Tag Archives: carbohydrates

Carbohydrate Loading

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This post is adapted from Nutrition for Cyclists: Eating and Drinking Before, During, and After the Ride, a forthcoming ebook which I will be publishing for Kindle on Amazon.com.

Nutrition for Cyclists: Eating and Drinking Before, During and After the Ride can now be purchased on Amazon.com.  For information about the book and how it relates to what I’ve posted to Tuned In To Cycling, please check out this post.

eating spaghettiWell-organized and popular century rides often offer an all-you-can-eat pasta dinner the night before the ride.  If you go to the dinner, you’re likely to see people putting away enormous plates of pasta and if you ask them why they’re eating so much spaghetti they’ll tell you that they’re carbo loading for the next day’s ride.  What is carbohydrate loading and is eating a lot of spaghetti the night before a big ride the right way to go about it?

The basic idea behind carbohydrate loading is that glycogen stores in the muscles and liver can be increased over the norm by following specific exercise and dietary regimens in the days before a ride.  The increased glycogen stores should then translate into a longer time before fatigue sets in due to glycogen depletion during the ride. There are three recognized carbohydrate loading methods and I will suggest an alternative approach.

The original and most severe method follows a week-long regimen. On the 7th day before the ride, you exercise to exhaustion.  This exercise bout should last a minimum of 90 minutes.  The next 3 days are a carbohydrate depletion phase during which you train lightly while keeping carbohydrate intake at only 10% of your daily caloric intake.  The final 3 days before the big ride are a carbohydrate loading phase.  You continue to train lightly while jacking carbohydrate intake up to 70% of your daily caloric intake.  It’s important not to increase your total caloric intake from the norm over the 6 days of carbohydrate depletion and loading.  During the 3 day depletion phase you replace calories normally consumed in carbohydrates with calories consumed in fats and proteins. During the 3 day loading phase your replace fats and proteins with carbohydrates.

drink-b4-thirsty-mod-4-customThink about this for a minute.  The depletion phase is an extended period of controlled hypoglycemia, essentially a 3 day bonk.  During that time you can be expected to experience all of the negative effects of bonking including weakness and lethargy, anxiety, depression, hostility, feelings of hopelessness and failure, low levels of emotional control, reduced awareness of your surroundings and confused thinking.  In addition, the immune system will be depressed and you will be more susceptible to contracting an illness that may still be present when the ride comes several days later.

A 3 day bonk is hard.  Very hard.  The second method eliminates the bonk by eliminating the depletion phase. On the 7th day before the ride you have a long exercise session but you don’t exercise to exhaustion.  For the next 6 days you engage in progressively lighter exercise sessions each day.  Some people recommend tapering the level of exercise down to a day of rest on the 6th day.  For the first half of this 6 day period you ingest carbohydrates at a normal 55% – 60% of your daily caloric intake.  For the final 3 days you ramp carbohydrate intake up to 70% of your daily caloric intake, again by replacing fats and protein with carbs.

The third method is the easiest of the three. During the week before the big ride you exercise lightly and eat normally.  On the day before the ride you do a very short, 3 minute high intensity workout.  The workout should be made up of a 2.5 minute session at 130% VO2 max which is roughly equivalent to the fastest pace you can maintain over approximately 4 minutes of all-out running or cycling.  Follow this 2.5 minute effort with a 30 second flat-out sprint.  If done properly, this 3 minute workout is going to hurt.  During the following 24 hours ingest 12 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of lean muscle mass.  Muscle mass can vary greatly depending on age, gender and degree of muscular development.  Based on a very rough average of 35% muscle mass for men and 27% muscle mass for women the carbohydrate intake over the 24 hour period would total approximately 305 grams for a 160 lb. male and 191 grams for a 130 lb. female.

If followed correctly, all three of these methods should produce a markedly enhanced level of glycogen storage on the day of the big ride.  Neither anecdotal reports (which are basically worthless) nor research studies have reached a clear consensus on how much better or worse one method is relative to the others.  The bottom line is that all three methods are effective if followed properly.

baby spaghetti dumpNow, I’ll suggest a fourth method that is usually not discussed in the literature.  Forget about it. Don’t bother with any of this stuff.

Wait . . . what? Consider the kind of riding you do.

If your ride takes less than 90 minutes, carbohydrate loading is a non-issue because proper eating before, during and after your previous ride should have adequately prepared you for the next ride.

