Nutrition whilst on long rides?
Comments
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Muesli is normally very high in sugar.
e.g. Alpen is 23% sugar and even the No Added Sugar variety is 16% sugar!More problems but still living....0 -
Most things will be with any kind of fruit content in there. An alternative is to take your own oats and your own extras (fruits, nuts etc.) and mix it yourself. Often works out cheaper than branded stuff and you get to choose what to have in it.0
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thegreatdivide wrote:Trev The Rev wrote:Eat a large well balanced meal the night before. Eat a good breakfast. Take food on the ride. Do not be brainwashed into thinking you need gels and sports drinks or energy bars. These are are all full of cheap crap which is then packaged with a load of scientific babble to convince idiots to think they need this garbage to ride a bike more than half a mile down the road.
http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4737#ref-9
http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4797?
Assessment of evidence behind sports products
A team at the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University assessed the evidence behind 431 performance enhancing claims in adverts for 104 different sports products including sports drinks, protein shakes and trainers.
If the evidence wasn’t clear from the adverts, they contacted the companies for more information. Some, like Puma, did not provide any evidence, while others like GlaxoSmithKline— makers of Lucozade Sport—provided hundreds of studies.
Yet only three (2.7%) of the studies the team was able to assess were judged to be of high quality and at low risk of bias. They say this absence of high quality evidence is “worrying” and call for better research in this area to help inform decisions.
What the research found
As part of the BMJ’s analysis of the evidence underpinning sports performance products, it asked manufacturers to supply details of the studies. Only one manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline provided a comprehensive bibliography of the trials used to underpin its product claims for Lucozade—a carbohydrate containing sports drink.45 Other manufacturers of leading sports drinks did not and in the absence of systematic reviews we surmise that the methodological issues raised apply to all other sports drinks.
Carl Heneghan, Rafael Perera, David Nunan, Kamal Mahtani, and Peter Gill set out to appraise the evidence and found a series of problems with the studies (see online for full article).9
Small sample sizes limit the applicability of results—Only one of the 106 studies —in 257 marathon runners—exceeded the acceptable target for a small study of 100 participants per group. The next largest had 52 participants and the median sample size was nine. Thus the results cannot be generalised beyond people with the study group characteristics
Poor quality surrogate outcomes undermine the validity—Many studies used time to exhaustion or other outcomes that are not directly relevant to performance in real life events
Poorly designed research offers little to instil confidence in product claims—Most studies (76%) were low in quality because of a lack of allocation concealment and blinding, and often the findings contrasted with each other. The studies often had substantial problems because of use of different protocols, temperatures, work intensities, and outcomes
Data dredging leads to spurious statistical results—Studies often failed to define outcome measures before the study, leaving open the possibility of numerous analyses and increasing the risk of finding a positive result by chance.
Biological outcomes do not necessarily correlate with improved performance—Reductions in use of muscle glycogen, for example, did not correlate with improved athletic performance. Physiological outcomes such as maximal oxygen consumption have also been shown to be poor predictors of performance, even among elite athletes
Inappropriate use of relative measures inflates the outcome and can easily mislead—One study inflated the relative effect of carbohydrate drinks from 3% to 33% by excluding from the analysis the 75 minutes of exercise both groups undertook before an exhaustion test
Studies that lack blinding are likely to be false—Studies that used plain water as the control found positive effects whereas those that used taste matched placebos didn’t
Manipulation of nutrition in the run-in phase significantly affects subsequent outcomes—Many studies seemingly starve participants the night before and on the morning of the research study
Changes in environmental factors lead to wide variation in outcomes—Although dilute carbohydrate drinks may have some benefit in heat, studies found no effect in cold environments. No plausible reason given for benefits
There was no substantial evidence to suggest that liquid is any better than solid carbohydrate intake and there were no studies in children. Given the high sugar content and the propensity to dental erosions children should be discouraged from using sports drinks. Through our analysis of the current sports performance research, we have come to one conclusion: people should develop their own strategies for carbohydrate intake largely by trial and error.
Another problem with the research is transparency. Even though a large proportion of the studies have been conducted by scientists with financial ties to Gatorade (PepsiCo), GSK, and Coca-Cola, the authors’ individual conflicts of interest are either not published or not declared. Conflicts of interest also exist within the key journals in sports medicine—GSSI funded scientists pepper their editorial boards and editorships.
