Watched this race in the background today. The lone wolf breakaway rider put on quite an eating display slamming 3-4 gels at a time on multiple occasions. I’m not sure what kind of gel he was eating but he was getting a fistful of them from the car and chain eating them. When he got roadside handups each bottle had three gels taped on…he would pitch the bottle and slam the gels one after the other.
I don’t think I have ever seen anybody eat on the bike like that.
I set a g/hr record eating on the bike on a long group ride this last weekend and it did not end up well. I have a couple long races this year, so I’m really trying to push my grams per hour up and I’ve switched to a flask of maple syrup as my main source. It goes down almost too easy. We had a sag wagon with food/hydration and we stopped quite a few times to regroup and I downed a coke at each stop (4 total). Candy bar and bag of gummies at a store stop. 8 big bottles of skratch. Without even realizing it, I was over 150 grams an hour for the first ~5 hours and my body started objecting. Sharp stomach pains and gas, but luckily nothing worse. Just really uncomfortable for the last ~90 minutes of the ride. It was the first hot ride of the year (over 90F), which made it worse. We had a guy get sick from the heat, ambulance, vomiting, etc., so it was pretty brutal. I’ll be targeting over 100-120g an hour for unbound and that’s well within my limits in training.
I can see why… there is no reason to eat less than the calories your body will burn. Maybe during training its ok to run under, but at race eat up all you can… keep the calories to avoid the bonk!
