I’ve recently bought a gravel bike and have started going out with a local cycle club, social road rides at the moment in the 30-40 mile range. This is a step up in distance for me, off-road is always below 20 miles.

The aim with the road riding is to shift some bulk, therefore making future rides easier and less fatiguing. I’ve absolutely no idea when it comes to nutrition and fuelling, the aim like I said is to lose weight, but I obviously need something in the tank to ride with.

Today’s ride was a lumpy 42 miles, a couple of big hills in there, but not extreme. Normal off-road rides would be done with a decent sized bowl of muesli or granola, sometimes porridge, maybe a banana before we set off. Then coffee and cake when finished, maybe a ready made pot of pasta salad, meal-deal type of thing. Last ride I was suffering at about 30 miles, so today I’ve had two SIS gels and half a Cliff bar. In addition to coffee and cake about half way round.

I’m absolutely wrecked today. I think it’s the first time I’ve bonked. I was an absolute mess.

Is this not enough food for the step up in distance and effort or am I just pathetic and weak?

Rule#91: No Food On Training Rides Under Four Hours. Thereafter your preferred kind of pie surely?

Little and often is the key.

At that kind of distance, depending upon pace, I’d be eating every 30-45 minutes. I eat roughly 20g of carbs per ‘meal’ which is a single sis gel or four jelly babies.

For me its food every hour or so and generally something approaching real food. But I guess picnics are not the done thing on a club ride?

Rice snacks

Found this on YT. They’re OK. You can muck around with the ingredients etc. I also like Sainsburys mini flapjacks 😁 probably explains a lot 😳

Is this not enough food for the step up in distance…

Depends. The body adapts. I’d maybe have an energy drink and a flapjack or something on a ride like that. Some days I might eat nothing. If you need to eat more, eat more, but don’t over think it. Unless you’re racing you can eat pretty much whatever you want. Personally I avoid sugary foods generally, on and off the bike, otherwise I just have a sugar crash and even a short ride can be a struggle. As a general rule I’ll pack more than I think I need. Better to have it and not need it, etc.

In terms of feeling wiped out the next day, make sure to refuel afterwards.

Very much depends on your ride companions. If they’re the type that like to take in “coffee” stops then you should be able to make it round without much planning. If it’s a more continuous effort then I find liquid carbs are easier, so something like Torq in your water bottle(s). Don’t forget to drink as you go to. My biggest fault is not drinking anywhere near enough when riding – especially once the temperatures drop.

depends very much on intensity, in simple terms you have two fuelling systems (not perfect explanations but a primer)

The aerobic system is used most of the time, and within reason if you keep putting fuel (food) in then you can keep going indefinitely. You want to stay in this regime most of the time.

The anaerobic system uses glycogen as the energy source and that has limited stores in muscles and liver, etc. If you use them up then it takes time to replenish, like days (not hours) and that is when you bonk. In the olden days the old clubmen talked about having a book of matches and when you’ve burnt them all, you don’t get any more.

The switchover from one to the other comes at your aerobic-anaerobic threshold and there’s ways to estimate that based on exertion levels. But to be serious you could do worse that get a HRM (even better, a power meter), work out your zones, and then work out when you’re going too hard to sustain.

So practicalities….. 2 gels, a clif bar, cake and a decent breakfast, plus being a bigger lad, you should have plenty of fuel on board so no real need to eat any more than you are would be my layman’s assessment. What I suspect is happening is that being a bigger lad on a lumpy ride, when it goes uphill you’ve been burning your matches to keep up (or if properly steep, just to keep going) and in that case you can easily run out and go close to bonking even in a shorter ride.

So – the plan:

get lighter, so you don’t need to work as hard going up hill.

get fitter. You won’t massively change your threshold as a % of heartrate, but you will be able to put out more power at that effort level which when coupled to being lighter = going faster. So then you can keep up at a lower effort level that is all day sustainable.

of most immediate effect – identify where your threshold is (few ways to do that if you google it) and try to ride within it when you can, choosing when to go harder. On your group rides may mean that you need to fall off the back on hills and then if it’s a decent social group they’ll wait on the tops. BUT – because it’s a threshold, not a gradual transition over you may not need to reduce by that much – just enough to stay this side of the line. You’ll still be faster overall as a result, giving up 1/2mph or 1mph on climbs but still being able to keep up later on on the flats is faster on average than keeping up for the first half of the ride and then having to phone your mummy to pick you up because you’ve bonked and just want to lie down and cry.

