OK great, thanks!
So workout intensity shouldn’t make a difference?
Suprathreshold work probably merits limiting to the recommended or minimum amounts to avoid GI distress. Table of Intra-workout Carb Needs Per Hour of Training
Otherwise, my typical strategy is: fuel maximally… which also applies above, I suppose.
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Question…I train about 3 hours a day…but split up:) 1 hour ride to work. Hour lunch run. Then hour home. Treat this as one 3 hour ride and do 120-150 an hour…or 3 one hour rides and do 70 grams an hour?
3 x 1-hr @ 40-60g/hr will prob work great. If they’re every very close together in time (short gab between rides), consider increasing rate of consumption.
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I thought I’d report back.
I did virtually the same sort of long ss interval effort. Kept 60g with 80% coming from table sugar, rest from wiggle energy drink, but increased the concentration by mixing with 500ml water. I did leave out the sodium, well, I had it in another water bottle, but didn’t drink much during the ride.
Does sodium help with tolerating the sugar, hinder it or make no difference?
I tolerated this a lot better, it wasn’t easy but a step forward from my Tuesday experience. With smaller regular sips, I finished the 500ml of sugar mix. The only nervous moment came when I chased the sugar with the sodium, but I think that might be just because of taking a bigger gulp. So progress, now I think it’s just a case of repeating and slowing increase the sugs. Like any good training plan 
I found increasing the concentration a bit counterintuitive, but is that the whole point, i.e. higher concentration, more tolerable?
A day removed from the workout, I have recovered much better from fuelling the whole ride. Which is kind of the whole point of getting right this.
One thing I realised that probably makes a big difference is that I do all my rides in aero, so that must make it more difficult for your stomach to process anything compared to sitting up?
A very small amount of sodium is required for optimal sugar absorption.
Bigger effect of sodium on absorption would be seen in longer rides where sodium intake helps maintain hydration, and maintained hydration is key to maximizing gut absorption.
2 big things that cause gut issues:
- Too much volume.
- Too high of concentration
Your initial concentration was on the low end and it’s common for folks to be able to handle >>100g/L in many cases.
Your fluid consumption was slightly on the higher end, especially for hard efforts.
It’s not that the higher concentration made things better. It’s that the higher concentration was similarly tolerable to your gut as the lower concentration, but that the higher concentration ALLOWS for a reduced volume which may have been helpful.
There may be more compression, and more mechanical disturbance to the gut during aero position riding. This could result in reduced volume tolerance. I have experienced similarly. There is no literature on this, to my knowledge.
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Amazing, thanks!! That’s a big help!
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Make a bigger batch of salt water, 1:10 or something like that with a scale. The larger volumes/weights will make it easier and more accurate to measure either with measuring cups or a scale
Is anyone adding BCAAs to their mix? According to the article below, and other sources I’ve seen:
BCAA supplementation may reduce the muscle damage associated with endurance exercise.
200 g of gatorade glacier cherry in a 24 oz blender bottle works no problem. Save the high end race fuels (maurten, Infinit, etc) for races, and drink $2/lb gatorade powder.
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I use that with caffeine at the start.
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Right now my mix is 60g maltodextrin, 30g fructose, Nuun+Caffeine tab, and 1500mg of 2:1:1 BCAAs.
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It might be worth it according to an emerging body of literature. I haven’t played with it personally, yet.
BCAAs have a very earthy / soapy flavor, so about 1/4 - 1/2 tsp is all I can tolerate in a 750ml bottle. When I started mixing my own bottles I did not include BCAAs and do think that they make a positive difference. That and caffeine.
+/- 60g of Gatorade mixed with +/- 60g of table sugar in 750ml water. Each hour-ish.
Are there any, well done, studies you would recommend reading on this?
I don’t have any handy.
When I do research, my personal approach is to look for the application, assess it’s magnitude, direction, and reliability/validity and commit to memory only the application. I then save any good literature on it.
So the fact I have none handy in my folders, indicates to me that the effect size was small and/or inconsistent and was probably not yet worth my time or money.
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Great questions and thinking. Thank you!
I am 6’1", 94 kg, ~11% BF, 309W 20min best effort. Interestingly, my wife does virtually identical fueling approaches to me. She is 5’9" 63kg, 16% BF, 275W 20min best effort.
I was able to do a 6.5-hr ride with 117g/hr, with no previous gut training beyond 90g/hr, and very limited training up to that. The literature to date does not indicate gut-training status of the research participants. I suspect most fuel with FAR lower amounts than optimal, in their daily training, and have effectively done no gut training. If that’s true, the current body of literature is reflective of what “non-gut-trained” subjects are capable of.
I don’t think it needs to be scaled to weight. Gut tolerances appear to be largely independent of weight, which is why weight is ignored for the most part in all the related literature.
Personal anecdote: I’d estimate if gut training has taken place, it has made the 130-150g/hr range more enjoyable and there have been times where I’ve fallen behind on consumption rate for an hour, then subsequently consumed 200+g in one hour with no issue now, to average in the 130-140g/hr range.
Correct. Not all the consumption will be burned during exercise but may serve to prevent blood glucose drops during exercise to enhance cognitive drive and subsequently to provide immediate glycogen repletion post-exercise.
My recommendation for the higher carb rates stems from probable increases in performance during longer sessions (>3hrs especially, which has rarely been investigated) and better long-term adaptation to training with such consumption. NOT that the carbs will all be burned by the exercise itself, which won’t happen even at 60g/hr consumption.
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Which paper are you referring to specifically? I’ve read a lot… and my head spins sometimes with similar studies. Help me out here!
Ah yeah, I only share that specific study to note that high rates of carb oxidation are possible while using 1:1, and specific to where I shared it above in this thread, I was answering the question displayed below, in response to my claims that sucrose might work as well as malto+fruc. There are many better papers displaying specific differences in various sugar ratios. Some linked at bottom here.
Also relevant, and shared in other threads:
TROMMELEN_2017 Fructose and sucrose intake increase exogenous carbohydrate oxidation during exercise.pdf (1.8 MB) REVIEW, Rowlands2015_Article_FructoseGlucoseCompositeCarboh.pdf (785.1 KB)
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