What to Eat & Drink While Cycling
Cycling Food
This might seem like an incredibly basic blog on cycling nutrition, but itâs important to know about the best foods to eat while endurance cycling, or what to eat during a cycling race.
You would be amazed at how many cyclists, even really experienced ones, are not fueling for their ride, and have no idea what to eat during cycling. So, what are the best carbs for cycling?
In this post, weâre going to look at some basic points to help you instantly become a faster cyclist. You will be stronger later in the day, put out more watts, and feel better after your long ride. No one likes coming home depleted and feeling completely smashed. Nutrition is a big reason why this happens, not just the huge efforts.
Should You Eat or Drink While Cycling?
Yes! Absolutely! I donât know if I could be more emphatic about this.
While you are cycling, the amount of fluid that you take in will depend on the weather conditions (is it very humid, hot, or cool?) and other personal factors like how hard you are riding, and whether you sweat a lot.
A general rule would be to drink 16 - 20oz, or 450-600mL of fluid per hour. If you live in a very hot and humid environment, and the temperatures are scorching to 90F (32C), you may consume 40oz (1200mL) in one hour!
What to drink while cycling? Make sure you are consuming fluids that have electrolytes in them while cycling, especially in the heat. This will help you avoid cramping and having a poor finish on the ride.
When we talk about what to drink when cycling, there are a lot of options, and you should check out our Full Nutrition Blog.
I donât care to eat real food (solid food) while cycling, whether I am eating for a long distance endurance ride, or for a race.
I tend to stick to maple syrup in a soft flask (Iâm still experimenting on my favorite one)*, or gels. I will bring one or two bars, but nothing special; maybe an RXBar or Larabar, or something like that.
*I have used this one, but am leaning towards buying this one, as the former had fallen apart on one ride! Not good!!
Some athletes like to eat real food on the rides, and that is fine if that works for you. For me, I donât like sandwiches or things like that because they are often messy, and take up too much space in my pockets. Or, they get squished! No one like a flat sandwich.
Also, I find it hard to know exactly what Iâm eating while cycling. You want to be consuming 75-90g of carbs per hour on the ride, no matter what the ride is.
Check out this link from sport scientist Asker Jeukendrup, that shows carbs up to 120g can help performance, and it can even help us feel less sore after a ride.
I consume up to 130g of carbohydrates while racing, in the form of maltodextrin in my bottles, and maple syrup in a flask. I add a small splash of water in there to make it less viscous (or more ârunnyâ).
Update: as of 2022 Iâve been using Sugar Water in my drink bottles with sea salt, as opposed to maltodextrin. So much cheaper and easier!
Iâve also boosted my performance with ketones from Delta G. If you want to learn more, check out this article.
Take note: that maltodextrin is Informed Choice tested, so I would highly recommend that product from NOW.
Cycling Weight Loss: Find Your Race Weight & Maximizing Power to Weight Ratio
How to Eat or Drink Safely on a Bicycle
I know, âI know how to eat and drink on my bike, thank you!â
But have you seen riders that really struggle with this? Of course! We all were a little awkward eating and drinking on the bike when we first started; especially when we get tired on a long bike ride!
The best thing for new riders to do is practice getting your bottles out of the cage while on the trainer. Donât look down at the bottle, and practice just getting a feel for where the bottle is located.
Another good thing to practice is getting food out of your back pockets! This is great to practice while on the trainer as well!
You always want to be looking up the road, and being aware of the other cyclists around you. Safety is crucial when you are eating or drinking while cycling.
What Are The Best Foods to Eat While Cycling?
The easiest answer for this is to eat what your body digests well, while also delivering your body the energy that it needs.
Carbohydrates are the best fuel for cycling, so youâll want to focus on easily digestible forms of this.
The most important thing is to aim for 70-100g of carbs per hour while cycling. If your gut is well trained, you can bring this up towards 120g for very intense sessions, races, or when cycling long distance, like in big gran fondos. This range is the total number of carbs when you combine your cycling food and cycling drinks (we will cover that next).
