Nutrition noob - help

peat

Hey all.

I am doing a big ride in May (17 weeks and counting - eeep). Climbing the 3 Peaks by foot and riding between, circa 500 miles, over 6 days.

I'm confident(ish) about getting fit enough to cope with multiple 100 mile days, what is starting to worry me a bit is fuel!

I'm a 6'3 78kg (12-15% body fat) streak of wee wee. I find that even after a decent breakfast of porridge and fruit, i find that i can only go 20 miles or so until i am literally shaking in need of sustenance. I usually take one or 2 cereal bars with me on rides.

What can i do to aid endurance for day on day rides, and what steps should i be taking on the run-up to the event? I hear terms like 'carb-loading' but have no idea what it actually infers.

(It's worth noting that we will have a support vehicle carrying our kit/food for us on the event, so volume should not be an issue i hope)

Any advice gratefully recieved.

Cheers

ut_och_cykla

You can probably only take on about 60g carbs per hour - so you need to be well 'tanked' before you start - rested and increased carb (pasta/bread porridge etc) intake. But a more important issue would be getting fit enough so you can travel at a comfortable speed WITHOUT using up all yor carbs in the first hour or two - or at least limiting carb use in the body to a rate you can replenish!
So plenty of aerobic fitness before the event and practise eating on the bike etc.

danlikesbikes

Would suggest you dump the cereal bars - nutritionally they are pretty poor & what with the (typically) high sugar levels you will find yourself getting a high followed pretty quickly by a massive low.

As already suggested you need to work on your endurance from a fitness point of view, so that either means getting fitter or riding at a slower average speed that will not put your body into the red.

Good to hear that you have support so make sure they feed/water you correctly & if its hot consider your fluids as salt depletion can have a massive effect on your riding performance.

Good luck on the ride.