If your ride takes longer than 2.5 or 3 hours, you’re going to have to eat during the ride anyway because even perfectly executed carbohydrate loading isn’t going to provide you with sufficient glycogen stores to last for this length of time.  All carbohydrate loading is doing is delaying the time before you have to start eating.

Wiggins eating_croppedIf your ride takes between 1.5 and and 2, maybe 2.5 hours, carbohydrate loading might allow you to get through the ride without ingesting any carbohydrates. But why would you want to do this? If you enjoy rides that last more than 90 minutes you would be much better served by becoming proficient at eating on the bike to fully supply your nutritional needs during the ride. You get better at what you practice and if you find a way to avoid eating on the bike, you’re not going to get better at eating on the bike.

The fundamental goal of cycling nutrition is to provide full nutritional support for your ride.  A competitive race, a long organized or training ride, and a Sunday afternoon toodle around the neighborhood all make different demands on your body but whatever the ride, you will do it better and enjoy it more if you provide the nutritional support the ride needs.  The simplest and most effective way to do this is to develop the habit of ingesting small amounts of carbohydrate regularly during the ride.  The best way to develop the habit is to practice doing it.

If properly carried out, carbohydrate loading can fully support rides lasting 1.5 to 2 hours, maybe a bit more, if you don’t ingest any other carbohydrates during the ride. It’s not much use for rides lasting less than 90 minutes or more than 2, maybe 2.5 hours.  Eating properly during the ride can fully support any kind of ride you want to do. The choice is yours.

Cycling Nutrition: Eating After the Ride

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Post ride recovery in Ireland

The information in this post has been revised and substantially enhanced in Nutrition for Cyclists: Eating and Drinking Before, During and After the Ride which can be purchased on Amazon.com.  The revisions include new information about the relationship between protein and carbohydrates in post-ride recovery based on research published after this post was written. The book also has new sections devoted to rehydration and glycogen, protein, and electrolyte replacement following the first hour after you get off the bike. For information about Nutrition for Cyclists and how it relates to what I’ve posted to Tuned In To Cycling, please check out this post.

I’ve seen this happen time and time again.  Laura and I have had the good fortune to go on several bicycle tours that last one to two weeks.  The tours are advertised for advanced or experienced riders and typically feature hilly or mountainous terrain and daily rides in the 60 to 125 mile range.  You ride from place to place and a van carrys your luggage.  The other riders on the tour are almost always experienced cyclists, at least in the sense that they have been riding for many years and are used to riding long miles.  These tours usually schedule a day or two off when the riders are free to do whatever they want.  This has always puzzled me.  Why would experienced cyclists pay the steep cost of going on one of these tours, go through all the hassle of getting their bike to some exotic location, and then spend a day or two not riding in terrain that provides spectacular cycling?  The people who run these tours obviously know more about it than I do because by the third or fourth day of the tour almost all of the riders are noticeably lacking in energy and enthusiasm, are irritably fretting about why they feel so tired, and are looking forward to the break.  Meanwhile, Laura and I are riding extra miles every day because we’re having so much fun, are fresh and ready to go every morning, and are typically the only ones out on our bikes on the day off.

What’s going on?  Why are we riding more miles with less overall fatigue than almost all of the other riders?  I don’t know for sure, but I’m fairly certain the answer lies in post-ride nutrition.  Many of these other riders are active members of their local cycling clubs.  They shine on organized centuries and long weekend rides with members of the club.  After the ride everyone goes out for ice cream or pizza and beer.  They are clueless about post-ride nutrition and have given no thought at all to how what they eat when they get off the bike can affect how they will ride the next day and the day after that.  They finish the first day in glycogen debt and fail to adequately replenish their glycogen stores before the next day’s ride.  Every day the situation gets worse and the riding becomes more unpleasant until by the third or fourth day their blood sugar levels are so low they’re grinding it out with their head down and need a day off to physically and mentally recover.  All of this can be avoided if you pay attention to what’s happening in your body when you get off the bike and take advantage of the opportunity your body gives you to prepare for strenuous activity on the following day.  Most of it comes down to what you eat in the first 30 to 40 minutes after you get off the bike.

When you finish a long ride your glycogen stores are exhausted and you are very likely to have low blood glucose.  Your body responds to the glycogen debt by going into overdrive to replace the missing glycogen.  Excess glucose in the bloodstream is converted to glycogen and stored in the muscles and the liver.  Under normal circumstances insulin is used in this conversion process.  However, after an extended period of exercise when the muscle glycogen stores are exhausted an abbreviated and accelerated glycogen-storage process kicks into gear that converts glucose into glycogen and stores it in the muscles without the need for insulin.  This period of intense glycogen production and storage lasts for 30  to 60 minutes.

