Should I be fueling my 60 min hard interval morning sessions? Does that change if I’ve eaten breakfast before or if I haven’t eaten since dinner?
From what I’ve read, I should start fueling rides that are over 60 min with increasing grams per hour depending on duration.
Have a look here.
The video:
7:30 onwards specifically covers workout fuelling
Not as you mean it. The idea is to have energy/nutrition available as your body needs it regardless of length or intensity.
So your main meals you need regardless of training. Pre, during, and post workout nutrition should align to the needs of the workout.
Thanks for the link. I’m eating the right total number of calories per day and at the right macro percentages. For my longer rides, I drink 1/2 of my expended calories during the ride.
I’m wondering if given my body’s glucose storage, I should drink 1/2 of my expended calories for my 60 min rides or just drink water on the bike and eat my calories afterwards.
The majority opinion is to fuel adequately on the bike. The amount you should take in depends on factors such as whether you have already eaten or the intensity.
Here are a few advantages from my experience:
No, I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it. I’d simply shoot for 60–120 g/h. Even at 120 g/h you will expend more calories during an endurance workout, unless your FTP is really, really low.
So workouts will leave a net calorie deficit, and if you can keep it smaller, you can be more consistent with your off-the-bike meals and nutrition.
Assuming your body composition is where you want it and you have no health issues it would impact, I’d try both and do whichever you think feels better.
If you’re riding first thing in the morning before breakfast, I think it would be a good idea to down a gel or some drink mix with carbs in it as you’re getting your bibs on and prepping for the workout.
60-minute workouts are generally “doable” on an empty stomach, but you may find that your rate of perceived exertion goes down if you do those early morning sessions with some extra carbs in your system. As a bonus, you should recover a bit better from them as well, as you ideally wouldn’t be depleting your glycogen stores.
If you’ve already eaten breakfast and you’re hopping on to do your workout within a few hours afterward, I don’t think you’d necessarily need gels/drink mix for a 60-minute session. Just make sure to eat lunch or down a recovery shake after the workout is over. 
Turn the question around. Assuming performance is your primary goal, why wouldn’t you fuel a workout?
The fact that your body CAN function for an hour or two with no fuel doesn’t mean it couldn’t function better with a good supply of readily available carbs. Fueling your workouts is also a good way to train your gut.
Performing well in an early morning 60 min workout probably has more to do with what you ate the day before than what you are sipping on during the workout. If you come in glycogen depleted, you’ll struggle to make great power even if guzzling 120 grams of carbs during the ride. On the flip side, if you ate 12g/kg of carbs the day before, you could probably smash all of the intervals without any dip in performance related to any lack of fuel.
I used to. I don’t anymore. If I do put anything in my drink it’s for RPE purposes, not sustenance.
I usually have something light, like a 100 calorie cliff bar, before my morning interval workouts (around 6 a.m. start time). On my 1-1.5 hour early endurance rides, I usually don’t have any food before or during unless I’m actually hungry before I start.
If I’m doing a FTP test I’ll usually have a full bowl of oatmeal w/ banana and cup of coffee about an hour before I start the session. Depending how I’m feeling during my warm up, I may have a gel (with or w/ out caffeine) shortly before the actual test starts.
Primary goal of workouts is to elicit a stress that will lead to adaption which will lead to improvements.
I added that caveat because I frequently see the “no need to eat if you’re riding less than 90-120 minutes” advice from people who are riding for general fitness, weight loss, or something other than winning races. From my own experience, I know that fueling for performance gets me much different results than fueling for general fitness.
I’ve experimented with my own TTE at threshold, and anecdotally find that sipping from a fuel bottle vs. only water extends how long I can hold FTP power by something in the ballpark of 8-12 minutes.
Elicit a signal that will lead to adaptation.
Sounds about right. At 300w, 10 minutes would be about 200cal burned.
I was doing a 7x3min VO2max workout, in the morning, and forgot to eat my 30g of gel until I was at the end of my warmup, getting ready to start the intervals. Midway through the 4th interval (about 15 mins in) it occurred to me that this interval was not like the others (felt easier), so I pushed and got another 10 watts to finish that one and held that for the rest of them. Funny how that works.
eta: I generally eat relatively low carb in my diet, and add them to fuel my rides. So high intensity in the morning I need to fuel.
Makes perfect sense to me.
I just did a 60m ride where I pushed 44m at 95% capped off by 60s at 150% sipping on water. I would rate the RPE as 8 until the last 30s. Not sure my standard 100g bottle would have made a difference at all. Conversely, some days that effort would feel like a 9.5 RPE, and no amount of carbs would fix that. For me, fuel <60-90m makes no difference. More than that, and I aim for at least 70-80g/hr.
“Only”? That sounds very significant. Going from e. g. 50 to 60 minutes is an improvement of 20 %!
Hello all,
I train 10 to 11 hours a week, 6 days a week. I spent a lot of time testing different nutrition strategies on the bike, based on discussions with a nutritionist.
My conclusions are that not eating on the bike, even during an hour of endurance, will lead to a poor training quality. A recovery shake after each workout will also allow for super recovery and boost body adaptations.
The basic rule of 60/90g carbohydrates/hour, including an isotonic drink, is certainly an excellent starting point, to be adapted according to each person’s needs and feelings. Choose the food type depending on what your stomach tolerates best. Before each workout, assess the calories you will burn and set nutrition accordingly. In general, I consume 70 to 85g of carbohydrates per hour, even during endurance, with a recovery shake after each session. This systematically leads me to eat 50 to 60% of the calories burned on the bike + the recovery shake after training. With all this, the total calories eaten remain slightly lower than the calories burned during training. I maintain a stable weight, stable/increasing muscular mass, with a very low fat level.
However, I never hear about nutrition off the bike, which is equally important. It’s responsible for your weight fluctuations, not what you eat on the bike.
If you are trying to lose weight, do not hesitate to train from time to time with water and without food, but never for more than 1 hour (very max.) and at very very low intensity, in recovery ride mode. Wait 45 minutes before eating after training, your body will continue to draw on your fat reserves during this period.
Training for performance and on bike diet are absolutely incompatible, and dangerous.
Even if you have the feeling to feel well and to perform well, doing endurance or higher intensities without eating is a guarantee of poor improvement, poor recovery (heavy legs, fatigue) and a very high risk of injury, which I have experienced twice while testing other strategies.
Finally, 10 minutes of serious stretching in the morning and evening is life-changing. Try with and without. The difference is just mind-blowing.
In summary:
Of course, everyone’s nutritional needs are personal. But I am convinced that this is valid for everyone.
Bad wording by me, which has since been revised. I’ve now changed it to “only water”. It was more like 45min → 55min, which is an even higher percentage!