Around half of the studies supplied by GSK appeared in four journals—the Journal of Applied Physiology (20), Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (24),International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism (11) and the Journal of Sports Science (9). Several of these journals belong to organisations that have long relationships with Gatorade (box).
Most of the scientists identified as being on the GSSI board have prominent roles in journals. Even its global senior director, Asker Jeukendrup, professor of exercise metabolism at Birmingham University, is an editor of the European Journal of Sport Science—the official journal of the European College of Sport Science. His biography states that “he has been a member of the advisory editorial board of theJournal of Sports Sciences, and served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Sports Medicine and Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise. To date, Asker has served as a reviewer for 35 different scientific journals.”53Jeukendrup is one of the main authors of a series of research papers given to theBMJ by GSK to demonstrate the effectiveness of its sports drinks.9
Nice edit of your post. Pity it's total and utter ****.
Carl Heneghan is well qualified, I agree with him.0 -
phreak wrote:Well sure, a similar sized bowl of porridge works out at around 400 calories. Don't want to eat the same thing every day though, and muesli is far from the worst culprit. Granola or something comes in at nearer 750 for the same bowl.
It’s carbs not calories you need to be taking on. Porridge, low fat rice pudding, even a wee bowl of mashed sweet potato with olive oil and some salt and pepper (a fave of mine).0 -
Trev The Rev wrote:Eat a large well balanced meal the night before. Eat a good breakfast. Take food on the ride. Do not be brainwashed into thinking you need gels and sports drinks or energy bars. These are are all full of cheap crap which is then packaged with a load of scientific babble to convince idiots to think they need this garbage to ride a bike more than half a mile down the road.
http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4737#ref-9
http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4797?
Assessment of evidence behind sports products
A team at the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University assessed the evidence behind 431 performance enhancing claims in adverts for 104 different sports products including sports drinks, protein shakes and trainers.
If the evidence wasn’t clear from the adverts, they contacted the companies for more information. Some, like Puma, did not provide any evidence, while others like GlaxoSmithKline— makers of Lucozade Sport—provided hundreds of studies.
Yet only three (2.7%) of the studies the team was able to assess were judged to be of high quality and at low risk of bias. They say this absence of high quality evidence is “worrying” and call for better research in this area to help inform decisions.
What the research found
As part of the BMJ’s analysis of the evidence underpinning sports performance products, it asked manufacturers to supply details of the studies. Only one manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline provided a comprehensive bibliography of the trials used to underpin its product claims for Lucozade—a carbohydrate containing sports drink.45 Other manufacturers of leading sports drinks did not and in the absence of systematic reviews we surmise that the methodological issues raised apply to all other sports drinks.
Carl Heneghan, Rafael Perera, David Nunan, Kamal Mahtani, and Peter Gill set out to appraise the evidence and found a series of problems with the studies (see online for full article).9
Small sample sizes limit the applicability of results—Only one of the 106 studies —in 257 marathon runners—exceeded the acceptable target for a small study of 100 participants per group. The next largest had 52 participants and the median sample size was nine. Thus the results cannot be generalised beyond people with the study group characteristics
Poor quality surrogate outcomes undermine the validity—Many studies used time to exhaustion or other outcomes that are not directly relevant to performance in real life events
Poorly designed research offers little to instil confidence in product claims—Most studies (76%) were low in quality because of a lack of allocation concealment and blinding, and often the findings contrasted with each other. The studies often had substantial problems because of use of different protocols, temperatures, work intensities, and outcomes
Data dredging leads to spurious statistical results—Studies often failed to define outcome measures before the study, leaving open the possibility of numerous analyses and increasing the risk of finding a positive result by chance.
Biological outcomes do not necessarily correlate with improved performance—Reductions in use of muscle glycogen, for example, did not correlate with improved athletic performance. Physiological outcomes such as maximal oxygen consumption have also been shown to be poor predictors of performance, even among elite athletes
Inappropriate use of relative measures inflates the outcome and can easily mislead—One study inflated the relative effect of carbohydrate drinks from 3% to 33% by excluding from the analysis the 75 minutes of exercise both groups undertook before an exhaustion test
Studies that lack blinding are likely to be false—Studies that used plain water as the control found positive effects whereas those that used taste matched placebos didn’t
Manipulation of nutrition in the run-in phase significantly affects subsequent outcomes—Many studies seemingly starve participants the night before and on the morning of the research study
Changes in environmental factors lead to wide variation in outcomes—Although dilute carbohydrate drinks may have some benefit in heat, studies found no effect in cold environments. No plausible reason given for benefits
There was no substantial evidence to suggest that liquid is any better than solid carbohydrate intake and there were no studies in children. Given the high sugar content and the propensity to dental erosions children should be discouraged from using sports drinks. Through our analysis of the current sports performance research, we have come to one conclusion: people should develop their own strategies for carbohydrate intake largely by trial and error.
