Hello! Love the product, the forum, the podcast, the whole bit! Thanks for all the great resources. Hopefully I didn’t miss this covered elsewhere, but I couldn’t find it; pointers to other threads are welcome.
Participating in primarily half-IM events and trying to ramp up my carbs. Did an event recently and 90g per hour on the bike felt magical… Many of my training rides are shorter, say an hour, and from what I’ve seen would typically use more in the 30-60g range. If I want to “train” my system for higher carbs in events, is there any reason NOT to consume 90+ in an hour tempo/threshold workout?
Appreciate any feedback / guidance!
Sincerely,
Jon
I’d say that when you’re working on training your gut for carbohydrate absorption it’s not a bad idea to practice getting in your target amount of carbs/hour whenever you can. No, you might not necessarily need 90+ grams an hour during those 60-minute tempo/threshold workouts, but honestly, it probably won’t hurt to practice getting it in while on the bike regardless. In those cases, maybe you won’t need to replenish as much after your ride which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Since your target events are still relatively long (half-IM) I’d say that carbohydrate absorption should certainly be something to work on and consider. Something I’ve found that works well for me though is focusing on nutrient timing and taking in the carbs when I need them and not when I don’t. It is possible to become more biased toward burning carbs (they burn fast & easy) than fat, and you still want to be efficient with fat burning during longer events. Essentially you want to be really good at both, so a bit of consistency in both scenarios is ideal.
For me, this means that I’m totally willing to take in lots of carbs during/around those harder efforts regardless of duration to ensure that I’m able to absorb what I need when I need it and take in much less when I don’t need to in order to allow my body to still be efficient without them. This means that I typically have a wide variety of rides including long easy rides without a ton of carbs, as well as both short & long hard rides where I fuel with my race strategy. On some of those longer rides, I tend to start with fewer carbs and increase them as the ride progresses. This allows my body to deal with what it has onboard and when the tank is starting to get low more fuel begins to dump in.
Let me know if this helps and if you have other questions. I’d be happy to chat some more if you’d like!
Great feedback and yes that’s helpful! I think I’m trying to find that right balance; I’ve historically been more of a as few carbs as I can get away with and biased towards IM and Half IM distances, but as I’m trying to learn to be a stronger rider I’m finding the value in ramping the carbs up. Working on finding that balance in training and events (can’t call it racing being as slow as I am ).
Thank you and open to any other thoughts!
Jon
Don’t forget about dental health if you start doing 90g of sugar for every hour of your training.
In general for below threshold work under 60 minutes, normal food will cover you. Personally, I only drink sugar for events and high intensity intervals.
Would you consider eating 30 grams on a 15’ ride high carb training? It’s 120g/hr…
I say this to make this point. Duration is a key component, and eating 90 grams likely isn’t enough to create any adaptation. Is there anything wrong with it? Probably not. I eat 90+ grams for breakfast in like 15 mins, which is 360g/hr, and I’m not even riding ha!
I’m experimenting with keeping the sugar & salt in separate bottles. Carbs at a fairly high concentration (about 800g/L), so that I can swig some carbs then rinse & swallow with water, thinking that’s probably a bit better for the teeth than a more diluted drink mix alone. I do this during rest periods on sweetspot & threshold workouts. I’m okay up to two hours but I need to experiment with longer durations. I ran into problems at about hour 15 on an adventure several months ago, but I suspect that was caused more by dehydration than an untrained gut.
It’s exactly the other way around. The acids from food weaken your enamel and you shouldn’t brush until at least 60 minutes after eating. Brushing also decreasing the bacterial load in your mouth so less acids will be formed and the fluoride from the toothpaste will make your teeth more acid resistant.
I was just talking to my dentist about this. She said do not brush immediately after high sugar drinks, but it would be a good idea to swish with pure water.
Just remember that maltodextrin is not the same as sugar. Dental hygiene is extremely important for everyone, and you need to take extra care when drinking sports drinks as often as some of us do, but we’re not talking about drinking 120g of sugar/hour here, but rather simple carbohydrates.
Yes, maltodextrin, like many other foods, can cause tooth decay without the proper care but it isn’t quite the same as the “sweet” sugars. It’s more starchy than sweet but is able to break down into sugar easily which is what makes it so desirable for high-carb drinks. There’s no way I could drink 100g/hour of sugar.
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