dur to overtraining or not getting the right nutrition). I guess this is more difficult to distinguish from the other factors you mention.

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In my experience a lot. I fuel every ride, even short Z2 rides. I take in 80–120 g/h. I used to do 80–100 g/h, but since Podlogar’s study I have been experimenting with more.

Getting a handle on nutrition on the bike has really helped my training and my recovery. Rides feel easier. It stabilized my eating patters away from the bike, too. Gone are the hunger flashes after training where I’d devour half a loaf of bread. (This also complicates eating when I don’t train, or not as hard.)

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Do you need to “fuel” DURING a one hour ride? No.

Should you “fuel” BEFORE and AFTER a one hour ride? Yes.

As for those looooong days… In my one and only Ultra (50k running race in the mountains) I was super low energy… Orange soda and red vines were my savor.

For 1 hour rides you technically have more than enough muscle glycogen to cover (at least according to Andrew Lim’s Feedzone books).

I find that I do much better if I get 60-100g carbs even for the short one hour workouts. I feel much better during the workouts and feel like I recover better. I don’t feel as ravenous after a ride. I am also trying to slowly lose a little lbs from holidays and injury and am doing time-restricted feeding, so think that the workout nutrition plays an even more important role in this case.

Also - I love to eat candy on the bike and that is one more motivator to hop on the trainer after a long day! :slight_smile:

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Just to reiterate: this is not the issue. You can ride 3 hours without needing any carbs, perhaps more if you train for that specifically. But that’s a single ride and ignores recovery.

The purpose of fueling your workouts is to ensure you can function at max capacity, lower RPE and improve recovery. And it becomes more important the higher your FTP is (since a 10 % higher FTP means 10 % more energy consumption for the same workout).

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As someone with roughly 280W ftp, and rock-solid aerobic endurance, fueling during my ~2 hour workouts does NOT improve functioning at max capacity, or lower my RPE, or improve my recovery. I’ve been experimenting continuously for 7 years. I’m curious enough to have gone without carbs for 3+ hours, a couple times, simply to find just how long I can go before bonking. And estimate my muscle storage capacity.

Not trying to be contrarian, just stating facts about me. And to point out that how you fuel off the bike can be more important than fueling on the bike for ~2 hour workouts.

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Do you ride in the morning before breakfast or after you have had some food?

Yes, and in my experience, fueling on the bike helps a lot to improve my nutrition off the bike.

At least 4 out of 5 days I ride in the morning before breakfast. If I don’t eat on the bike, I get ravenous, and I tend to overeat on the days when I don’t train. It also led to weight gain in the offseason, because it took my body some time to adjust my feeling of satiety to my actual calorie needs.

I also don’t need to adjust my food intake off the bike as much depending on whether I have had a hard day or an easy day.

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Only back in 2014/2015 when I did 5:30am spin classes at the gym. No breakfast. A lot of those were 60-75 minutes and high intensity. Only ‘on the bike’ 3 days a week, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. No problems.

When I do morning club rides, I get up 2 hours before and eat. Fructose to restore the liver - blueberries and orange juice - and some granola/milk, and yogurt.

Off the bike I don’t have any of these food issues y’all are speaking about.

This year, I’ve been doing my trainer rides in the evening and the impact of fueling has been profound.

I usually eat lunch between 12-1pm and get on the trainer around 5pm. Initially, I thought that if I was just doing an endurance ride of 90min or less, my lunch was enough to fuel the session but I was wrong. I found my legs would be heavy and what should’ve been an easy session was a real slog. Now, I eat some carbs just before or during the first few min of the ride and it makes a huge difference, lowering the RPE from a 4 or 5 to a 2. I’ve tried fig bars, bananas, oats, gels, maple syrup, drink mix, rice, and other stuff. Bananas seem to work the best for me.

Given that these are trainer rides that are easily duplicated, it’s been easy to compare like with like. In seasons past, on my afternoon outdoor rides, I’d only eat right before the ride if I was hungry or had a particularly hard session on the docket but now in hindsight, I’m feeling like I probably left a lot on the table due to under-fueling.

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Anything up to 75 minutes, assuming it’s a) Z2 and b) not first thing in the morning, I won’t fuel it. Anything over that (in terms of intensity or length), I’ll take in c.70g carbs/hour. It has very much improved performance for me, and leaves me less ravenously, raid-the-cupboards-for-anything-hungry afterwards. YMMV: we know that certain individuals (even of similar weights, LBM, and FTP) burn far more carbs than others.

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I’ve nailed this situation too, simply eat 70-80g of carbs as an afternoon snack around 3pm. Then go out and hammer at 5pm.

Back when I was doing 2 a days in late 2016 and early 2017, my calendar is filled with high IF morning and afternoon rides:

Nothing was left on the table, literally and figuratively :rofl: and I didn’t eat on the bike. Then home for post-ride chocolate milk, and eat dinner within 30 minutes :man_shrugging:

Yes my ftp was set correctly. Not the smartest way to train, but hey, I was learning.

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You consider 70–80 g carbs a snack :scream:
To me a yoghurt or a banana is a snack (15–20 g carbs perhaps?).

(Please take it in a light-hearted way, do whatever works for you! :slightly_smiling_face:)

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The lazy way… 90 seconds to a serving of pure ROCKET FUEL (71g carbs / 310 calories).

Don’t forget the 2 bananas before leaving!

And to think I eat all those carbs and still manage to slowly lose 0.5 pounds a week.

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Just experiment and find what works best for you

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