0
0
As you might know by now, high-carb fueling, aka consuming 80g of carbs per hour or more, is all the rage at the Tour de France.
If you are training for two hours, going all gels, chews, and high-carb drinks works well. But what do you do for longer workouts like a Tour stage that is 5+ hours?
This is where Tour riders introduce solid fueling options into the first half of the stage.
Let’s take a 4-hour stage as a simple example to make the math easy. In the first 2 hours, a Tour rider would consume the following PER HOUR:
Solid: 1 Maurten Solid or 2 Honey Stinger Waffles (~40g of carbs)
High Carb DRINK: 1/2 bottle of Maurten 320 (40g of carbs)
Hydration Drink: 1/2 bottle of First Endurance EFs (13g of carbs)This plan gets them to 93g of carbs per hour without using gels or chews, letting the riders save the sugary stuff for later in the stage.
Then in the final 2 hours (or 2nd half of the stage), riders will replace the solid with gels and chews.
Gel: 2x Honey Stinger Gel (58g of carbs)
Chews: 2x chews every 15 minutes (~20g of carbs)
Hydration Drink: 1 bottle of First Endurance EFs (26g of carbs)Now the riders are at 104g of carbs per hour in the 2nd half of the stage with more “quick energy” sources.
Why split up your fueling?
There are two reasons to split up your fueling.
The first is for digestion. Many athletes can only tolerate so much of the sugary gels and chews. This strategy lets you save them for when you need them at the end of the stage or for the final climb.
The second is simply flavor fatigue. You can leverage the solid fueling options early on, and there are many great choices.
What are the best solid fueling options?
Many riders in the Tour use waffles (especially our Belgian and Dutch riders). Honey Stinger has great regular and gluten-free waffles.
The newest solid fuel choice is Maurten Solid, which is easy to eat, has a whopping 44g of carbs, and is very popular this year.
DRG
