Gels, Protein, Tablets or just plain water.

woo1

Does anyone recommend taking protein before or after a ride ?

Does anyone take certain gels or hydration tablets on a ride, or just plain water ?

How often should you take gels on a ride, every hour ?

Any advise would be appreciated.

imposter2.0

what kind of ride? Magazine articles have a lot to answer for....

MartinGT

Depends what type of ride.

I have protein after a long hard ride or turbo session.

For short rides, I usually stick to water.
For longer rides usually have an energy bottle
For hard efforts (race or sportive) I will have a couple of gels.

All depends really.

Flâneur

Early morning club rides, I don't eat breakfast so I grab a protein bar or shake as it doesn't sit on my stomach like porridge, toast etc.
After a ride I will take a protien shake if it has been a work out rather than a leg stretch.

Short rides, water
Summer/long rides will often be an energy drink for the extras in it.
Gels rarely but on big rides/sportives and course dependent. If it is a big hill ride of say 80-100 miles then I will generally take my first about the 30 mile mark, then one every hour or before any big climbs. But this is only when I am pushing myself. Not with the social club ride.

So as you can see it is all down to you, how tired you get after what distance. Is it hunger or just dehydration? If you don't already try ensuring you have a swig from your bottle every time you put your foot down or you are slowing down to let others catch up or when someone beside you takes a swig. I was terrible at staying hydrated so trained myself in the above fashion.

jotko

Gels etc do my guts in so I stick to flapjack/soreen/fig rolls on the bike.

Chocolate milk after a hard ride - much cheaper and tastes better than 'science' drinks

littledove44

I read this recently on a guide to food and drink for cycling using natural products. Seems like sound advice to me.

"Scenario – 5hour ride starting at 8am
Day before:
For this you need to start your fuelling the day before by increasing carb and fluid intake. So have cereal for breakfast, yoghurt as a snack, small baked potato and salad for lunch, an energy bar and cuppa in the afternoon. An ideal meal for the night before would be spaghetti bolognese or chilli con carne followed by some yoghurt and fruit or even ice cream with banana and maple syrup. It’s not a massive blowout but is a bit bigger than normal portions.
Pre-ride:
On the morning of your long ride have a medium bowl of porridge with milk and honey and one or two slices of peanut butter on wholemeal or granary toast. Have a cuppa as well (you need to enjoy your food and fluids and tea is fluid!)
Rationale: Porridge is slow burning carbohydrate and the addition of milk adds protein which further slows release and helps you stay feeling full. Peanut Butter on toast gives you more carb and protein, plus some good fat; fat has a satiating influence. All good sports diets contain fat in its healthy, unprocessed form. Have real butter on your toast and use full fat milk. Un-messed with foods are always the wisest choice.

In-ride:
During your five hour ride you’ll need to keep carb-stores topped up as you only have the ability to store about 2000 calories-worth of carb in your body and you’ll be burning at least double that. Drink isotonic fluid such as High5 4:1 which has added protein to help prevent muscle breakdown during endurance training. There’s a lot of snobbery amongst cyclists about what food they carry (although they don’t appear to shun the cake stop!) and how much solid food they consume. Well throw that thinking out of the window as it’s for Muppets! You’ll need some solids at 2hrs and 4 hrs and, rather than keep packing in the sickly sweet stuff, one of those stops can be for a peanut butter (or, even better, peanut butter and Marmite) sandwich and the other can be a bar such as the delicious Get Buzzing Bars, made from all natural stuff and refreshingly unpretentious, DELICIOUS and easy to carry and chew. Other good choices are Clif Bars or Mule Bars, when eating a bar have a large handful of salted nuts with it. Wash your bars down with water rather than sports drink or you’ll get too much of a massive sugar hit.
Rationale: Keep the carb stores topped up, maintain consistent energy, prevent bonking and keep electrolytres going in for good muscle function and prevention of cramp

Post ride
Immediately have 300-400ml of good quality chocolate milk or a For Goodness Shakes. You can carry a sachet of For Goodness Shakes and make it up with water.
Go on to have a medium meal with some carb and protein; like meat or fish salad sandwiches or beans/egg on toast followed by some yoghurt, fruit and honey. Later on you can snack on a bit of dark chocolate and a cuppa (keep the fluids going in) or some fresh juice and water with malt loaf. For dinner you might choose lean steak with baked potato and salad/veg. Maybe a small red wine. If you’re consistently training hard you could have a night time recovery drink such as SiS Nocte