Another problem with the research is transparency. Even though a large proportion of the studies have been conducted by scientists with financial ties to Gatorade (PepsiCo), GSK, and Coca-Cola, the authors’ individual conflicts of interest are either not published or not declared. Conflicts of interest also exist within the key journals in sports medicine—GSSI funded scientists pepper their editorial boards and editorships.
Around half of the studies supplied by GSK appeared in four journals—the Journal of Applied Physiology (20), Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (24),International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism (11) and the Journal of Sports Science (9). Several of these journals belong to organisations that have long relationships with Gatorade (box).
Most of the scientists identified as being on the GSSI board have prominent roles in journals. Even its global senior director, Asker Jeukendrup, professor of exercise metabolism at Birmingham University, is an editor of the European Journal of Sport Science—the official journal of the European College of Sport Science. His biography states that “he has been a member of the advisory editorial board of theJournal of Sports Sciences, and served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Sports Medicine and Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise. To date, Asker has served as a reviewer for 35 different scientific journals.”53Jeukendrup is one of the main authors of a series of research papers given to theBMJ by GSK to demonstrate the effectiveness of its sports drinks.9
This is too funny.
What you've done is found some papers that claim research done by the businesses that create energy products is biased!
and that's not obvious at all :roll:
But this has nothing to do with the discussion in hand.
You haven't actually provided any evidence that these energy products are bad for athletic performance (or worse than normal food and drink)... so please go and find some, take the time to read and interpret it properly.. and then come back and post it only if its actually relevant to the discussion we're having.0 -
ALIHISGREAT wrote:
This is too funny.
What you've done is found some papers that claim research done by the businesses that create energy products is biased!
and that's not obvious at all :roll:
But this has nothing to do with the discussion in hand.
You haven't actually provided any evidence that these energy products are bad for athletic performance (or worse than normal food and drink)... so please go and find some, take the time to read and interpret it properly.. and then come back and post it only if its actually relevant to the discussion we're having.
It has everything to do with the discussion in hand.
Read what Carl Heneghan and his team have to say then make up your own mind.
I don't need to prove anything, that is what the manufacturers need to do.0 -
Trev The Rev wrote:ALIHISGREAT wrote:
This is too funny.
What you've done is found some papers that claim research done by the businesses that create energy products is biased!
and that's not obvious at all :roll:
But this has nothing to do with the discussion in hand.
You haven't actually provided any evidence that these energy products are bad for athletic performance (or worse than normal food and drink)... so please go and find some, take the time to read and interpret it properly.. and then come back and post it only if its actually relevant to the discussion we're having.
It has everything to do with the discussion in hand.
Read what Carl Heneghan and his team have to say then make up your own mind.
I don't need to prove anything, that is what the manufacturers need to do.
Its just funny that you fundamentally misunderstand the aims of the two papers you've provided.
Since I'm a student I basically do this full time, I'll be nice and help you to understand!
1) http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4737#ref-9 - 'The Truth About Sports Drinks'
" Deborah Cohen investigates the links between the sports drinks industry and academia that have helped market the science of hydration"
Oh look.. its a paper discussing relevance of evidence.. not actual effectiveness of the product.
2) http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4797 -'Forty years of sports performance research and little insight gained'
"Carl Heneghan and colleagues take a critical look at the evidence used to back up claims that Lucozade enhances sporting performance"
oh look... its a paper discussing relevance of evidence.. not actual effectiveness of the product
So in the introductions of those two papers provided on the BMJ website, I was able to see that neither are relevant in our quest to answer the question on whether energy products actually work since they only discount a body of evidence on the grounds of poorly executed studies, and bias in academia. They don't provide any evidence that sports energy products are not effective, or even any evidence that the results from the studies in question are wrong, only evidence that they are not to be trusted, and that we should look elsewhere for the answer.
