[eloycoto]

Nowadays, some riders use glucose monitoring devices during training with relation to how long it takes from ingesting and getting into blood. They are now measuring more and more things, and food is a crucial role.

Glucose monitoring is banned during races, but I guess that is why you don't see some cyclist collapsing like as 15 years ago is because they understand their glucose levels.

For sure, doping it's still a fear, but these guys cannot climb Galibier at that speed only with storoids/drugs, it's insane the effort that they did over the year.

[hinkley]

I haven't been a cyclist since about the time that the market of energy drinks first exploded. And at the time there were a number of articles that said that really all you need is Gatorade, that most of these new drinks were advertising more calories per liter, but Gatorade was already tested out on absorption rates and dialed in to the maximum calories per liter of water that the average human stomach can absorb.

The tricky word there is average. If Tadej can absorb an extra 5 grams per liter, then you should give Tadej an extra five grams per liter. If Jonas can absorb 2 grams less per liter than the average then you should give him that serving.

These race results come down to mere seconds per hundred miles, for cyclists that are averaging 20 miles an hour. Any 1% difference is going into the training regimen.

[0_____0]

I still use Gatorade because I'm a cheap bastard.

The limits aren't wrt water absorption, but gut tolerance of sugar.

I get about 100g of sugar into a bottle by doing roughly 50:50 Gatorade and maltodextrin, and then throwing in some extra Na an K salt if it's going to be hot. Although with the super hi carb stuff you should make sure that you have some plain water as well - it sucks to be super thirsty but only have carb drink on the bike.

[ricw]

that is outdated advice. for one, some people sweat more than others, the salt levels in the sweat is totally different too. this means that if you're really serious about sport or are doing endurance races (ie 2 hours+) you should really not just use gatorade, but something where the mix of salt/water is closer to whatever you're sweating.

if i personally use gatorade for endurance exercise, i'll just cramp up after 90 minutes and not be able to ride normally. if i use a high salt mix instead, this isn't an issue whatsoever. I'm sure the exact same is true about food itself. remember that for the tour de france, last years time difference between the winner (Vingegaard) and the second (Pogadcar) was 8 minutes out of 82h 05' 42", aka only 0.16% faster overall. every single sub-percentage matters here.

there are tons of products that cater to this. the one i've been using is https://www.precisionhydration.com/ which is cheaper and more tailored than gatorade (i have no affiliation to them).

[WalterBright]

On the Netflix TdF documentary, they mentioned that the difference between the winner and last place is 2%. There was one stage where the winner won by 4 inches.

It also said that doping made a 20% difference, so either none of the current competitors are doping or all of them are.

[Someone]

> for cyclists that are averaging 20 miles an hour

I don’t think modern professional cyclists even can ride at 20 miles an hour ;-)

20 miles an hour didn’t win you the Tour de France in 1950. Nowadays, with better tech, better training, and shorter stages, you have to do over 25 miles an hour to win it, and the last rider in the general classification easily is within 10% of that.

[ruszki]

They count it as gram per hour. If I remember well, pro cyclists can absorb 2-2.5 times as much carbohydrate in an hour than beginners.

[jimbokun]

Maximum calories per liter sounds like something you really want to avoid unless you are engaging in extremely intense exercise.

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

There are multiple kinds of carbohydrate and the differences can matter.

Gatorade’s ingredients list shows sucrose (glucose+fructose) and dextrose (glucose).

Maltodextrin is isotonic in a 6x stronger solution than fructose and glucose. This means you need to drink meaningfully less water during a race to digest maltodextrin. So do we want all maltodextrin? Nope! Fructose can be absorbed by a separate pathway, which is less efficient, but increases your total intake of carbohydrates into the bloodstream.

So you’re probably not going to see Tour de France teams giving their riders Gatorade. You want more maltodextrin and less glucose.

[deff]

That is indeed why you don´t see them collapsing and also why the finals are much longer nowadays. Riders train their guts to be able to eat up to 120g of carbs per hour, for the whole duration of the race.

[avs733]

I am far FAR from the tour de france but I do train for and run ultramarathons.

When I started the general guidance seemed to be about 200 calories (50g of carbs) per hour during training and races. I followed that or a little above for a long time, and constantly had problems both physically and cognitively near the end of races.

It took about a year to get used to fueling heavier (for me...about 400 calories per hour or 100g). Lots of figuring out digestion and timing and sources and other factors. But once I got there it was transformative...I could push much harder for much longer without a deep bonk and recovery was faster. More importantly, my ability to think/plan/make decisions at the end of races was orders of magnitude better.

I'd bet if you went to an aid station around 80 miles on a 100mile ultra marathon you could pretty reliably identify who had been on the 200cal end of the spectrum and who had been on the 400 + end.

[brazzy]

> For sure, doping it's still a fear, but these guys cannot climb Galibier at that speed only with storoids/drugs, it's insane the effort that they did over the year.

The way I heard it, the don't use doping to improve their performance. They use it so they can train longer and more intensely than they would be able to without it.

[nradov]

That's part of it sure, but anything which improves oxygen transport like EPO or blood transfusions will absolutely improve climbing performance regardless of training quality. For anyone with good fitness the main limiting factor is amount of oxygen delivered to the muscles.