Have to weight the amount of my cereals rice based flour and check exactly the carb load on it. I didnt realy felt any need to eat during the wo. Drinked 750ml of energy drink (around 50/60g of carbs) and eated a gel around 30g just because I was thinking about the podcast and recommended 90g per hour at least.
Definitively going to be more alert on this subject
It’s funny how you were joking in a recent podcast (or this one?) about your 500+ episode count (huge congrats ) but how things had to be repeated for the sake of clarity as you can’t assume everyone heard or even remembers a contextual piece of information several hundred episodes ago, relating to a current topic you discuss.
Im probably late to the party, and it must’ve been discussed somewhere, but what’s the guidance related to late evening workouts and post ride nutrition? What if the ride has been relatively easy vs taxing? Eg 60-90min z2 vs 60-90 min with intervals/V02 max.
Great question! Dr Kyle Pfaffenbach directly answers your question in episode 458 of the Ask A Cycling Coach podcast. Here’s the link to the specific part of that episode.
Basically, it depends on what time you are training, how close it is to your bed time, and what your current limitations to your reocvery, performance etc are. This clip offers some guidance depending on your specific situation.
Regardless, protein is important. At least 15-20 grams. That will be enough to start the recovery process.
Ideally, a recovery drink has a carbohydrate to protein ratio of 4:1, but insulin can have a disruptive effect on sleep. So try different ratios of carbohydrate and see if it impacts your sleep. Adjust it if necessary.
DR Kyle Pfaffenbach explains the nuance in a really helpful and clear way so it’s defintiley worth a listen! Let me know if you have questions after listening .
Thank you for the link and helpful reply!
I finally got around to listen to the whole podcast during a flight and will start out with the “protein only” approach but also experiment with smaller amounts of added carbs to try measuring whether it also impedes sleep due to the insulin spike Dr Pfaffenbach mentions.
On a side note it’s very interesting he happens to mention Dr Longo who I’ve listened to via the Plant Proof podcast (Protein Masterclass episode). He advocated moderate to low protein intake from a meta analysis / longevity perspective which adds interesting perspectives to the long game of lifestyle. I suppose people eat healthy for many similar reasons to why they exercise, aside from pleasure, the common denominator being prolonged health and wellness. Protein consumption is somewhat contradictory depending on whether you look at short term or long term perspectives.
I worked with Will in a private capacity last year as a nutrition coach (well mostly with someone from his team who was also awesome, Liam) - the basic education along with accountability and support to drop some weight while training was super helpful and I got insanely lean while raising my FTP going into my “peak” event of the year.
What was really good was that the process wasn’t actually insanely complex but instead just putting together a bunch of sensible steps and processes into something digestable and manageable along with training. Chatting to Will was really fun as he’d through in some of that World Tour flare and give me little stories and insights about how the pros are doing things (both good and bad things). We also did a few of those “high performance” things, like a low residual super high carb load a few times - not something I think would score well on the longevity side of things, but definitely the sort of thing the pros are doing to eek out that extra %.
Sounds like a solid approach! Let us know how you get on .
I missed jotting a note during my listening in the car. What book did Will recommend re: taste profiles in building meals/menus?
I’m not sure which one he recommended, but this is the one I have and it’s great - lots of good ideas for what goes together or what to try:
That’s the one! Thanks for the quick reply and the endorsement. Going on a couple of Christmas lists for our sons who both love to cook.
After doing the Townsend workout yesterday with 1h30 and 0. 63 IF and having read in the text during the workout that exercises of up to an hour or even more than an hour of low intensity don’t require replenishing hydrates with energy drinks, and that water or less energetic foods are enough, because during this duration at low intensity the body uses the burning of accumulated fats to generate the necessary energy, I had doubts as to whether I had interpreted what I heard on the podcast correctly, because I had gotten the idea that an intake of at least 90g of hydrates would be for any training, even at low intensity, and that in competition it should go even higher, up to around 150g per hour.
The quote from Jonathan that ive read again also goes on the direction of only charging in long or hard wo.
Can anyone help on this?
I didnt used to charge on carbs on low intensity or low duration wo but after listening to the podcast started charging up even on low intensity days and in the last couple of weeks I’ve gained 1.5kg maybe due to excess calories intake in the evening although my trainig is always around dinner time for most people and always have a late dinner and off to bed no more than 2h after the end of the wo and 1h30 or so after dinner.
Tks!
I think a lot of the workout text is old and outdated from what their current thinking is. Personally I don’t fully fuel my shorter endurance rides. Usually just have a few dates before the ride and eat dinner after the ride.
Weight by itself really doesn’t tell you much. It’s pretty difficult to know the profile of any weight gain or loss without a DEXA scan. Maybe you lost a bit of fat but if you’re strength training you put on a hundred grams of bone & muscle mass, & you’re storing more glycogen & water. That would be the most ideal but a simple scale won’t tell you that. Also, I gained 1.1kg yesterday & lost 1.3kg today (yesterday was a carb load for today’s big ride, & of course, it’s all subject to reading inaccuracies), & then weight can fluctuate on any given day for a number of reasons. Longer-term trends can be valuable; single data points can be misleading. How has your appearance changed when you look in the bathroom mirror, & better yet do you have someone who can objectively confirm? That sort of info can sometimes be more useful.
Also, further to what UWDawgs said, TR podcast hosts changed their tune some time in the vicinity of 2020 or 2021 regarding fuelling workouts. Before then it was about encouraging fasting to train the body to burn fat; afterwards it was, during the workout let’s give the body as much sugar as it can absorb & see if it can do more work. And by the way, let’s train it to absorb more & more, because eating is now its own sport. Workout texts could be representative of the older way of thinking if they were written before this change.
As a result of my ~6-week experimentation with fasting I lost about 5kg over maybe a month, then once I stopped I gained it all back over two months. I think a significant proportion of that was glycogen stores plus the water attached, possibly some fat yes, maybe some muscle. I was making some newbie gains during that time so it’s hard for me to tell whether it was detrimental.
I personally don’t bother with fuelling for 30-minute workouts, other than something beforehand. I’d be very surprised if any carbohydrate consumed at the 15-minute mark has got into my bloodstream by the time the workout’s over. But a 1½h workout, yes I fuel like it’s a race, starting about 10 minutes before I get on the bike.