For fitness sake
- Thread starter jShort
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jackx
Well-Known Member
Its true. Even if one rides a lot but eats (or drinks a lot), the weight won't come off. If one burns 1,000 calories and then eats 1,000 calories of pizza or other food, one should not be surprised they are not losing weight - even though they exercise a lot.
one piece crank
Well-Known Member
And a simple fitness tracker like MyFitnessPal can easily help you track calories. Nothing like taking on a hard ride and seeing the resulting calorie deficit, or know how many more calories you can now eat/drink
This was a really good video about bike nutrition. Maybe because it fits my perspective but I've tried this general philosophy and it works for me. He makes the point much better than I could though.
The gist of it is that if you fuel your endurance rides with enough carbs you won't be in such a calorie deficit. This will make it easier to stop eating so much off the bike. It also makes the longer rides so much easier than they could be if you didn't get in enough.
The gist of it is that if you fuel your endurance rides with enough carbs you won't be in such a calorie deficit. This will make it easier to stop eating so much off the bike. It also makes the longer rides so much easier than they could be if you didn't get in enough.
I've been on some two hour runs. Not sure anything more than water would help? I guess setting it up for longer is the point.
Can't replace it as fast as consuming, so gotta stay consistently ahead.
The Kalmyk
Well-Known Member
To give some color on this perspective, this is geared towards people that train. Where a typical week would include 5 ish scheduled workouts and one would likely be an endurance workout. Those are typically a minimum of two hours.
3 of the other 4 workouts include relatively difficult interval days so most people know to fuel properly for them. But for the “easy” endurance day, it’s easy to assume you don’t need to fuel. This video explains why that’s a bad idea.
@Patrick for a 2 hour run, you would absolutely benefit from taking in carbs. Anything over an hour is going to benefit you. And anything under an hour but with intensity will benefit from recovering with carbs after the workout.
3 of the other 4 workouts include relatively difficult interval days so most people know to fuel properly for them. But for the “easy” endurance day, it’s easy to assume you don’t need to fuel. This video explains why that’s a bad idea.
@Patrick for a 2 hour run, you would absolutely benefit from taking in carbs. Anything over an hour is going to benefit you. And anything under an hour but with intensity will benefit from recovering with carbs after the workout.
I would have not really thought this was true until recently when I started putting in way more hours running. My calorie intake is much, much higher and I'm purely doing endurance runs of 1-2 hours. 2 hours running is way more calories than a 2 hour casual bike ride. Outside of stints during bad winters inside on the trainer I've never done any consistent hard riding so that's new to me.
It's a little hard mentally to eat food when you're not hungry on the run, but I find if I don't I'm starving at other times. I've been very anti-food on bike rides that aren't high intensity or long and have come around to a certain extent. I'll eat something small an hour in on a casual bike ride if we stop for chatting now as there is no real downside.
From reading on training, fueling to train is something many coaches push HARD as it's an easy one for people to skip. Yes I can go out for a multi-hour fasted run but if I'm feeding I'm already putting in the nutrition for the recovery. Not always feeding the run/ride you're on, but you're already feeding the next one.
Another reason (where I'm failing a bit) is to train the eating during training so that when you're racing you are prepared for the eating. Triathletes seem to train this well. If you're used to doing 2 hour rides but start doing 3-4 hour endurance rides, are you prepared to open and eat gels or other foods while riding? Can your stomach handle hour after hour of food you had on shorter training or casual rides? Was the volume per-hour of food & water OK on the shorter distances but you run into a deficit in longer events?
Yea, you definitely need to train your gut to take in more fuel. Once you’re doing 3-4 hour rides, the current thought is that you should be taking in 80-100g a carbs an hour. That’s why you see so many high carb drink mixes popping up. Drinking your carbs is the easiest way for a lot of people.
And none of this is relevant to “casual” rides. When you’re on a MTB trail or on a group ride and stopping and starting nonstop, there isn’t as much demand from your aerobic engine. You also aren’t building that engine either.
Fueling those rides won’t hurt but you could probably get away with less carbs and still not feel an increase to your level of effort.
I'm talking about those casual rides in the context of them being mixed in with heavy riding/training throughout the week. "Recovery" ride. Certainly not a casual ride mixed in with constant low-impact rides.
80-100g is high. I wish there was a good formula of weight vs power, etc. Smaller rider putting out less power vs a larger riding putting out more power can have the same performance but different caloric/carb requirements. But either way, better to get in 30g per hour during hard efforts than 0g.
Steve Vai
Endurance Guy: Tolerates most of us.
I don't do many rides over the 2.5 hour mark anymore, but on longer rides there would come a point when I just could drink anything but water. Usually I would start with two 24 oz bottles with drink mix and than after they were done, I would do solid food only. I assume this fall into the category of training yourself to drink/eat more.
That’s the opposite of what I usually hear. Most people I’ve talked with will eat the solids early in the long rides with the thought being it gives the body more time to break down and absorb the food. Being more fatigued also makes it harder for me to eat. Then as the ride goes on they will go to chews and gels. And then eventually they’ll only get calories through liquid.
Personally after 3 hours a cliff bar would be the last thing I would want. Now some haribo and a little can of coke would probably would be mouth watering.
Now i'm thinking about how wiped out i am about an hour or two after a two hour push.
Creating a huge deficit - and it takes time to recover from it. def could see a gain there.
Could def drink it w/o my gut turning over. not sure i'll be back there soon tho.
good stuff.
Creating a huge deficit - and it takes time to recover from it. def could see a gain there.
Could def drink it w/o my gut turning over. not sure i'll be back there soon tho.
good stuff.