Ride intensity and carb intake

Nutrition
1

I spent the last few years training for longer duration endurance type rides in preparation for 2024 Unbound. In that time I ate just about anything and everything you can imagine on longer rides and only found 1 drink mix i couldn’t stomach. With the one exception I never had any gut issues. Even on the hard interval days the gels and drink mixes didn’t give me any problems.

Fast forward several months and I am doing much more intense MTB rides and races that are about 1-2 hours in duration. The shorter/harder efforts seem to cause a lot of gut distress with anything I am trying like Gatorade or Tailwind and solid food is out of the question. None of these calorie sources are new to me.

Any suggestions on gut training for this type of scenario? Would simply increasing the mix in the bottle slowly over a period of time work to adapt? Right now anything other than water during race paced training is a no go to the point of vomiting on the side of the trail.

2

I’d find something that you like and slowly work your way back up to the amount that you need to fuel your output.

I’d always recommend trying something as “natural” as possible, as many of the other additives are what tend to cause issues. Gatorade has never worked for me in the quantities that I’d like, which I’d imagine is from the artificial flavoring and food coloring.

Skratch is something that has always worked well for me in all conditions at various amounts, all the way up to 120+ grams/hour. Maybe it just works for me, but it’s so simple that there is likely less to go wrong. :man_shrugging:

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