When I started the general guidance seemed to be about 200 calories (50g of carbs) per hour during training and races. I followed that or a little above for a long time, and constantly had problems both physically and cognitively near the end of races.
It took about a year to get used to fueling heavier (for me...about 400 calories per hour or 100g). Lots of figuring out digestion and timing and sources and other factors. But once I got there it was transformative...I could push much harder for much longer without a deep bonk and recovery was faster. More importantly, my ability to think/plan/make decisions at the end of races was orders of magnitude better.
I'd bet if you went to an aid station around 80 miles on a 100mile ultra marathon you could pretty reliably identify who had been on the 200cal end of the spectrum and who had been on the 400 + end.
900-1000 calories might mean that in is optimal - but think about eating a full meal from mcdonalds every hour while massively extering yourself.
Training your gut matters and I've never seen anything that suggests much beyond 400 calories per hour is possible during meaningful exertion.
These days I cram haribo and peanut butter M&Ms, although I think the latter are more useful for multiday things.
Edit: I did the math on that risotto cake recipe and it comes out to about 2500kcal for the batch, for me that comes out to calories for ~5-6 hours of riding.
I did a similar ride a few years ago, I mixed gels, energy bars with bananas, nuts, sandwichs, nuts and pastries bought along the way.
The tricky word there is average. If Tadej can absorb an extra 5 grams per liter, then you should give Tadej an extra five grams per liter. If Jonas can absorb 2 grams less per liter than the average then you should give him that serving.
These race results come down to mere seconds per hundred miles, for cyclists that are averaging 20 miles an hour. Any 1% difference is going into the training regimen.
The limits aren't wrt water absorption, but gut tolerance of sugar.
I get about 100g of sugar into a bottle by doing roughly 50:50 Gatorade and maltodextrin, and then throwing in some extra Na an K salt if it's going to be hot. Although with the super hi carb stuff you should make sure that you have some plain water as well - it sucks to be super thirsty but only have carb drink on the bike.
if i personally use gatorade for endurance exercise, i'll just cramp up after 90 minutes and not be able to ride normally. if i use a high salt mix instead, this isn't an issue whatsoever. I'm sure the exact same is true about food itself. remember that for the tour de france, last years time difference between the winner (Vingegaard) and the second (Pogadcar) was 8 minutes out of 82h 05' 42", aka only 0.16% faster overall. every single sub-percentage matters here.
there are tons of products that cater to this. the one i've been using is https://www.precisionhydration.com/ which is cheaper and more tailored than gatorade (i have no affiliation to them).
People forget that. They just follow "salt is killing you" advice, meanwhile I sweat salt like it's water. Last race I did had the sense to add salty potato chips to their rest stops... I didn't cramp up.
Meanwhile Gatorade is absolute trash for electrolyte maintenance for someone like myself.
It's funny that Precision uses almost exactly the same bottle as Nuun.
Gatorade’s ingredients list shows sucrose (glucose+fructose) and dextrose (glucose).
Maltodextrin is isotonic in a 6x stronger solution than fructose and glucose. This means you need to drink meaningfully less water during a race to digest maltodextrin. So do we want all maltodextrin? Nope! Fructose can be absorbed by a separate pathway, which is less efficient, but increases your total intake of carbohydrates into the bloodstream.
So you’re probably not going to see Tour de France teams giving their riders Gatorade. You want more maltodextrin and less glucose.
It turns out though that maltodextrin didn't exist in manufactured quantities until the mid 1970's, which was after Gatorade was a national brand. That they never changed their formula is disappointing but maybe not surprising (especially after Quaker Oats bought them in '83)
But none of the 'sports drinks' that Coca Cola and friends were pumping out in the 90's had maltodextrin in them to my knowledge. It was just more sucrose and glucose, so its star fell a bit more recently.
Do you know when the isotonic research was done? I don't have any recollection of that being even mentioned in the tests I talked about.
Also maltodextrins are made from wheat in Europe and a problem for celiacs.
I don’t think modern professional cyclists even can ride at 20 miles an hour ;-)
20 miles an hour didn’t win you the Tour de France in 1950. Nowadays, with better tech, better training, and shorter stages, you have to do over 25 miles an hour to win it, and the last rider in the general classification easily is within 10% of that.
The Tour de France did 124miles on its first day this year. Through mountains.
Many amateur cyclists have a 100 mile single day even or 150-300 mile multi day event as their yearly goal. And they can’t push the sort of power for the duration that a pro can. Something less than 75% as much power for less than half as long per day. And for days instead of weeks.
Nutrition doesn't matter for rides up to 15 miles, and you can improvise almost anything for rides up to 40 miles. More (or particularly hilly courses, etc.) and it becomes very important to get the amount you eat and drink right.
It also said that doping made a 20% difference, so either none of the current competitors are doping or all of them are.
The drafting effect in cycling means that a clean cyclist can finish very closely behind a doped cyclist
https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_classification:
Riders who finish in the same group are awarded the same time, with possible subtractions due to time bonuses. Two riders are said to have finished in the same group if the gap between them is less than three seconds. A crash or mechanical incident in the final 3 kilometres of a stage that finishes without a categorised climb usually means that riders thus affected are considered to have finished as part of the group they were with at the 3 km mark, so long as they finish the stage.
see https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-de-france/2024/sta...
Did anyone else feel like there was more drama around the end of the Indurain era?
I feel like doping could show up as more intense struggles for first without necessarily increasing the spread of placing. Also people who drop out don’t count right?
The way I heard it, the don't use doping to improve their performance. They use it so they can train longer and more intensely than they would be able to without it.
Glucose monitoring is banned during races, but I guess that is why you don't see some cyclist collapsing like as 15 years ago is because they understand their glucose levels.
For sure, doping it's still a fear, but these guys cannot climb Galibier at that speed only with storoids/drugs, it's insane the effort that they did over the year.