Suffered bonk and cramp stopping me from walking over the last couple weeks.

First was cutting carbs / sugar while training. Fine for gym and recreational cycling but then it hit me bad as I tried to scale up. Lesson learnt.

Cramp kicked in bad after climbing for a few hours. I’d learned from lack of sugar carbs so made sure I had energy gels and ate properly the night before but ouch. Hobbled to parking spot where a woman gave me a banana which seemed to do trick after a break. Now I take magnesium / vit D before bed if I’ve been working out but never during rides.

Anyone else have any advice or magic tricks around nutrition during rides as you scale up activity. Previously I’ve always been fine with flapjacks / sis gels or date + nut + choc bars.

Get yourself some HIGH5 ZERO tablets, other brands do similar things.

It’s just general nutrition whilst riding.

Gels aren’t the best for me because you have to remember to take them and they are gloopy and weird, and generate a lot of messy sticky rubbish. That said, Torq ones are quite tasty. Also very expensive overall.

I use maltodextrin powder in my water bottle, less than the maximum suggested amount, about 2 scoops per bottle. I also add about 1g of electrolyte mix. I buy generic stuff from bulk.com, it’s cheaper than food.

For me I use whichever SIS/High 5 electrolyte tablets I’ve last picked up on offer and have that in my bottle/bladder for the ride ahead. If its a big/all day ride then I’ll have one the night before and will take a gel or two as an emergency option if things get tricky.

As a side note, electrolyte tablets are a great hangover preventer 😉

Interesting.

So basically it looks like High5 add magnesium to their Isotonic/electrolyte product where SIS do not, bit High5 is then missing the energy component. SIS energy is basically malextrin added to the gel so maybe just adding a scoop to the High5 water bottle will work.

To be fair I was riding up Ventoux so a bit more than I’m used to when it comes to climbs but have always found SIS effective in the past. Seems like a bit of an oversight unless there are any potential negatives to the magnesium. To be fair the banana worked really well.

+1 to the hangover preventer haha

Any other products that do energy, electrolyte and magnesium in one hit?

Gels are just maltodextrin, the same as the powder. They are just gloopy.

Bulk.com electrolyte powder has magnesium in it too. Magnesium is an electrolyte.

Any other products that do energy, electrolyte and magnesium in one hit?

Most, afaik. Try this: https://www.bulk.com/uk/complete-hydration-drink.html

Cheers, will give it a go. Hitting that age where I can’t just ignore these things anymore 😂 Learning as I go. I didn’t even know magnesium was an electrolyte until just now!

Magnesium isn’t a “quick hit” you have to take a regular (daily) supplement for it to be in your system. iirc most research into magnesium supplements casts doubts on it having any beneficial impact on cramping, that’s not to say it has no benefits, just not in alleviating cramping.

I think Dylan Johnson has one or two vids that go into the research papers.

Tonic water with quinine (Schweppes and Fevertree are examples) are supposed to be good at preventing cramp.

I know people are trying to simplify the situation but magnesium is a metal and to go into the chemistry can be complex ;).

It is worth considering what form is included. I noted on the link above they use Magnesium oxide. I don’t think this is readily absorbed by the body? It turns to Magnesium hydroxide in water in any case iirc.

The better form is magnesium citrate if I remember, same for many other ions too.

If you are scaling up you riding, it is unlikely that there is a magic bullet that will save you. Eating and drinking poorly will likely increase the chance of cramp. A large part of it is down to muscle fatigue though.

The banana was a magic bullet though 🙂

Remember being on meds before that caused leg cramps. Was very different feeling but fevertree definitely helped. This kind of cramp is a different league in terms of intensity. May work if I’m trying to throw the kitchen sink at it.

The only way to test is to do multiple rides with different combos. Read some interesting articles about different types of cramps and that sporting type can be as a result of faulty signal lying between muscles and nervous symptoms where your body essentially misfires forcing contraction.

Magnesium seems most promising but now as above I’ve realised there are many different types. Interesting to see many of the research papers are funded by supplement CO’s or other interested parties.