The more carbs that your body can process for these rides, the better. The one key here is to make sure youâre getting the carbs from multiple sources, like maltodextrin and fructose. Multi-transportable carbohydrates will allow the body to use more carbs per hour than if you just focused on a single-transportable carbohydrate.
We delve deeper into the topic in the Complete Guide To Cycling Nutrition.
Snacks For Cyclists
Some athletes enjoy real food to eat while cycling, especially on longer rides, whereas this just doesnât work well for some others. A little bit of personal experimentation will be your best guide here. For myself, real food just takes up too much space in a cycling jersey, and sandwiches or rice balls just donât sound appetizing to me when Iâm riding.
Therefore, my favorite foods and best cycling energy snacks are those that are easier to digest, like maple syrup in a flask. Maple syrup is mainly sucrose, and also contains Calcium, Potassium, Iron, Zinc and Manganese. I used to consume a lot of energy gels, but the cost of those can add up over time. But either way, those are extremely easy to digest, and work well with my gut.
What to eat when cycling long distance? I might bring a bar of some sort, just to add in some variety. There are an endless number of brands, and it doesnât have to be a âcycling specificâ energy snack either. RX Bars are pretty tasty on a long ride, and I enjoy that they are all natural.
At the end of the day, whether you choose real food to eat while cycling, or find the best cycling energy snacks that work with your body, ensure that you are getting that 70-100g of carbohydrates per hour to have the best performance! This is low lying fruit! A well fueled athlete will outperform someone else that is running on fumes.
Lastly, another way to stay on top of the micronutrients is to utilize the best supplements for cycling.
What Are The Best Drinks to Drink While Cycling?
What should you drink while cycling? Youâll want to have some carbohydrates and electrolytes in your bottles to keep you well fueled (hitting that 70-100g of carbohydrates per hour) as well as the electrolytes to prevent cramps and regulate muscle contractions.
There are a lot of electrolyte mixes on the market, but the more I dig into these, the more weâve realized that sodium is the one that needs the most focus and attention. The exact word from a Performance Nutritionist at one of the big brands was: âEffectively, sodium is the key electrolyte our body regulates fluid and hydration status on, more so during exercise, which makes it the important one to look at in-exercise.â
1 g salt = 400 mg sodium, so I put about 1g of salt per 20oz of fluid, with my maltodextrin (about 40g per 20oz).
Another leader at an more organic brand had these words to share:
Sea salt has a much more varied and wide array of electrolytes than traditional table salt. Lots of companies put a lot of ingredients into foods that people think âoh that sounds like I need thatâ. For example sodium chloride. Thatâs literally salt. Calcium lactate is a food additive and calcium supplement. Potassium chloride is supplemental potassium. Iâd rather just have sea salt. Citric acid sounds like citrus. It tastes like citrus but itâs fermented corn and itâs in 99% of your lemon/lime flavored sports drinks.
Long story short, Iâve used sea salt exclusively as my electrolytes for the past 5 years and havenât had any ill effects, so itâs not as though Iâm late in a race thinking, âI need my calcium lactate!â Sure thatâs anecdotal, but weâre force fed sports nutrition and Iâd rather consume something I enjoy.
So, 40g of malto + 1g of sea salt has been my mixture for 20oz bottles for this 2021 racing season. Seems to have been working well!
What to drink after cycling? Iâm not huge on recovery drinks, but after super hard sessions or really long rides, Iâll use this protein powder which is vegan. Iâm not a big fan of dairy.
Iâll also consume water, tea, or coffee, depending on the time of day. I donât like to drink coffee past noon, unless it was a brutal 4 hour road race.
Iâll usually eat some salty foods afterwards, so I donât stress too much about getting more sodium in via my post-ride drink. Iâm more focused on good carbohydrates, proteins, and micronutrients to help the recovery process.
