New to riding longer and wondering when to eat, what to drink and how to avoid the bonk? Start here.
New to riding longer and wondering when to eat, what to drink and how to avoid the bonk? Start here.
Cycling is one of the most fuelling-dependent things you can do, simply because you can ride for hours and burn an enormous amount of energy doing it. For a newer rider, though, the nutrition side can feel mysterious: when to eat, what to drink, and how to avoid the dreaded bonk that leaves you crawling home empty.
The reassuring news is that cycling nutrition is very learnable, and the bike actually makes it easier than running because you can carry and consume more comfortably. Here are the fundamentals every rider should know.
On a bike you can sustain effort for hours, and over that time your body relies heavily on carbohydrate to keep you turning the pedals with any intensity. Your stored carbohydrate, glycogen, is limited relative to that demand, so on longer rides you have to keep topping it up or you run out.
Running out of carbohydrate on the bike is what riders call bonking or hitting the wall: a sudden, miserable collapse in energy that can turn the last hour into a grind. Good fuelling is simply how you avoid it.
For short, easy rides of under an hour, you generally do not need special nutrition; eating normally and staying hydrated covers it. As your rides extend beyond an hour, and especially past 90 minutes, fuelling on the move becomes important.
The longer and harder the ride, the more carbohydrate you need per hour. This is where energy drinks, gels and chews come in, giving you convenient carbohydrate you can take without stopping.
A good starting point for longer rides is a mix of an energy drink in your bottle and gels or chews to supplement it, aiming to take on carbohydrate steadily rather than waiting until you feel low. For genuinely long rides, dual-source products like BETA Fuel let you take on more carbohydrate with less stomach trouble.
Hydration matters throughout: drink regularly, and on warm or long rides include electrolytes, particularly sodium, to replace what you lose in sweat. The bike's advantage is that carrying bottles makes staying hydrated straightforward.
Before a long ride, a carbohydrate-rich meal a few hours beforehand tops up your stores. Before short easy rides, you rarely need anything special. The principle, as with all fuelling, is to avoid trying new foods right before you ride.
Afterwards, refuelling with carbohydrate and protein supports recovery, which matters if you ride regularly. A recovery drink is a convenient option when your appetite has not returned or you are short on time.
The most common beginner error is fuelling too late, only reaching for food once you already feel empty, by which point you are behind and struggling to catch up. Start fuelling early on longer rides and keep it steady.
The second mistake is neglecting hydration, especially in warm weather, which undermines both your energy and your ability to keep fuelling. Get ahead of both fuel and fluid and most rides go far more smoothly.
As with any endurance discipline, practise your fuelling on training rides rather than saving it for a big event. This builds your gut's tolerance, helps you learn what products and amounts suit you, and turns fuelling into a confident routine.
Get the basics consistent, ride within yourself as your distances grow, and cycling nutrition quickly stops being mysterious. Fuel well and you can ride further, faster and with a lot more enjoyment.