The Idiot’s Guide to Cycling Training Part 2

Part 2 – The role of Carbohydrates

This is such an emotive and personal subject and we all have our own thoughts about what works and doesn’t work in the pursuit of weight loss and/or a healthy body. What I want to talk about in this article is more directed at fuelling “performance” on the bike and what has worked for me during my journey over the past 8 years or so. Many athletes make the mistake of thinking nutrition is all about what you weigh and of course if you are climbing a mountain for 60 minutes watts per kilo will have a massive impact, however it’s probably more important to look at body composition as this has a massive impact on 2 key fundamental metrics.

Firstly, VO2 max is inversely related to body fat percentage, meaning higher body fat generally results in a lower VO2 max. Because VO2 max is typically measured relative to body weight, excess fat acts as dead weight, lowering the efficiency of oxygen usage during exercise. Lower body fat, alongside higher muscle mass, generally improves this ratio. Secondly, as fat mass is not metabolically active it doesn’t burn any calories so reduces our Resting Metabolic Rate. Having more muscle means we burn more at rest and should mean you have more power e.g. compare the size of typical sprinters to GC riders. Muscle is where we store glycogen (the available CHO in our bodies) so obviously the more muscle you have the more glycogen you are able to store, typically we will be able to store 300-400g of CHO depending on our composition and size. Now some of that glycogen is claimed by our brains and organs to keep us running and we need to make sure that we have enough CHO to be able to cover the demands of our training. As a guide a typical rider will burn CHO at the following rates: · Zone g CHO/hr · Recovery/Zone 1 30g · Base/Zone 2 60g · Tempo/Zone 3 115g · Sweetspot/Zone 4 150-175g · FTP/Zone 5 200-250g This gives you an idea why riders on grand tours consume up to 150g/hr and why I refer to events like Haute Route as an eating competition with some cycling thrown in!

Now here is the kicker and why sometimes our bodies work against us. Our bodies like homeostasis, in other words they don’t like feast or famine, and like to know that there is a state that is ‘normal’. Moreover, the element we don’t always consider and should, is that we are the only primate that is able to store white fat for future energy use. You might call it our “thrifty gene” which is what allowed us to survive during the Ice Age. Storing fat is what our bodies do when there isn’t enough CHO being ingested to help us survive. Of course, your body doesn’t always know the difference between running away from a sabre-toothed tiger or a hard interval session. Both involve high levels of cortisol which also cause us to store fat, especially if we are in a carb reduced state. Useful in our ancestors who needed to avoid real dangers and survive the hardships of a brutal environment with minimal resources. In modern times, when general living and societal customs trigger this response, this feature can backfire if not managed properly. Many influencers will tell you that we can become fat-adapted to enable us to burn more fat. This is true to a degree but fat only burns in a CHO flame and no you can’t magically turn fat into muscle. From a composition point of view, to reduce body fat and replace with increased muscle for stronger performance, you need to start ingesting sufficient CHO to both repair and fuel the session and said muscle. We do burn fat at any zones below our 2 nd lactate threshold (more on that in a future post) and the rates can vary but tend to be in the range of 30-50g per hour, depending on the effort and physiology of the rider. My own FatMax is around 41g/hr but needs 60g/hr of CHO. We are bombarded with all kinds of adverts about sports nutrition, and they do play a role in fuelling our training at certain times. This is mainly due to limitations in how much of one source of CHO we can absorb in an hour and how long and hard we are training. We can easily absorb 60g of one source per hour, but when that requirement increases then we need dual source carbs like gels etc. Less than 60g/hr we can easily substitute real food like dried fruits, I’ve been using a fig loaf that we can get in Spain and it’s great as it still feels like real food rather than a gel. I’ll talk about fuelling training session in a future post but for now I will leave you with another quote: “Cycling has completely changed… Now you eat like a mother all day long” – Mads Pedersen says modern peloton barely resembles the sport he joined