Hence we must look at other materials in our search for an answer -> actually f*$& it.. I can't be bothered so I'll just never use a sports energy product again and post these stupid irrelevant links in any discussion of sports nutrition I ever see.
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What you need to do is prove these products work better than real food on long rides.
Like it or not you have been brainwashed.0 -
Trev The Rev wrote:What you need to do is prove these products work better than real food on long rides.
Like it or not you have been brainwashed.
If you tried the products you'd understand that they do work better on longer rides -> I'm starting to think you don't actually cycle, or have any experience of any of the things you discuss?
(and yes I hate it when you go to university and they 'brainwash' you.. I'd much rather not be able to critically analyse materials.. its much easier to blindly follow what others say)0 -
Sounds like a lot of people are overeating.
1 malt loaf is fine for me for anything 60-90 miles, I sometimes stop for a coffee, sometimes not. And I tend to apparently burn 3k calories over 65 miles according to my powermeter.Blog on my first and now second season of proper riding/racing - www.firstseasonracing.com0 -
ALIHISGREAT wrote:Trev The Rev wrote:What you need to do is prove these products work better than real food on long rides.
Like it or not you have been brainwashed.
If you tried the products you'd understand that they do work better on longer rides -> I'm starting to think you don't actually cycle, or have any experience of any of the things you discuss?
(and yes I hate it when you go to university and they 'brainwash' you.. I'd much rather not be able to critically analyse materials.. its much easier to blindly follow what others say)
I have tried the products, I first tried Gatorade in 1982 during an international competition. Yes I do cycle, probably have for more years than you have been able to breathe.0 -
FlacVest wrote:phreak wrote:For rides of around 4 hours I find I don't need to eat a great deal, especially at this time of year when the pace isn't massively high. For that kind of duration you maybe burn 2-2,500 calories.
A good breakfast can give you half of that, so it's pretty unlikely people will be bonking, given how much we usually have in reserve anyway.
I'm assuming you're fit, which isn't the case for a large number of people posting on these forums.
Yes, as you increase in fitness, you'll be able to "hold" more Calories and put those down; I never eat while riding and always have gorged on a huge meal right after, and throughout the day.
With that said, from my HR monitor, I can put out about 2000 or so Calories before I start thinking about bonking; no way could I do that a month or 2 ago. If you don't train to put down a lot of power over a long duration and cruise at ~17 or 18 mph for a long time, your body will burn a lot less efficiently if you amp up the speed, simply due to not adapting for that kind of output.
Your body type and training will dictate this, and anybody can work on improving their energy reserves and their overall wattage through x time.
Actually as you get fitter you'll burn calories faster, not slower, and the requirement to eat will increase.0 -
okgo wrote:Sounds like a lot of people are overeating.
1 malt loaf is fine for me for anything 60-90 miles, I sometimes stop for a coffee, sometimes not. And I tend to apparently burn 3k calories over 65 miles according to my powermeter.
+1 to this, some people must spend more time eating than riding, 60 miles probably just water and a f l a p jack, longer and water is still the preferred option, or coconut milk with water and a few f l a p jacks. I don't even stop for a break. If you have less reliance of sugars and the like, you might be able to burn the biggest store of fuel in the body - FAT. Relie too much on sugars and the body will never learn to use it's fat stores. Fitness only plays a small part in this ability, nutrition plays the biggest part by far.
Also nothing wrong with museli and cereal for breakfast if you are going on a long ride, tops up the glycogen prior to the ride. It is well easy to eat 1200 calories for breakfast, though I admit I don't eat that much.0 -
And so another nutrition topic ends with a the standard selection of posts ranging from I eat a whole cow while I’m on the bike to I haven’t eaten anything for 6 years yet I can still put out 800W nonstop for a whole LEJOG.
Basically it’s all bollox – so eat what you want when you want.0 -
thegreatdivide wrote:And so another nutrition topic ends with a the standard selection of posts ranging from I eat a whole cow while I’m on the bike to I haven’t eaten anything for 6 years yet I can still put out 800W nonstop for a whole LEJOG.
Basically it’s all bollox – so eat what you want when you want.
Says the bloke who has not only posted the most, but arguably has the most over the top list of stuff I've ever seen for 5-6 hours riding...Blog on my first and now second season of proper riding/racing - www.firstseasonracing.com0 -
To be honest in the Training section what do you expect, surely training your body to use the fuel it has plenty of is a good thing to do, shoveling sheds loads of food in especially refined sugars just defeats this big time.
