Fuelling long rides: a simple carbs-per-hour guide that actually sticks

Almost nobody bonks because they're unfit. They bonk because they ran out of fuel. That hollow, leg-heavy, world-going-grey feeling on the back half of a long ride is your body scraping the bottom of its carbohydrate tank — and the frustrating part is that it's almost entirely avoidable. Get the eating and drinking right and the same legs that cracked at three hours will happily roll on for five. This is the simple, sticks-in-your-head version of how to do it.

Why carbs, and why per hour

Your muscles and liver store carbohydrate as glycogen, and that store is small — enough to fuel roughly 90 minutes of hard riding, less if you go out fast. Once it's gone, your power falls off a cliff and no amount of willpower brings it back quickly. Eating carbohydrate while you ride tops up blood glucose, spares what glycogen you have left, and keeps your brain and legs supplied so your power holds late into the ride.

The reason we talk in grams per hour is that your gut can only absorb carbohydrate so fast. A single type of sugar (glucose) maxes out around 60 g/h; add fructose, which uses a different transporter, and you can push toward 90 g/h or beyond. So fuelling is a steady drip you meter out by the hour — not a big feed you cram in when you already feel empty.

How much, by ride

You don't need the same fuelling for a Sunday hour as for an all-day epic. Match the intake to the ride:

The jump that catches most riders out is the one from "just water" to "actually eating". If your longer weekend rides have started creeping past two hours, that's your cue to stop treating them like a long coffee spin and start fuelling them properly.

What to actually eat

There's no magic product here. The best fuel is the one your stomach tolerates and you'll actually reach for at hour four. Here's roughly what common options give you:

Do the quick maths and it's less daunting than it sounds. A 500 ml bottle of drink mix (~30 g) plus a banana (~25 g) in an hour already lands you at ~55 g — comfortably inside the range for a three-hour ride. The single best habit is to mix real food with sports products: gels and drink mix for the fast, reliable carbs, real food like rice cakes and dates to keep your gut happy and your mouth interested over the long haul. All-gel fuelling turns most people's stomachs by hour three.

Hydration and sodium

Carbs get the headlines, but dehydration will end your ride just as fast. As a working baseline, drink 500–750 ml of fluid per hour, nudging toward the top of that — and beyond — when it's hot or you're sweating hard. You don't need to gulp; steady sips every few minutes are easier to absorb and easier to remember.

On long or hot rides, plain water isn't enough. You lose sodium in sweat, and replacing it helps you hold onto the fluid you're drinking and stave off cramps and that washed-out feeling. An electrolyte tab in a bottle, a salty snack, or a drink mix that already includes sodium all do the job. Watch for the early warning signs that you're under-drinking:

• A dry mouth and real thirst — by the time you notice these, you're already down a fair bit.
• Dark urine at the café stop — pale straw is the colour you want.
• Rising heart rate at the same power, plus a heavy, sluggish feeling that food alone doesn't fix.
• Cramp twinges late in the ride, often a sign sodium and fluid have fallen behind.

Train your gut

Here's the part most riders skip: your gut is trainable, just like your legs. If you never practise eating 80 g of carbs an hour, race day is a terrible time to try — you'll bloat, cramp or worse. So treat fuelling as a skill to rehearse on your long training rides, not something you switch on for the event.

• Eat on every long ride, even when you could get away without it, so the habit and the tolerance are already there.
• Build up gradually. If 40 g/h is where you're comfortable, work toward 60, then 70, over several weeks rather than doubling overnight.
• Rehearse your exact race fuel — the same gels, mix and food, at the same intervals — on your dress-rehearsal rides. No new products on the big day.
• Note what agrees with you. Everyone's stomach is different; find your combinations in training, not mid-event.

A trained gut is a genuine performance gain. Riders who can reliably take on 90+ g/h have a real edge late in long events, purely because they've practised the plumbing.

Make it automatic

None of this is complicated, but doing the sums for every ride — carbs per hour, bottles per hour, sodium in the heat, scaled to how long you'll be out — gets old fast. That's exactly what Moveee's Nutrition planner is for: tell it the ride and it turns the hours into a concrete per-hour carbs and fluids plan — how many grams, how many bottles, what to pack — so you can stop guessing and just ride. It's free, it works from the rides you already do, and it takes the maths off your plate so the only thing left to remember is to start early and keep eating.