Rationale: Replace carb as quickly as you can, for about an hour after exercise your muscles have their ‘mouths’ wide open and that’s the absolute best time to feed them. If you miss that window you’ll miss the opportunity for maximum glycogen replenishment (glycogen is carb, basically). That’s the purpose of the immediate chocolate milk; choc milk is just as good as any bought recovery drink and is all natural. The first meal is to further re-stock carb along with some good protein for muscle repair. Endurance training often suppresses appetite so you want something that’s not too big and is easy to make and eat; it’s unlikely you’ll feel like cooking after being in the saddle for five hours. The evening meal gives you more lean protein and starchy carb with a hit of nutrient dense veggies. Red wine has antioxidant properties and is totally fine if you have a glass with food. Don’t deprive yourself too much or you’ll develop cravings

So to sum up, you don’t need any special foods, just good nutritious natural foods, in the right quantities at the right time. Don’t be snobby about your in-ride nutrition, avoid random grazing and don’t think that exercising hard is a license to eat a chocolate covered elephant!"

kajjal

Water and muesli bars.

phreak

littledove44 wrote:

*snip*

Not disputing the dietary advice, but to burn 4000+ calories over 5 hours you'd need to be averaging around 250 watts. I'm not sure that's all that realistic for the average club rider.

To give you a guide, 200watts is roughly 720 calories an hour. 180watts is around 650 per hour.

Cookie91

I personally just drink water, and eat tons of bananas.
Cafe... stuff my face!
On longer rides, I essentially have a whole bunch in my jersey pockets! Maybe a snickers bar or some cheap breakfast bars!
Racing is the only time I consider gels. I don't know if they make a difference, but they are easy to consume quickly. I hate the stickiness and syrup taste. Oh and they cost a bomb!

Trial and error, eat and drink what you wish. If you bonk, then perhaps eat more. You'll soon find what works on the bike and what doesn't.. (Snickers bar on a hot summer day... :roll: )

dgstewart

phreak wrote:

littledove44 wrote:

*snip*

Not disputing the dietary advice, but to burn 4000+ calories over 5 hours you'd need to be averaging around 250 watts. I'm not sure that's all that realistic for the average club rider.

To give you a guide, 200watts is roughly 720 calories an hour. 180watts is around 650 per hour.

+1. Unless you're a very big and/or strong rider (you might be!) this is more sensible. For a steady 5 hour training ride I'd maybe average between 170W and 200W, depending route/hills and how hard I'm pushing. This works out (very roughly) between 600 and 750 calories per hour. Not all of that is coming from carb stores, some is from fat, so maybe around 300 to 400 calories per hour from carb stores, giving 1500 to 2000 overall.

These are very rough figures and people are different (power levels, amount of fat utilised for energy, etc), but useful as a guide or to illustrate the point I think.

racingcondor

There's quite a bit of decent advice here (especially towards the end). Personally my rule tends towards only using gels in emergencies i.e. I'll take one caffinated gel on a sportive >80 miles or a road race in case I've screwed up my intake massively but otherwise no gels.

Typically for me a 100 mile ride will be about 4-5 bars, 3 bidons (topped up at a shop along the way) of water and one of energy drink (60 miles, 2 bidons, 2-3 bars). That's a little over 1,000 calories intake for a 3-4,000 calorie ride. Then get home and eat to replenish the muscle glycogen and you're fine.

Never forget that since very few of us on here are elite athletes we don't want to replace every calorie we use and if you aim for that there's a good chance that with your other meal intake you'll put weight on which for most of us is the opposite of what we're trying to achieve.

EDIT - I'm not claiming that I get it right but it works for me. Helps that I tend to only ride one day on the weekend so I often have a day off completely after a really long ride. But that probably mirrors what most of us do.

LegendLust

littledove44 wrote:

I read this recently on a guide to food and drink for cycling using natural products. Seems like sound advice to me.