See Also: Homemade DIY Energy Drink For Cycling
What To Eat Before Cycling
One issue that can sneak into the training diet when preparing for long distance cycling is eating too much before cycling. When eating before a bike ride (a large one in particular) it can be tempting to eat a huge meal. In reality, you wonât need to eat that much right before a ride, whatâs more important is eating a moderate sized meal and then staying topped up while eating on the bike. A common tendency is for athletes to eat too much before a bike ride, but not enough eating while cycling.
Ideally, you want to finish eating all of your food 2-3 hours before the ride starts. The harder the ride, the more time you want to leave before the start.
What is the best thing to eat before a long bike ride? You want to eat a carb-based meal with some protein. Some examples could be oatmeal or whole grain toast with fruit.
What should you not eat before cycling? Meals that contain large amounts of fat and protein. For one, this wonât really help fuel your ride because carbs are the limited energy source that your body needs, but secondly a big olâ plate of bacon, eggs and biscuits can cause some GI distress or cramping once you get on the bike.
Make sure that you are hydrated, but drinking too much coffee before the ride can leave you having to pee quite a bit at the start.
I often find that 20-30 minutes of riding before a race really helps to flush out any water retained from carb loading. This will help reduce the chance of needing to go when the race is underway!
Another reason that you donât want to eat or drink too much while cycling is that you simply cannot digest it, and you will feel extremely full and uncomfortable when pedaling.
This happens most often if a rider gets behind on their nutrition and then tries to catch up, stuffing bars and tons of fluids down all at once. This is a bad idea that does not end well. Instead, eat a normal portion (100-150 calories of cycling snacks), and then wait 20 minutes and go for it again. I wouldnât snack more than every 20 minutes in order to catch up.
Another time that overeating can be a problem for cycling is at the coffee shop stop. Big desserts sound good, especially if you havenât been on top of your nutrition, but eating them can leave you feeling stuffed for the second half of the ride. If you choose to indulge in a treat, make it a small one or stick to snacks made for cyclists.
Sample Food & Drink Plan for Cyclists
Everyone asks about the pro cyclist diet plan, and if youâve listened to the pro rider interviews, everyone has their own little concoction for race day.
Some of the staples are: oats, rice, dried fruit, and breads. Eggs often come up, but I wouldnât go overboard with this before a hard event; focus on the carbs, and get the proteins in afterwards.
Consume about 20oz of fluid per hour on the bike, adding or reducing the amount based on the temperatures, your sweat rate, and humidity. If you come home absolutely parched, you didn't drink enough.
Best Food For Cycling
If you have more questions about cycling nutrition, check out our other blogs on this topic here.
Eating and drinking on the bike while cycling, whether endurance cycling or eating for long distances, it shouldnât be too complicated.
Dial in the amount of carbs that you need in your cycling nutrition to perform well; itâs going to be in the 70-120g an hour area.
Figure out the number of carbs in your cycling snack and figure out how often you will eat them. Get your total carbs for the ride in that zone mentioned above.
Electrolytes are key for a myriad of reasons, so find a mixture (or make your own like I do!), that works well with your body. That means you enjoy it, and that your stomach tolerates it.
If you nail the nutrition aspect of cycling, whether youâre eating during a cycling race or eating real food while riding a long endurance ride, your performance will increase; I promise you that!
You can check out our athlete testimonials here, so you know that what we do works.
If youâre interested in getting faster, and want to do it faster than reading blogs and trying to do it on your own, contact one of our coaches and explore some of our programs. None of these include templates (because those donât work), and everything is completely customizable to your lifeâs schedule.
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The main goals of the analysis are to:
Benchmark your performance level versus your peers
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EVOQ coaching has been instrumental to my development as a racer. They have taken me from being dropped in cat 4 races to being constantly at the front of big cat 3 races. The personalized coaching that they offer is huge, and I definitely wouldnât be here without them.