Strategies for using energy products

andyeb

During training rides, I've mostly used energy products (gels, bars, jelly beans) as a prop-up measure. i.e. if I'm flagging I'll eat something to prop me up. However on a recently long ride (what ended up being my first 100+ miler in fact), I tried taking on small amounts consistently, right through the ride. I finished much stronger than on previous longest-yet rides, and felt like I could have gone on to do another 30-40 miles, had the time been available.

This has got me thinking - I can see there are three potential strategies you could use with energy products:

- reactive (i.e. you have a *gel when you are flagging)

- proactive (i.e. you have a *gel 10 mins before each big climb)

- consistent (i.e. have a *gel every half an hour)

What strategy do you use? Should it differ for training and actual events? I know conventional wisdom is to keep training and the event as similar as possible, but you surely have different goals for the two; for training it's to get stronger/leaner/faster, for the actual event, it's to make it round in the shortest time possible as a one-off.

*gel - gel/chunk of energy bar/few jelly beans (replace as appropriate).

The Real Gromit

A dietician friend of mine (who also happens to be a good marathon runner) told me that its as important to train the stomach as it is everything else for endurance events. You can't expect the stomach to take in something on the day of an event that its not used to from previous sessions. You either won't use the fuel efficiently or worse still just bring it straight back up!

Wrath Rob

Proactive and Consistent are really the same strategy, as long as you do it right

There's loads of information on this over in the Training section, so have a look there. However, essentially your body has around 1.5-2 hours energy stored as glycogen and a lot more than that as fat. When you ride very gently, your body will be mostly metabolising the fat reserves so you can ride for a long time with little requirement for additional energy. As you up the effort you get more and more of your energy from glycogen, as the fat metabolism process is too slow. If you do nothing, you'll run out of glycogen after 1.5-2 hours and then you'll "bonk", which is when you go all light headed and your legs stop working. Unfortunately your body is not like a car, you can't just scoff a couple of gels and away you go, you need time to get this energy into your blood stream and then to your muscles. Remember that your body will only be able to take on approximately 60-90g of carbs an hour (it varies based on the carbs and your physiology). That works out at 3 gels or roughly 1 energy bar.

Now that you know this you can see why you need to have a sensible eating approach. You want to be eating before you're hungry (you'll hear that one a lot). If you feel hungry then that's a strong sign that you're already in trouble and should eat immediately and dial back the effort. I aim to ride for around 1' to 1'15" before starting to eat something small and often, e.g. starting on an energy bar or similar. Aim to have 1 bar an hour (i.e. 60-90g of carbs) for each hour from then onwards. Obviously if you've got a cake stop planned then that will count, so don't scoff a bar and then eat at the cake stop, do one or the other! Personally I avoid gels as much as possible as they're expensive, messy and only good for a short (20 minute) burst. Eating 3 gels every hour would get very old, very quickly. Great for when you need an immediate boost, not so good for sustained energy delivery.

Putting all of this together you can see why when you've eaten consistently, you've felt much better at the end of the ride. You've avoided the glycogen debt and ensured your body has the fuel it needs to perform.

make mine a triple

All really good advice from Rob's post, I would add the more long rides you go on, the better at metabolising fat you get. I have only bonked twice, both as a novice, once after 30 miles (no food at all) and once after 50 miles (kit kat at 40 odd miles wasn't enough to save me). I might not do so now as I would take longer to run out of gas but I am not about to start experimenting. My rule is never leave it later then 45min to start eating for any ride over 40 miles. I always take something savoury mini cheddars, pretzels etc as all that sweet stuff gets a bit much after 4 or 5 hours. I tend to save gels for emergencies / final hour flourish

andyeb

Thanks guys - some really great advice to follow there. Appreciate it!