Fuelling is contingent on: fuel leading up to exercise (available glucose in liver and muscle), power output, intensity, duration, temperature, fitness, etc.

Fat adaptation is mostly bushit. Carb tolerance training is a real thing.

But you didn’t come for a sports science lecture so I’ll be super brief.

Fit your calorie deficit into your daytime routine – don’t diet on the bike. If you’re finding yourself out of energy, start aiming for 40-60g carbs / hour on casual rides. If the ride is hard for you and people are pushing it, aim for 60-80g/hr. Simple sugars – gels, chews, rice cakes, drink mix is cheapest (bulk maltodextrin from myprotein). This is more than you think. Don’t bother with protein or fat intake on the bike it’ll only slow your gut down and lead to tummy ache.

Apologies to the OP for my flippant reply – I was thinking on the lines of Reddit’s famous ‘Am I the Asshole’ thinking STW needs a response to the OP’s brilliant question ‘Am I just pathetic and weak?’

A more mature response would be it depends on your training and usual exercise diet – it is very hard to absorb more than about 200 calories an hour when undertaking endurance exercise, and you only have so much stored glycogen. So there is a balance between how much you burn, and how much you can take on, and how – but for extended endurance you can’t absorb more than that. When you aren’t very fit slow down, and take on as much as possible in easily absorbed carbs. I rate Tailwind and have used it successfully for a lot of ultramarathons and Long bikes rides, but it’s a balance, and in that regard I recommend Stu Mittleman’s inspiring book on endurance exercise nutrition – or as I’d summarise: burn fat not sugar, and know what your metabolism is doing.

HTH, and apologies again for my very flippant reply!

How much of your MTB stuff is “riding with faffing”? MTB group rides (IME) tend to involve an awful lot of stopping at gates, top of climbs etc so the exercise is short sharp bursts followed by some recovery time.

Road and gravel rides tend to involve a lot less of that; it’ll be a much more constant effort and it’s that, rather than intensity or distance, that tends to get people the first few times they’re out.

Depends on the time of day, before 1pm Coffee and Cake, after, Beer and Pastry.

No Food On Training Rides Under Four Hours.

This isn’t a serious suggestion.

@continuity has it right.

Basically, you get energy mostly from fat at low intensity and some fat plus more stored carbs at high intensity. The point at which you start significantly depleting your carb stores varies depending on how hard you are working relative to your max and how your body’s adapted, which in turn depends on the riding you’ve been doing and your genetics.

You’ll always been using some carbs and some fat whilst riding. When your carb stores get really low this is called bonking. You can avoid this by riding slowly or by eating carbs during a ride. Some people can ride all day on a single banana, these people are heavily biased towards fat burning. You may not be, so trying to do this is foolish. You can get better at burning fat, but some people will always be better at it than others. You get better at it by riding in your fat burning zone, which is pretty slow. If you ride with other fitter people, you probably won’t get the chance to do this.

Taking carbs on a ride IMO is best done with plain carb powder and orange squash or similar, two or three scoops to a bottle at most – but figure out how much you need. Plain maltodextrin is super cheap – cheaper than jelly babies etc and easier to consume.

If you deplete your carb stores and don’t replenish them, you will feel extremely hungry, like crap, or both for several days and probably end up pigging out. The idea is to keep your carb stores topped up and rely on the fat burning part of your exercise. A hard ride will need more carbs than a gentle one but may still end up burning more fat overall. But longer slower rides will burn more fat because you will be able to ride further. Long hard rides will stress your system a lot and probably end up causing you to eat more to compensate.

Fuel when riding, and eat healthily without too much carbs when not.

Rab Wardell talked quite a bit about fuelling on the downtime podcast he did. Worth a listen:

Rab Wardell Downtime Podcast

For a similar length ride where I am pushing myself ( for the sake of clarity your pushing and my pushing don’t need to be in anyway comparable). Bowl of porridge for breakfast. I would take two bottles one with carb powder in and one with plain water. I focus on the carb bottle early in the ride but like to have plain water sometimes. I would also take a banana and eat that in two goes in the first hour or so. I would then expect to get home on that. Our rides often stop for cake near the end but obviously eat cake wherever you can… I usually have a gel on me for emergencies.

Oh and put some slick tyres on the gravel bike, that’ll help loads.

There is a limit to how far you can absorb carbohydrate.

You therefore need to be fueling from the start. Not waiting until you’ve run out

Rap up warm my only group ride bonk was on a cold day. Starting warm needs food

bulk maltodextrin from myprotein

I have just looked at my smart gas and elec meter so interested in this. Would it be just the same as say torq energy?

