I’ve recently started fuelling all my rides with way more carbs. Before i’d just do water unless it was a 2 hour ride or 90 min hard trainer session. Now i try and have a proper carb meal 3 hours before and i never leave the house without a bottle of 60g SIS mix and a bar, per hour.
The effect is great. I can hammer it the whole way and most importantly i no longer get the feeling like crap thing later in the day.
Carbs are the way to go!
this is as well determined by daily cycles too. A calorie was shown not to necessarily be the same calorie later in the day. Damn you circadian rhythms.
OH it’s real alright!!!
I’m not sure I could do that to myself 
I haven’t had one in years (vegetarian) but I do remember them being uber rich.
30g is probably just keeping you from bonking vs giving you a physiological boost. I also used to take a gel/hr (~25g) and the comparison between that and 75-100g/hr is pretty crazy. The standout metric, for me anyway, is perceived exertion; it has drastically reduced since drastically upping carb intake.
The main difference between sugar water and a consumer product drink mix (please correct me if I’m wrong) is mostly the composition of types of sugars. Table sugar (sucrose) is 50/50 glucose and fructose, whereas the mixes will have additional sugars with different ratios. This will be done for both absorption rates (few podcasts where @Nate_Pearson talks about the best ratio) and also for palatability and gut/intestine stability.
Taken from the SIS Beta Fuel webpage:
Added fructose enables the body to absorb 90g carbohydrate per hour, 50% more than the 60g per hour achievable with glucose alone.
As above, sugar/sucrose is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. I don’t know the exact Beta ratio*, but since we aren’t trying to smash out monster Giro stage wins with marginal gains, table sugar is probably a pretty good alternative – and MUCH less expensive! (It’s just a bit freaky to be scooping that much sugar into your bottle!)
*(found on the SIS site:
The product mixed to concentration is 80 grams carbohydrate (2:1 maltodextrin:fructose), 20 mmol/L sodium and 500 ml of fluid per serving.
If you are industrious, it might be well worth your time to try to make your own version of this (there are existing TR threads about this): it will be way less sweet than sugar water and it will require less water to digest. Another important point shown here – add salt to your mix, no matter what you use.
I always have liquid carbs for workout SS and higher of any length, usually 60min-120min. Again, as Amber said, the time to diet is not on the bike! Hitting the power targets is your goal.
Have a look at the workout before, see what the kCal expenditure is and try to match on-bike consumption (maybe a bit less if you’ve had solid/complex carbs pre-workout). Sugar has ~4 kC/g, so a 1,500 kC workout would require ~190g/hr. Since your body can’t absorb that much per hour, go with the upper limit, ~90g/hr, and let your pre-workout carbs make up the difference. Shorter or easier workout, use less, or none.
Also, I time my intake to try and burn all the liquid carbs while I’m on the bike. I seem to remember that it takes ~5min from intake to utilization, so I’ll stop taking in carbs maybe 15min before the end of the workout, just to make sure I’m burning off as much excess fuel as possible. No one says you have to drink it all!
For a final anecdote, my last workout was a VO2max (Foraker +5) and I was doing +2% intensity on the last interval. Try it out, experiment, see if it works for you! 
(I’m not a science dude so please correct any incorrect statements!)
Doughnuts are non-denominational, totally veggie accessible. Trust me.
A calorie is always a calorie. To say otherwise is Like saying a gram is not always a gram, or a mile is not always a mile. It’s a unit of measurement. Specifically, the amount of energy needed to raise 1 ml of water 1 decree C.
Now…if you are saying your body has different levels of metabolism at different times of the day, thats perfectly reasonable. But I wish everyone would understand that some things are just concrete.
I was probably carb depleted on previous tests though, always eating a low carb diet, training hard and then doing my test without anything very much prior. I didn’t load massively for the test just ensured I had eaten a high carb meal which i hadnt previously and also now eat high carbs before and after high intensity days of training.
Probably don’t needany carb intake for a 30-minute workout or less. For the amount of muscle glycogen a normal person can carry, your stores will be there for an hour or so, but you can help your performance even with just a carb rinse (swish some carb drink inside your mouth for a little). Long aerobic rides that aren’t glycogen depletive don’t require many carbs.
ha, I knew someone would take it literally 
was slight sarcasm.
what I mean is what you’re body does with it does indeed seem to depend on the time of day. A calorie always is a calorie, for sure.
However, you say that but the fine structure constant which depends on the speed of light, charge e, and plancks constant has been shown to deviate due to potential e charge deviations near a black hole, so I reckon I can change those calories somewhere.
(joke).
So, if I understand correctly, you are adding 30g+ of ordinary sugar (plus a little bit of table salt) to a 500ml bidon?
My next workout is 90mins and roughly 1200kC so that’s 800kC per hour or 200g of carbs per hour. Obviously that’s not an amount that can be absorbed in that time. I’d normally have 1500ml of water for a workout of that length so that’s 45g per 500ml bidon to get to 90g/hr? That’s about the same sugar concentration as a can of Coke.
I’ve been known to be gullible from time to time lol 
Absolutely, heck yeah doughnuts are…sans bacon 
i am too, forums do that to us.
… like nate saying his performance increased with all of these carbs, where’s the evidence man???
The past few workouts I’ve been using 75g sugar + 500ml water + salt (a “good pinch”, sorry no SI measurements, but probably double what I was using). This seems to be working very well for me in terms of taste, GI distress (or lack of), and perceived absorption/utility (and greatly reduced nature calls!). I could probably go even less to 65g.
Yeah, the idea is to have those liquid carbs providing as much fuel as they can so your stored carbs are depleted less rapidly. For a 2hr/1500kC workout I’ll go through 1500ml water w/ 2x75g sugar bottles. I’ll do my best to take in all liquids carbs in the first 90-100min, which nets me ~90-100g/hr. I drink the 500ml water throughout the entire 2hrs.
As well, I’m finding I now eat less carbs off-bike which lends itself to weight control.
Coke…I guess? Not familiar with the exact carb/sugar make up of Coke.
Joking aside, the only, yet strongest, evidence I have is non-measurable perceived exertion (RPE). From a performance perspective, if before I felt like I was working at an 8 and now I feel like I’m working at a 6 (or even 5!), it means I can do my best to try to work at a carbed-up 8 and hopefully at a higher power.
Some possible scientific evidence (and the basis of my own experimentations):
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpendo.00376.2015
This is how I like to fuel long morning rides:
3 hours pre ride:
Oats (80g)
Frozen berries (200g)
3-4 walnuts
2 pieces grain toast
1 hour pre ride:
1 banana
During ride (going to experiment with increasing this year)
45min - 1 hour into ride and every hour after:
30g carbs energy pack
30g energy drink
Post ride immediately
60g glucose or dates
30 minutes after
Protein drink (30g min)
I nominate this as the most important thread in TR forum history.