A Cyclist's Guide To Caffeine

We all know cyclists have a thing about coffee, but does the caffeine really boost our riding? TJ Waterfall investigates

- TJ Waterfall

We’re a nation of coffee lovers – slurping down a staggering 90 million cups every day. Cyclists might very well be bumping up that average, given our renowned love of coffee – the cherished mid-ride cafe stop is a rite of passage. It would be useful to know, therefore, what effects our coffee intake might be having on our health and performance. Is that coffee stop helping our cycling, and if so, how?

As with any nutritional message reported by the media, the hype around coffee is pretty confusing and conflicting – some articles hail it as a magical superfood, while others suggest it might be an addiction we need to kick. Here, we’ll look at what the best evidence shows us, so you can make an informed decision about how much coffee to drink – and perhaps even use it to your advantage.

You might be surprised to learn that coffee, or more specifically caffeine – the constituent that provides the buzz – is classed as a psychoactive drug. That’s because it’s a stimulant, i.e. it is mind-altering, in that it affects how we think and feel. And perhaps most interestingly to cyclists, it affects how we perform too.

Cycling-specific studies tend to show improvements in performance of up to a few per cent when participants are given caffeine (or placebo) ahead of a cycling test. This seems to be true across a range of intensities and distances. For example, studies have shown a 3.1 per cent improvement in a 1km time trial, a 1.9 per cent improvement in a 5km time trial, and 34 seconds extra staying power (0.8 per cent improvement) when cyclists were challenged to perform to exhaustion after an hour cycling at 70 per cent of VO2 max. These kinds of improvements might seem marginal, but they can make all the difference in both competition and training sessions.