"Scenario – 5hour ride starting at 8am
Day before:
For this you need to start your fuelling the day before by increasing carb and fluid intake. So have cereal for breakfast, yoghurt as a snack, small baked potato and salad for lunch, an energy bar and cuppa in the afternoon. An ideal meal for the night before would be spaghetti bolognese or chilli con carne followed by some yoghurt and fruit or even ice cream with banana and maple syrup. It’s not a massive blowout but is a bit bigger than normal portions.
Pre-ride:
On the morning of your long ride have a medium bowl of porridge with milk and honey and one or two slices of peanut butter on wholemeal or granary toast. Have a cuppa as well (you need to enjoy your food and fluids and tea is fluid!)
Rationale: Porridge is slow burning carbohydrate and the addition of milk adds protein which further slows release and helps you stay feeling full. Peanut Butter on toast gives you more carb and protein, plus some good fat; fat has a satiating influence. All good sports diets contain fat in its healthy, unprocessed form. Have real butter on your toast and use full fat milk. Un-messed with foods are always the wisest choice.

In-ride:
During your five hour ride you’ll need to keep carb-stores topped up as you only have the ability to store about 2000 calories-worth of carb in your body and you’ll be burning at least double that. Drink isotonic fluid such as High5 4:1 which has added protein to help prevent muscle breakdown during endurance training. There’s a lot of snobbery amongst cyclists about what food they carry (although they don’t appear to shun the cake stop!) and how much solid food they consume. Well throw that thinking out of the window as it’s for Muppets! You’ll need some solids at 2hrs and 4 hrs and, rather than keep packing in the sickly sweet stuff, one of those stops can be for a peanut butter (or, even better, peanut butter and Marmite) sandwich and the other can be a bar such as the delicious Get Buzzing Bars, made from all natural stuff and refreshingly unpretentious, DELICIOUS and easy to carry and chew. Other good choices are Clif Bars or Mule Bars, when eating a bar have a large handful of salted nuts with it. Wash your bars down with water rather than sports drink or you’ll get too much of a massive sugar hit.
Rationale: Keep the carb stores topped up, maintain consistent energy, prevent bonking and keep electrolytres going in for good muscle function and prevention of cramp

Post ride
Immediately have 300-400ml of good quality chocolate milk or a For Goodness Shakes. You can carry a sachet of For Goodness Shakes and make it up with water.
Go on to have a medium meal with some carb and protein; like meat or fish salad sandwiches or beans/egg on toast followed by some yoghurt, fruit and honey. Later on you can snack on a bit of dark chocolate and a cuppa (keep the fluids going in) or some fresh juice and water with malt loaf. For dinner you might choose lean steak with baked potato and salad/veg. Maybe a small red wine. If you’re consistently training hard you could have a night time recovery drink such as SiS Nocte

Rationale: Replace carb as quickly as you can, for about an hour after exercise your muscles have their ‘mouths’ wide open and that’s the absolute best time to feed them. If you miss that window you’ll miss the opportunity for maximum glycogen replenishment (glycogen is carb, basically). That’s the purpose of the immediate chocolate milk; choc milk is just as good as any bought recovery drink and is all natural. The first meal is to further re-stock carb along with some good protein for muscle repair. Endurance training often suppresses appetite so you want something that’s not too big and is easy to make and eat; it’s unlikely you’ll feel like cooking after being in the saddle for five hours. The evening meal gives you more lean protein and starchy carb with a hit of nutrient dense veggies. Red wine has antioxidant properties and is totally fine if you have a glass with food. Don’t deprive yourself too much or you’ll develop cravings

So to sum up, you don’t need any special foods, just good nutritious natural foods, in the right quantities at the right time. Don’t be snobby about your in-ride nutrition, avoid random grazing and don’t think that exercising hard is a license to eat a chocolate covered elephant!"

Jesus christ if you followed this advice you'd put weight on very quickly!

Mikey23

Squash on the ride and a normal sensible diet the rest of the time

I have better things to do with my money than waste it on gels, proteins and isotonics...

Big_Ring_Rider

madasahattersley wrote:

Figs, brioche rolls and water is all I'm having at the moment, and yes I'm training full time.

+1 for figs, and other dried fruit. Apricots, raisins, cranberries...

FatTed

Racingcondor, why do you use the word Bidon for water bottle?

thegreatdivide

FatTed wrote:

Racingcondor, why do you use the word Bidon for water bottle?

It makes you sound Pro.