Pretty much yes then

Energy Organic
Ingredients: Maltodextrin (Polysacharide 93%, Maltose 3%, Maltotriose 3%, Dextrose 1%).

Pretty much, but see my point above about not drinking enough. I actually like the taste of the Torq Vanilla drink so that encourages me in a way that “just” water or other flavours don’t. 🙂

Fat adaptation is mostly bushit.

Hang on. You can get better at burning fat, absolutely, and this can make a significant difference to your riding. But you can only do so much within your given parameters which are genetics, what you actually want to do and what you enjoy. If you want to hoon around the local woods for two hours aka XC racing then your ideal training would be different to if you want to do 18 hour individual TTs.

Some people will never be 60kg hill climbing whippets who can ride a day on a banana, and conversely some will never be great sprinters. But generally your average MTBer can get much better at fat burning, and needs to be. Because the MTBing many of us do for fun is actually bad training for burning fat.

Would it be just the same as say torq energy?

Yeah Torq unflavoured/organic is just plain maltodextrin, just more expensive than the stuff from bulk.com. And their flavoured drinks work pretty well, feels like 10% better subjectively than plain, but costs about 5x more.

I actually like the taste of the Torq Vanilla drink

I generally use the plain torq and add a bit of squash, I prefer plain water tbh, that’s why even in winter I always take two bottles

But generally your average MTBer can get much better at fat burning, and needs to be. Because the MTBing many of us do for fun is actually bad training for burning fat.

Surely if we needed to be better at doing it our riding would enable this, not sure I follow your logic

Keep the porridge in the morning (even have a bowl the night before for carb loading). Eat every 30-60 minutes on the ride, little and often like others have said. I stay away from gels and just stick to cereal bars and trail-mix/dried fruit also maybe a banana.

As an update, because I forgot to include lots of details that other posters have brought up.

My MTB riding is still social, but short, sharp blasts of activity followed by short recovery. I’m generally OK at this. I’m no racing machine, I’m a slow social rider.

I’m a big bloke. 194cm (6’4”) and 116kg (18st 4lbs). Ex rugby player. I’ve never been an endurance athlete even in my younger very fit days. I’ve never been able to run very far, sprinter and quick explosive activity.

Today’s ride was cold and wet, 42 miles, 1500ft of climbing, 3 hours 47 minutes moving time, 11.2mph average speed. The speed doesn’t sound high but that’s due to some very, very slow climbing in granny cog. I got too cold. To the point where when I got home I was struggling to concentrate to put the bike away, shower, wash my kit, and get some food on board.

According to Strava I used 1500 calories, I’ll take that with a pinch of salt. I normally use a hydration bladder with about 1.5ltrs of water and a 750ml bottle of High5 hydration, I’m a sweaty bugger and found that helps with keeping cramp at bay during the following night’s sleep. Today I drank two 500ml bottles of High5 and nearly two bottles of water. That was hard to drink because it was so cold.

I felt lots better once I’d had a gel, within a few minutes, but that didn’t last long, 20-30 minutes or so. I think I need to consume more when I’m riding and ignore the weight loss goal until I get used to the new higher distance and time on the bike.

I also practice riding fasted on easier rides. Definitely teaches your body to not rely on easy consumed carbs. I rode for two hours the other week (early morning) and still wasn’t particularly hungry when I got home.

Not sure I have the mental energy to step into anymore of these threads as I am getting a pasting over on the TR forum as it is 🤣🤣

I’ll try and stick to 5 bullet points to make it succinct.

1. Riding to lose weight and riding to get maximally fit are not complimentary.
You will get advice ranging from “eat nothing” to “train your gut to absorb 150g carbs/h”. All are right. All are wrong. It depends on a billion details which is right for you 🤔🤣

2. The single best upgrade you can buy for fuelling and weight loss is a Power Meter. (Ignore strava guesstimate power and kcals.)
If you can afford it- buy one straight away. It will enable you to properly quantify the work you have done and assess how the food you are eating is really affecting your ride. It will give you a measure of work done in kj which is basically a kcal.

3. If you want to lose weight- you need a daily calorie deficit. Every gram of carbs you eat on the bike will be a gram of real food you have to forego later to hit your calorie deficit. (That is leading me to fuel my rides with almost zero carbs lately.)

