If you believe the marketing hype you should be eating every 20-30 mins but how would you carry all that. I’m quite a small build fortunately so I won’t need anything like that and I usually get round 5-6h century on 3-4 things. Usually a banana, a cereal bar which can be two feeds and a Gel for emergency that I often don’t use. I sometimes stop for coffee and cake too. Lol, on my last century with the club I never realised it was to be a century I did on 3/4 of a bottle, a bar and a bar and bottle I bought at a corner shop for a pretty flat 19.9mph (Strava nicked 0.2mph), I’m pretty sure we could have done 20mph + if I’d been prepared and it had been dry.
Yep same here…checked and I did 5h Z2/3 ride 3000kj on a decent breakfast and 200g of carbs during the ride…I’m 55kg which probably must be relevant but I also do a lot of tempo/SS training so suspect I have half decent fat max thingy
I would certainly eat more in a race of course and it blows my mind how much people consume on rides…
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Yeah agree…I don’t eat anything like some people in here on normal rides. 50-60 miles is my normal shortish loop and I usually have about one bar and come back with still some water in my bottle. And I’m nowhere near as light as you…
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In the last couple of months I’ve started eating half of the estimated calorie burn on every workout, and surprisingly that has resulted in a positive impact on my overall training. So while I can do hard 2 hour rides with only water, by replacing 50% of calories on the ride my recovery and downstream training has improved. Its also getting easier to eat ON the bike, something I’ve always struggle with on long weekend rides. Summary: less downtime on long rides, better recovery and training.
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Yes for a 3000kJ ride I would pack 1500 cals of carbs, something like:
- 500 calories from two bottles of Gu Roctane
- 500 calories from two Cliff bars
- 500 calories from 5 dates/figs/bananas
On the bike its either one bottle of water and one bottle of Roctane, or later in the ride two bottles of water. On a 3000kJ ride like that, at endurance pace, would need to refill water bottles twice on my 90 mile route.
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I am not sure if this helps, but last Sunday I went out for a 107km / ~67mile, having said that it was a big 331 TSS ride. (I think I am due a FTP bump, which would explain the high TSS, either that or I destroyed myself) The ride took me 3hr 38min
This is what I ate / drank through out the whole ride:
2x bottles of beta fuel - 160g carbs
1x Clif blok (packet) - 44g carbs
2x Clif bars - 90g carbs
1x OTE energy drink - 40g carbs
1x Banana
1x Double espresso
Minus the banana it worked out to be about 84g of carb per hour, as I was aiming for a 4hr ride. I just keep eating every 30 mins whilst drinking in-between. I only have 3sec avg / speed / workout time on my wahoo which allows me to easily spot when it’s time to eat. (if only I could set a 30min alarm on the wahoo)
FR maybe lol
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Eat your body weight in grams of carbs about 2 hours before ride start. For example, I’m about 150 pounds, so I eat 150gr carbs for breakfast. I also do this for workouts over 2 hours and hard group rides. I eat 90gr carbs per hour if the ride is hard. Otherwise, I just top off carbs before an effort is coming up and eat minimal food if I’m sticking to endurance zones.
Most important for me is staying on top of water and salt. If I do well on that, no cramps. If not, I will cramp. For that reason, I drink a ton of water all day and night for a couple days before, and I try to eat salty food.
I did a 4hr 41min elapsed century (including two stops to get water) about a month ago, and this worked well for me.
Another thing, what doesn’t work for me is eating solid food towards end of the ride, as that makes me nauseous. Been there and those last miles can be hell when you want to puke!
Everyone is different so you have to practice nutrition to find what works. Ideally, I know I’ve done well when I still feel pretty good at the end.
On my Garmin 530 it has either a timer or smart (its another I went with Garmin functionality over Wahoo simplicity).
The smart setting wakes up every time you should consume 100 calories (= 200kJ/kcal work), which is really nice depending on the type of effort (slow reminders for z2, and faster reminders for long sweet spot).
I would not take that many gels. take real food.
It ain’t easy, so practice every ride!
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It will take a bit of experimenting to determine how much you can tolerate per hour. For me, it’s about 250cals per hr.
Whatever your number is, organize your eating into easy multiples of one hour. Eg every 20 or 30 minutes. This allows you to more easily do the math on how much you are eating per hour.
45 minute intervals make the math harder - especially when you are tired!
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I tried real food. In at those temperatures it quickly goes rancid and I ended up vomiting on the bike.
What works ,works
Although on a training ride I stop for grub or take something out of the book FEED ZONE PORTABLES ,(unless I’m looking to ride as I would in a race)
You need to find something that you can put in your pockets and shove into your mouth with minimal fuss. Partly it depends on how comfortable you are with bike handling - if you can ride while taking both hands off the bars, that makes opening packaging easier. Otherwise, you might have to open them before you set off, or at stops.
Also “without stopping” can mean different things. If you are in an urban area, you have to stop at lights, junctions etc anyway. And if you’re on your own, just slow down a bit. If you only ever ride in fast groups, start by eating when you’re at the back.
It’s also something you can practice indoors, maybe on those long endurance rides, where ‘eat a jelly baby every 10 mins’ might break up the time.
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I’m amazed that people would seriously consider to eat that many gels. There are so many other/healthy options that can be tried. These gels will cause sugar spikes and once you started using them you are more or less trapped to keep using them til the end of your event. I am not saying you cannot use gels, but I would use them towards the end of an event when you want to squeeze out the very last to succeed.
Have you tried to make your own rice cake? Have you tried to make sandwiches from healthy choices like bread (I do whole grains despite the fact that people are saying that this will make it harder for your body to utilize the carbs) with nut butter (not cheap everything added peanut butter but butter that contains nuts only) with mashed banana?
just my 2 cents.
This is literally me 