There is nothing special needed for a long ride (define what you mean by long as well), just eat a normal breakfast and take some food and water with you. The longer you go, the easier you have to ride, but there is still enough fat in the body for a 5-6 hour ride with minimal food intake to be honest. If you were in a competitive event, then yes having easily and quick digesting products is more beneficial, but a training ride is just that - training.0 -
ALIHISGREAT wrote:Trev The Rev wrote:ALIHISGREAT wrote:
This is too funny.
What you've done is found some papers that claim research done by the businesses that create energy products is biased!
and that's not obvious at all :roll:
But this has nothing to do with the discussion in hand.
You haven't actually provided any evidence that these energy products are bad for athletic performance (or worse than normal food and drink)... so please go and find some, take the time to read and interpret it properly.. and then come back and post it only if its actually relevant to the discussion we're having.
It has everything to do with the discussion in hand.
Read what Carl Heneghan and his team have to say then make up your own mind.
I don't need to prove anything, that is what the manufacturers need to do.
Its just funny that you fundamentally misunderstand the aims of the two papers you've provided.
Since I'm a student I basically do this full time, I'll be nice and help you to understand!
1) http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4737#ref-9 - 'The Truth About Sports Drinks'
" Deborah Cohen investigates the links between the sports drinks industry and academia that have helped market the science of hydration"
Oh look.. its a paper discussing relevance of evidence.. not actual effectiveness of the product.
2) http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4797 -'Forty years of sports performance research and little insight gained'
"Carl Heneghan and colleagues take a critical look at the evidence used to back up claims that Lucozade enhances sporting performance"
oh look... its a paper discussing relevance of evidence.. not actual effectiveness of the product
So in the introductions of those two papers provided on the BMJ website, I was able to see that neither are relevant in our quest to answer the question on whether energy products actually work since they only discount a body of evidence on the grounds of poorly executed studies, and bias in academia. They don't provide any evidence that sports energy products are not effective, or even any evidence that the results from the studies in question are wrong, only evidence that they are not to be trusted, and that we should look elsewhere for the answer.
Hence we must look at other materials in our search for an answer -> actually f*$& it.. I can't be bothered so I'll just never use a sports energy product again and post these stupid irrelevant links in any discussion of sports nutrition I ever see.
For a student you are extraordinarily patronising
Can't believe I'm going to agree with Trev :shock:
The question is not whether "sports nutrition" works, it's whether it works better than traditional food and lives up to the claims made in the advertising.
The two articles referred to look at the claims made for sports nutrition products and the conclusion they come to is that the claims are not substantiated by the evidence available, because the evidence is of very poor quality.
If some tablet came on to the market claiming to make you live to the age of 150, but would cost you £1000 a month, you would want to see evidence that it works, not just believe the claims, before stumping up and a bunch of "trials" with small numbers and no statistical back up is not adequate.
The papers quoted don't make any claims about the efficacy or otherwise of nutritional products, they just point out that the evidence that the manufacturers use to support their claims is of very poor quality so the claims are unsubstantiated.. And you might want to note that one of the critics of the athletic drinks industry is Tim Noakes who's been a Professor of exercise and sports physiology for longer than Trev has been riding a bike
Maybe before you make any more ill-informed comments on the value of scientific papers you should have a look at this http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources- ... read-paper . Seriously - you'll learn a lot
No one is saying that sports nutrition products don't work - after all, they all contain food - but they are expensive and some people are led to believe that they possess qualities over and above their calorie/carb/protein/fat content.If you haven't got a headwind you're not trying hard enough0 -
okgo wrote:thegreatdivide wrote:And so another nutrition topic ends with a the standard selection of posts ranging from I eat a whole cow while I’m on the bike to I haven’t eaten anything for 6 years yet I can still put out 800W nonstop for a whole LEJOG.
Basically it’s all bollox – so eat what you want when you want.
Says the bloke who has not only posted the most, but arguably has the most over the top list of stuff I've ever seen for 5-6 hours riding...0 -
thegreatdivide wrote:
An example of the sort of stuff I’ll take for a century:
4 x Cliff Shot Blocks cut in half to give 8 ‘gel’ quantities.
1 x High 5 gel bottle filled with 5 x High 5 Caffeine gels.
4 x Homemade rice cakes (sushi rice/bacon/egg/soy sauce/brown sugar/parmesan)
2 x bottles filled with High5 2:1 ‘normal’.