4. As a bigger rider you likely do have more glycogen on board. However if you are unfit, you are likely burning though it twice as fast as the others. This may mean fuelling your rides *with them* but doing lots of solo training rides un-fuelled or even fasted in between times. Remember you don’t want to Bonk on these solo training rides- so keep your intensity so that you can still maintains a conversation. Do as many hours as you can of this each week. This will help you build a bigger fat-powered engine.

This is the dichotomy mentioned in 1. above. Just getting fitter means your body becomes better at burning fat anyhow. But if you are tipping in sugar- you do inhibit that process so the fat burning comes later in recovery. Only, if you eat junk later, that gets inhibited too so it’s actually harder and harder to outride a bad diet.

5. Science on this subject is changing fast. But lots is funded by vested interests. Luckily- the optimal ratio of glucose-fructose seems to be 1/0.8 which is the same as table sugar. Seriously- save cash and just use table sugar with a pinch of salt. Start at 60g/h but the upper limit is still being debated. I can do 120g in a 1 hour chaingang no problem.

IT WILL MAKE YOU FEEL INCREDIBLE but is dangerous stuff 🤣 I got carried away this summer and put ON 10lbs using this method.

When you exercise, your muscle cells vibrate the glute 4 transporters open (the same ones that are usually opened by insulin when not exercising). This means your body sucks up this rocket fuel mixture insanely efficiently.

100g/h is enough sugar (400kcals) for 112 extra watts/h !! If you aren’t producing that much extra power then you will struggle to out-ride the extra calories. But it might well help you keep up and get better at drafting etc 😀

Hope this helps.

Tl/dr ride lots un-fuelled when solo, drink sugar to keep up on this ride.

@anagallis_arvensis

Yeah except it’s about 1/10th of the price.

The gut can only transport about 60g/hr of glucose, but up to this point glucose is king. Above 60g/hr you need to stop adding glucose and start adding fructose. This is why the super expensive drink mixes (maruten etc) are now approx 50/50 glucose:fructose. You can buy bulk fructose powder from Holland and Barrett for about £3/500g.

I make a drink mix of malto, fructose, table salt and whatever squash I have to hand (or sometimes fresh lemon or lime juice). This is maruten 320, except it’s 30p a bottle, not £4.

@ampthill

Yeah but it’s higher than you probably think. I’ve tested up to 140g/hr (seriously put this in a 500ml bottle and it’s half full of sugar) without gut issues. Pros in the tdf this year were taking upwards of 160-180g/hr even when not working hard just to keep up with the energy equation.

@molgrips

CBA to link it all as on phone but exogenous carbs have little impact on fat oxidation. The only real lever for fat oxidation is getting fitter (because then your Watts@LT1 are higher so you’re burning more fat). The whole adaptation thing is mostly a nutritionist fad that isn’t borne out by the latest research.

Similarly, the latest evidence for fasted training as a method of aerobic adaptation is messy at best and seems only really to be valuable if you’re already doing 15h/wk+.

@bigblackshed

If you’re 116kg I think that 1500kcal is an enormous underguess. I tapped away today for 3hrs @ z2 and burnt about 2000cal. Just go do the maths on how much food you’d need to eat to balance that and then see if you think you’re anywhere near!

@crosshair

You’re getting pasted on the TR forums because you’re trying to tell other people to do something at the edge of the bell curve. The OP just wants to stop bonking. The answer is more sugar, not to adhere to your niche diet. Most people can and will a) lose weight and b) get fitter by fuelling the work as well as they can. Your unique case isn’t something you should be trying to get everyone else to copy as the research says it is suboptimal (but for you and your specific desires – and here I mean you aren’t good at dieting off the bike – you admit – it’s fine).

@continuity
Most people on there chiming in are close to optimal weight already. If people have large amounts of weight to lose- you cannot do it easily by “fuelling” your rides. This means sacrificing top end to work on aerobic fitness and weight loss.
What’s wrong about that? Or anything in my post here?

(I’ve told the OP he may need to fuel this ride to keep up. That will make it hard to lose weight so he needs to cut kcals too- best done solo at sub Z2)

I’m now 8 weeks in to practicing what I preach on this and my endurance rides have gone from 15.5mph to nearly 18 thanks to adding 20w to my Z2 AND losing 12lbs 🤷🏻‍♂️

The only real lever for fat oxidation is getting fitter (because then your Watts@LT1 are higher so you’re burning more fat).

Surely this IS fat adaptaion? That’s what I assumed it to mean anyway.

Surely if we needed to be better at doing it our riding would enable this, not sure I follow your logic

You need base fitness and speed fitness together. Smashing 2hr MTB rides only gives you speed fitness. You need both, and both will help both long and short rides for different reasons.