In order to take advantage of this brief period of accelerated glycogen storage the system must have blood glucose that can be converted to glycogen.  And there’s the problem.  When you finish a long or intense ride you are almost certainly low on blood glucose.  Your system is ready to rapidly and efficiently replenish your empty glycogen stores but it doesn’t have the glucose it needs to make the glycogen.

The solution is to flood your system with carbohydrates that can be quickly converted to blood glucose which will in turn supply the accelerated glycogen production and storage mechanism with the glucose it needs.  Although the enhanced glycogen production mechanism will operate for roughly 60 minutes after exercise has stopped, keep in mind that it takes time for carbohydrates in the stomach to be broken down into useable blood glucose.  Food you eat during the second half of that 60 minute window may still be in the stomach being digested when the enhanced glycogen-storage process ends.  The first 30 minutes after you get off the bike are critical.  If you are going to fully replenish your glycogen stores for the next day’s ride, you must ingest enough carbs during those 30 minutes to flood your system with glucose.  If you don’t, it doesn’t matter what you eat for the rest of the day; you will be building on a weak foundation and you won’t have the glycogen reserves you need to ride with strength day after day.  This cannot be stressed enough; you have to reload your system with carbs during the first 30 minutes after you get off the bike.

How many carbs do you need to eat during the critical 30 minutes?  Current thinking holds that you should aim to ingest one half gram of carbohydrate for each pound of body weight during the 30 minutes after you get off the bike.  This is easy to figure out; simply divide your weight in half and eat that many grams of carbs.  For example, I weigh about 160 lbs so I need to eat 80 grams of carbs within 30 minutes of getting off the bike.  There is also some evidence that combining these carbs with protein may facilitate the glycogen production and storage process.  The recommended ratio of carbs to proteins is 4 to 1.  Thus, at 160 lbs I need 80 grams of carbs and 20 grams of protein.

Eating enough food to provide this much carbohydrate in the first 30 minutes after you get off the bike can be very difficult.  The 30 minute part is much more important than the specific amount of carbs and protein part.  If you can’t manage to choke down the full recommended amount, eat as much as you can, but make absolutely certain you do it in the first 30 minutes after you get off the bike.

You can eat any kind of food you like as long as it’s high in carbs.  Simple carbohydrates that can be more quickly broken down into blood glucose are better than complex carbohydrates that take a longer time because you need to get the glucose in the blood stream within a short window of time.  There are two key factors that will end up driving your 30 minute carbohydrate feast; the food has to be available immediately when you get off the bike, and you have to be willing to eat it.  The carb sources you’ve been eating on the bike will work equally well during this critical 30 minute window but you may be sick and tired of sports drink, energy gel, low-fat fig newtons or whatever you’ve been eating by this time.  Laura and I drink a Endurox - picture from accelsport.comrecovery drink called Endurox that contains carbs and proteins in the recommended 4 to 1 ratio.  We find it’smuch easier to drink a large number of carbs than eat them immediately after a long ride.  It’s also very easy to have the drink ready at the end of the ride.  Endurox comes in a powdered form that you mix with water.  We premeasure the powder, put it in a baggie, and carry it with us on the ride.  Water is almost always available at ride’s end and we simply mix the powder with fresh water in our water bottle and chug it down.  Although the manufacturer would have you believe otherwise, there’s nothing special about Endurox other than that we like the way it tastes.  A number of companies make recovery drinks that provide huge carbohydrate loads for immediate post-exercise glycogen replacement.

After the critical 30 minute window, try to continue to ingest carbohydrate at regular intervals throughout the remainder of the day.  Eat small amounts steadily rather than eating nothing and then pigging out at dinner.  Avoid alcohol because it will interfere with the uptake of glycogen and will also dehydrate you.  Avoiding alcohol is especially important immediately after the ride when the body is in the critical glycogen restocking period.

What you eat during the 30 minutes after you get off the bike is probably the single most important factor affecting how you will fare if you’re riding more than 90 minutes a day for more than 2 days.  If you get the carbs you need during this 30 minute window, you can ride for days and days without problems; if you don’t, you’re most likely going to be tired and out of energy by the third or fourth day.

For more information about what to eat (and what to avoid eating) after a ride, see Eating After the Ride Part 2.