2 x sachets of High5 2:1 – sometimes one of them will be an ‘Extreme’ sachet.
A cafe stop half way for a caffeine boost and cake.
The rice cakes give an hourly savoury fix and I’ll make a large batch so the guys I’m riding with can get some too.
Is this a list of everything you take century ride???
I've never really eaten when on the bike, I commute to work (25miles) without having breakfast and eat once I am in the office. For all long training rides (2hr+) I just take a couple of bottles of water, but make sure I've eaten a well balanced large breakfast.
I went on a training week to Majorca last March, 80+miles a day for 6 days. We always had a cafe stop with coffee and cake but never ate when I was riding. Big breakfast and lots of pasta after the ride was plenty.
Not saying anyone who eats when riding is doing anything wrong at all, but really surprised at how much people seem to eat on training rides. As in my experience you really don't need too.0 -
Johncp wrote:For a student you are extraordinarily patronising
Can't believe I'm going to agree with Trev :shock:
The question is not whether "sports nutrition" works, it's whether it works better than traditional food and lives up to the claims made in the advertising.
The two articles referred to look at the claims made for sports nutrition products and the conclusion they come to is that the claims are not substantiated by the evidence available, because the evidence is of very poor quality.
If some tablet came on to the market claiming to make you live to the age of 150, but would cost you £1000 a month, you would want to see evidence that it works, not just believe the claims, before stumping up and a bunch of "trials" with small numbers and no statistical back up is not adequate.
The papers quoted don't make any claims about the efficacy or otherwise of nutritional products, they just point out that the evidence that the manufacturers use to support their claims is of very poor quality so the claims are unsubstantiated.. And you might want to note that one of the critics of the athletic drinks industry is Tim Noakes who's been a Professor of exercise and sports physiology for longer than Trev has been riding a bike
Maybe before you make any more ill-informed comments on the value of scientific papers you should have a look at this http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources- ... read-paper . Seriously - you'll learn a lot
No one is saying that sports nutrition products don't work - after all, they all contain food - but they are expensive and some people are led to believe that they possess qualities over and above their calorie/carb/protein/fat content.
It takes a brave man to agree with anything I say on here.0 -
Richj wrote:thegreatdivide wrote:
An example of the sort of stuff I’ll take for a century:
4 x Cliff Shot Blocks cut in half to give 8 ‘gel’ quantities.
1 x High 5 gel bottle filled with 5 x High 5 Caffeine gels.
4 x Homemade rice cakes (sushi rice/bacon/egg/soy sauce/brown sugar/parmesan)
2 x bottles filled with High5 2:1 ‘normal’.
2 x sachets of High5 2:1 – sometimes one of them will be an ‘Extreme’ sachet.
A cafe stop half way for a caffeine boost and cake.
The rice cakes give an hourly savoury fix and I’ll make a large batch so the guys I’m riding with can get some too.
Is this a list of everything you take century ride???
That was from my last century of 2012.
109 miles, 6493ft climbing (inc two ascents of Cairn o Mount* - see 100 Greatest Climbs), average speed 16.2 mph = 3519 cals burned. I’d consider myself to be a pretty fit cyclist and there is no way this could have been done on breakfast. By eating approx every 20 mins after the first hour of riding I didn’t feel tired once on the ride. Breathless on the climbs but not exhausted.
I’m 5’ 7” and weigh 65kg, so not much fat in reserve.
The Hig 5 gel bottle is an emergency measure. Sometimes it gets used, sometimes it doesn't.
*24th fastest time up the South face of the Mount – chuffed with that but must do better next time...0 -
thegreatdivide wrote:Richj wrote:thegreatdivide wrote:
An example of the sort of stuff I’ll take for a century:
4 x Cliff Shot Blocks cut in half to give 8 ‘gel’ quantities.
1 x High 5 gel bottle filled with 5 x High 5 Caffeine gels.
4 x Homemade rice cakes (sushi rice/bacon/egg/soy sauce/brown sugar/parmesan)
2 x bottles filled with High5 2:1 ‘normal’.
2 x sachets of High5 2:1 – sometimes one of them will be an ‘Extreme’ sachet.
A cafe stop half way for a caffeine boost and cake.
The rice cakes give an hourly savoury fix and I’ll make a large batch so the guys I’m riding with can get some too.
Is this a list of everything you take century ride???