Seriously- save cash and just use table sugar with a pinch of salt.

The reason maltodextrin is better than sugar is that a drink with that much sugar in it is extremely sweet to the point of being undrinkable. I have always had a pretty sweet tooth in life, and I can process a lot of maltodextrin but even I can’t manage that much actual sugar. And a few hours into a long ride and I’d be in a fair bit of gastric distress!

I also made a fructose/maltodextrin drink. The problem was that fructose is very sweet, but so is Robinson’s orange squash. I was unable to find flavouring that wasn’t already sweetened, so the addition of fructose made it too sweet. Imagine a glass of squash with 12 teaspoons of sugar in it.. ugh!

I do add squash as well to be fair. But sugar and enough salt is manageable on a Chainy 🤣

I was out today for example. 3h at 200w, so 2135kcal of exercise fuelled on less than 300ml of weak squash.

Scrambled egg and coffee for breakfast. Cheese on toast and soup with coffee for lunch, lasagne and veggie salad for dinner, choccy yog for pud and STILL have enough kcals to have tuna on toast with a cup of tea before bed. That will give me -600kcal deficit on the day whilst not even feeling like I’m dieting.

Or I could have eaten 1200kcals (100g/h for 3h) on the bike, maybe gone a few watts faster but had to miss out on some normal food and felt like I was restricting myself.

It’s a really simple concept and only controversial because Trainerroad need people to be able to do stupid amounts of high intensity to hit their plans.

1kg of maltodextrin is £5. That’s cheap enough for me not to need to drink actual sugar!

There you go OP. On your next ride, remember to take a set of scales, a calculator – oh and a syringe so that you can suck all of the joy out of what should be an enjoyable experience!

@scotroutes 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Sadly I do find it fun seeing objective measurable progress 😞 😭 🤣

Maltodextrin and other short acting carbs are really bad to rely on for fuel ( constant triggering of insulin response with corresponding sugar crashes). You need long and medium acting carbs with the short acting for emergencies / top up

Seriously for a ride of that length a decent breakfast preferably oat based ( regulates blood sugar ) and a snack on the way round should be plenty. keep some jelly babies ( almost pure glucose) for if you bonk / a top up

Its different if you are racing but for a short social ride? Forget gels / maltodextrin etc. Real food and a good mix of carbs.

I averaged 45+ mileswith luggage a day for 3 months on real food without once bonking.

Maltodextrin and other short acting carbs are really bad to rely on for fuel ( constant triggering of insulin response with corresponding sugar crashes).

This is true of normal life but it’s not true when you’re riding above a pootle.

Seriously for a ride of that length a decent breakfast preferably oat based ( regulates blood sugar ) and a snack on the way round should be plenty.

It’s not, if you are riding hard. Do the maths. Your porridge is a few hundred cals as is your snack. But a 4hr ride is likely to be 2500 cals, and if you’re pushing it and are a poor endurance athlete you’ll probably be depleting your entire glycogen stores, which might be 1000 cals for a big bloke. You need to put those carbs back somehow.

The problem with eating carb rich foods when you get home is that they tend to be delicious, and that in itself makes you want to eat more of it. Maltodextrin is completely tasteless and satisfies carb cravings without any side effects.

@tjagain you don’t get an insulin spike whilst exercising because your glute 4’s get self-activated above walking pace I believe.

It’s why the old adage about going for a walk straight after dinner works too! Your muscles automatically lower your blood glucose levels by sucking out all the fuel.

Even ultra endurance/ 24h cyclists etc are switching to just plain old sugar- everything else longer chain just requires taking blood away from your muscles to aid digestion.

This is a chap on a social ride not a racer or ultraendurance athlete

And yes you do still get sugar spikes and crashes – in previous descriptions molgrips has described having a sugar crash tho denied it but the description was exact

Taking in all that refined sugar ( and thats what maltodextrin is) is bad for you. No doubt at all.

This is true of normal life but it’s not true when you’re riding above a pootle.

Nope – its true all the time Are you still taking a kilo of refined sugar a week?

the walk after dinner is about activating your gut from the walking movement. Nowt to do with blood sugar

OP – If yo are really worried about diet get some real advice from someone with a real qualification ( not a “nutritionist”). There is a huge amount of quackery about and misunderstanding

Google it (GLUT 4 not glute stupid autocorrect 🤣)

Smashing 2hr MTB rides only gives you speed fitness.

But if you like 2 hour smash fest’s in the woods why worry?