CYCLING NUTRITION TIPS

Road cyclists run the gamut from recreational cyclists who live for weekend endurance rides, to the pros who compete in races all over the world. If you’re a weekend warrior, your goal may be to train and make it through a century ride. If you’re in the professional ranks, 100+ kilometre stage races can be daily fare, and hours into a ride you’ve got to be able to dig deep to drive the peloton’s pace, catch the breakaway group, and get your team’s best rider in position for the sprint to the finish.

For both types of riders, road cycling can be a punishing sport that will drain you of fuel and fluids. If you enter a ride or race inadequately hydrated and fueled, or if you don’t keep up with your fluid and fuel needs while on the bike, dehydration takes over, your quads feel dead, and it’s all you can do to hang on until the finish.

But if you’ve got a solid hydration and fueling strategy that you’ve practiced during training and implemented before and during this ride, you can PR on that century ride. And if you’re a pro, you will push the peloton’s pace, reel in the breakaway riders, and get your best rider in position to make that frenzied sprint to the line.

The bottom line is that when attention to nutrition and hydration is an integral component of your training and racing or riding strategy, you give yourself the chance to be your very best on the bike no matter what the day has in store.

As a road cyclist, at a minimum you need strength and endurance to finish strong on long rides. If you ride among the elite, you also need anaerobic capacity for breakaways, steep mountain grades, and all-out sprints to the finish. You may be involved in team and individual event stage races on a single day or over several days. Time trials and criteriums are probably also a part of your repertoire. Race distances can be from as short as a few kilometres for some criteriums, to individual stages covering 250 km or more. Elite cyclists may train once or more daily and rack up weekly distances of anywhere from 250 kilometres to more than 400–1,000 km. Serious recreational riders commonly log 185 300 km in a week. Weight training may be a regular part of the workout mix as well for both pros and recreational riders. In-season, elite cyclists can race almost every day, while recreational cyclists will often ride or race once or twice a week. With these types of physical demands, sweat losses can be enormous and muscle fuel stores can be seriously depleted on a daily basis. Recovery between workouts, training rides, and races is crucial, and rehydrating and refueling during long hours on the bike is essential to delaying fatigue and extending endurance.

The fact is that cycling long distances at a strenuous pace puts a huge strain on your body. Your leg muscles rapidly burn through fuel stores while generating loads of internal body heat. Add heat or humidity to the mix, and the physical and metabolic toll rises even higher. To achieve your best on the bike under these challenging circumstances, you have to stay hydrated and fueled for as long as you can. Inadequate attention to either of these factors will undermine your performance. Fortunately, you can extend your endurance and keep fatigue at bay by having a well-conceived and practiced performance sports nutrition plan.