JUST ADD CARBS AND WATER...

If you want the best output from your legs, you need the best input in terms of your fuelling – but how exactly? Deena Blacking finds out

- Deena Blacking

We spend thousands of pounds on bike components just to shave off a few grams. We leave no stone unturned in planning our training sessions and races. But do we pay enough attention to the fundamental matter of fuelling: giving our body what it needs to sustain our best possible output? For this feature, I made it my mission to uncover the golden rules of energy supply that every cyclist should follow.

Food and fluid provide the energy required by every function of the body, from an arm muscle contraction to pick up this copy of CW to the translation of visual data into (hopefully) coherent meaning, a complex relay from retina to brain, as you read this article. That energy requirement increases enormously once we put down our CW and head out on the bike. For endurance cyclists, our two major fuel sources are carbohydrates and fats. The average human stores over 100,000kcal worth of energy in fat, and a much smaller reserve of carbs, around 2,000kcal. And let’s not forget hydration, because humans are 60-70 per cent water; even bone is one-third H2O.

If we have so much energy available in fat, why do we need carbs in our diet? What about low-carb training? To cut a long story short, it’s easier and faster for the body to extract energy from carbohydrates than from fat. This is why carbs are king, even if we only store them in modest amounts. No pro in the peloton performs without an abundance of carbohydrates on board.