That was from my last century of 2012.
109 miles, 6493ft climbing (inc two ascents of Cairn o Mount* - see 100 Greatest Climbs), average speed 16.2 mph = 3519 cals burned. I’d consider myself to be a pretty fit cyclist and there is no way this could have been done on breakfast. By eating approx every 20 mins after the first hour of riding I didn’t feel tired once on the ride. Breathless on the climbs but not exhausted.
I’m 5’ 7” and weigh 65kg, so not much fat in reserve.
The Hig 5 gel bottle is an emergency measure. Sometimes it gets used, sometimes it doesn't.
*24th fastest time up the South face of the Mount – chuffed with that but must do better next time...
You have plenty of fat in reserve for 6-7 hours cycling, even if you have 5% bodyfat, it is virtually limitless, especially in the context of a realatively small time expending energy.
Not sure why having a hilly ride makes it more exhausting anyhow, just say you put out 200 watts over that 6-7 hours, you would expend the same energy in the hills or on the flat, the only real difference is the average speed you would be going. Might get more fatigued depending on how hard you hit the hills however, but that is not quite the same as running out of energy (though with that food intake you should never have an issue of running out of anything ) 0 -
You'll generally burn more calories on a flat ride than on a hilly ride. Downhills devastate average power and hence calories burnt.More problems but still living....0
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amaferanga wrote:You'll generally burn more calories on a flat ride than on a hilly ride. Downhills devastate average power and hence calories burnt.
Depends if you just freewheel down the hill, or how hard you go up them. For me energy expended (powermeter data), shows very little difference for a similar average power. NP would be a fair bit different though normally.0 -
That's true. If you can keep the power up on descents then that's different, but most of the roads I ride on, with the exception of a few bits of A-road, don't allow that. My average power is always higher if I stick to A-roads and avoid steep descents. But rides with lower average power in e.g. the Strines in the Peak District usually feel harder than rides with higher average power that avoid real hills. So for me hard rides usually mean fewer calories. NP is usually up a bit for the real hilly stuff though.More problems but still living....0
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SBezza wrote:You have plenty of fat in reserve for 6-7 hours cycling, even if you have 5% bodyfat, it is virtually limitless, especially in the context of a realatively small time expending energy.
Depends on how fast you ride, you can burn calories faster than your body can replace them by converting fat. Hence the bonk and the need for simple carbs while riding.0 -
Johncp wrote:For a student you are extraordinarily patronising
Can't believe I'm going to agree with Trev :shock:
The question is not whether "sports nutrition" works, it's whether it works better than traditional food and lives up to the claims made in the advertising.
The two articles referred to look at the claims made for sports nutrition products and the conclusion they come to is that the claims are not substantiated by the evidence available, because the evidence is of very poor quality.
If some tablet came on to the market claiming to make you live to the age of 150, but would cost you £1000 a month, you would want to see evidence that it works, not just believe the claims, before stumping up and a bunch of "trials" with small numbers and no statistical back up is not adequate.
The papers quoted don't make any claims about the efficacy or otherwise of nutritional products, they just point out that the evidence that the manufacturers use to support their claims is of very poor quality so the claims are unsubstantiated.. And you might want to note that one of the critics of the athletic drinks industry is Tim Noakes who's been a Professor of exercise and sports physiology for longer than Trev has been riding a bike
Maybe before you make any more ill-informed comments on the value of scientific papers you should have a look at this http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources- ... read-paper . Seriously - you'll learn a lot
No one is saying that sports nutrition products don't work - after all, they all contain food - but they are expensive and some people are led to believe that they possess qualities over and above their calorie/carb/protein/fat content.
Congratulations you've changed the question. :roll:
Trev was making unsubstantiated claims that energy products are "garbage", "full of crap" etc. and I pushed him to provide evidence that they are inferior to traditional food, and Trev was then unsurprisingly unable to provide any evidence actually useful to the question in hand.
then you join the discussion by changing the question? Perhaps you could enlighten us and find some reliable evidence on whether sports energy products are better or worse than normal food?0 -
ALIHISGREAT wrote:Johncp wrote:For a student you are extraordinarily patronising
Can't believe I'm going to agree with Trev :shock:
The question is not whether "sports nutrition" works, it's whether it works better than traditional food and lives up to the claims made in the advertising.
The two articles referred to look at the claims made for sports nutrition products and the conclusion they come to is that the claims are not substantiated by the evidence available, because the evidence is of very poor quality.
