How to beat energy drop on sportives

markhewitt1978

ut_och_cykla wrote:

I'm not trying to be funny - but there is a chance you are actually eating TOO MUCH - when you're exercising hard having too much (or the wrong ) food in your stomach will mean a lot of energy goes to digesting instead of cycling! So starting off with a 'good' breakfast that takes time to digest will both 'steal' energy from your legs and also take a long time to get out to your muscles.
The solution is to either eat well in advance of cycling (often a good evening meal is a better idea than a hearty breakfast if you're riding a long way) or eat a simple breakfast with little fat and protein and get riding straight away.
Similarly eat some quick carbs on your ride - bananas, dried fruit, jam sarnies without butter etc. but you shouldn't need /probablty can't absorb more than at most 240 kcal an hour (60g carbs). And as others have said - get fitter - but that is not something you can do overnight. Good luck!

Thanks for the sensible advice. There may be something in that! And yes getting fitter would be good, how can I do that? By doing more 60 mile rides I would think.

Wrath Rob

Good advice above re. breakfast, I'd add to that to ditch the full fat milk. You want your calories from the carbs in the cereal, not the fat in the milk.

While AK_jnr may not have the best communications skills, and as unpalatable as it sounds, he's probably right that compared to others you're relatively unfit and its this that's the real problem. You can get fitter by doing more 60 mile riders but as each one takes you several hours its unrelastic to expect to have the time to do 3 a week, which is something that would deliver real benefits.

Instead I'd suggest that you do a couple of shorter e.g. 1 hour, faster (or harder) rides during the week and then stick with a longer ride at the weekend. This will give you more or less the same increase in fitness but for less time on the bike. If you want to get scientific you can start looking into HR based training, intervals, periodisation, creating a training plan and so on, but for improving on a 60 mile loop only, getting out on 2 shorter rides will quickly have you noticing the benefits.

B3rnieMac

This is being overcomplicated. I did 62 miles on Saturday, and I had two rounds of toast before I left and just two litres of water during the ride. Ride more, increase your distance each time....it's not rocket science.

apreading

In my experience/opinion, Weight loss and endurance riding are mutually exclusive.

If I am riding for weight loss, I dont fuel much if at all and try to maximise fat burning but dont ride more than say 30 miles.

For endurance riding, you have to forget diet and not wanting to put on weight and just ensure you are fuelled as well as possible for the ride to make it as easy as possible, regardless of where the energy comes from.

50 miles is kind of in-between these extremes for me - I wouldnt do anything special beforehand, just set off and have a couple of snacks, maybe a gel and maybe some carbs in my drink, no more than that though.

Of course, I am not competitive and have 5 times the amount of body fat that GC riders carry...

DM222

ut_och_cykla wrote:

I'm not trying to be funny - but there is a chance you are actually eating TOO MUCH - when you're exercising hard having too much (or the wrong ) food in your stomach will mean a lot of energy goes to digesting instead of cycling! So starting off with a 'good' breakfast that takes time to digest will both 'steal' energy from your legs and also take a long time to get out to your muscles.
The solution is to either eat well in advance of cycling (often a good evening meal is a better idea than a hearty breakfast if you're riding a long way) or eat a simple breakfast with little fat and protein and get riding straight away.
Similarly eat some quick carbs on your ride - bananas, dried fruit, jam sarnies without butter etc. but you shouldn't need /probablty can't absorb more than at most 240 kcal an hour (60g carbs). And as others have said - get fitter - but that is not something you can do overnight. Good luck!

This is good advice

chris166

I find that I need to eat every hour on the hour. Flap jack works for me - bite sized pieces in my cross bar bag which I can eat on the move. Also an energy drink. Breakfast for me is porridge and tea. I recently rode the 100 mile Prudential Ride100 in just over 7 hours (at aged 64) and found that this food combination worked for me. I have used gels but not sure of their effectiveness. But there is no substitute for hours in the saddle - I was riding a minimum of 100 miles a week for the two months before the ride. I am lucky (do I mean that?) living in the Surrey Hills so Leith Hill, Box Hill, Staple Lane, and other Olympic "goodies" are all on my training ride. In the week of the ride my HRM said I burnt 12000 calories! And I lost about half a stone in weight. Good luck.

richa

apreading wrote:

In my experience/opinion, Weight loss and endurance riding are mutually exclusive.

If I am riding for weight loss, I dont fuel much if at all and try to maximise fat burning but dont ride more than say 30 miles.

For endurance riding, you have to forget diet and not wanting to put on weight and just ensure you are fuelled as well as possible for the ride to make it as easy as possible, regardless of where the energy comes from.

I don't think so. Plenty suggest the body can process intake of 300ish KCals/hr. But can expend 600+ KCals/hr. The difference is made up from stored fat. If you don't over 'recover' then long rides & weightless go hand in hand.

Back to the OP. IMO, if you are fuelling sensibly/appropriately then it is all about Pacing. Training just allows for a faster pace. At 5mph you could go all day. 10mph probably as well. At 15mph your pace means that you are burning too many carbs and are running low on energy. The same would be true for all of us, just at different paces.