If some tablet came on to the market claiming to make you live to the age of 150, but would cost you £1000 a month, you would want to see evidence that it works, not just believe the claims, before stumping up and a bunch of "trials" with small numbers and no statistical back up is not adequate.
The papers quoted don't make any claims about the efficacy or otherwise of nutritional products, they just point out that the evidence that the manufacturers use to support their claims is of very poor quality so the claims are unsubstantiated.. And you might want to note that one of the critics of the athletic drinks industry is Tim Noakes who's been a Professor of exercise and sports physiology for longer than Trev has been riding a bike
Maybe before you make any more ill-informed comments on the value of scientific papers you should have a look at this http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources- ... read-paper . Seriously - you'll learn a lot
No one is saying that sports nutrition products don't work - after all, they all contain food - but they are expensive and some people are led to believe that they possess qualities over and above their calorie/carb/protein/fat content.
Congratulations you've changed the question. :roll:
Trev was making unsubstantiated claims that energy products are "garbage", "full of crap" etc. and I pushed him to provide evidence that they are inferior to traditional food, and Trev was then unsurprisingly unable to provide any evidence actually useful to the question in hand.
then you join the discussion by changing the question? Perhaps you could enlighten us and find some reliable evidence on whether sports energy products are better or worse than normal food?
Read the ingredients then look up what they are and how they are processed then make up your own mind. It is for people selling garbage, products which are 'waste' and products which are cheap and highly processed using god knows what chemicals, to prove they work better than real food or water sugar & salt.0 -
marz wrote:SBezza wrote:You have plenty of fat in reserve for 6-7 hours cycling, even if you have 5% bodyfat, it is virtually limitless, especially in the context of a realatively small time expending energy.
Depends on how fast you ride, you can burn calories faster than your body can replace them by converting fat. Hence the bonk and the need for simple carbs while riding.
Speed has nothing to do with it, effort maybe, but even then, you obviously can't ride at the same effort for 6-7 hours that you would be able to do for 2 hours no matter what you ate. I actually doubt many people actually truely bonk, you are likely to suffer alot of fatigue before you came close to bonking if you were trying to ride at a high effort for long periods, they are not the same thing. You don't need simple carbs, especially when training, you can quite easily take in complex carbs and still cycle for long periods at a fair intensity. Even taking in simple carbs, your body can not process enough of them compared with how much you use so you have to relie on fat being used, the more efficient you are at burning fat the less carbs you need to take on board.
The point remains though, that you have plenty of bodyfat (even elite TdF riders) to sustain you on a 6-7 hour ride without food intake if required, obviously taking in food will mean high performance levels, but it doesn't need to be sports energy products. If people tried it and stuck at it, you would be amazed on how little food you actually need to eat whilst riding, even riding hard for longish periods.0 -
Even professional riders don't rely on sports products when racing nearly every day for three weeks. Why would an amateur rider doing a sportive on one day need to?
Just to put some numbers on it...
These sports 'nutrition' companies recommend 60-90 grams of carbohydrate per hour. Apparently the gut can't absorb carbs faster than that.
There are 4 Calories in a gram of carbohydrate.
Let's assume your gut is really good at absorbing carbohydrate and you have the 'ideal' mix of maltodextrin and fructose, so you take 75g per hour in a 6.5 hour sportive during which you easily cover 120 miles.
75x6.5 = 487.5g carbohydrate
487.5x 4 = 1950 Calories.
Fat metabolism releases about 9 calories per gram... If you weigh 75kg and have 10% body fat, you already have 67500 Calories stored, plus maybe 2000 Calories worth of muscle glycogen. Add a decent breakfast, say 600 Calories, plus a couple of bananas and a sandwich in your back pocket. You're unlikely to use more than 6000 Calories on the ride so that's plenty.
Does it really benefit anyone to eat the equivalent of more than a pound of sugar in processed food?
All it does at best is create dependency. At worst, who knows. Could lead to insulin-related problems later on in life.
Point is that you may use more calories on a ride than you can actually absorb through your gut. You will make up the difference by metabolising body fat and eating slightly more food over the next few days. Not by stuffing energy bars and gels into your gob at every opportunity...CAPTAIN BUCKFAST'S CYCLING TIPS - GUARANTEED TO WORK! 1 OUT OF 10 RACING CYCLISTS AGREE!0
