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41 posts in Nutrition
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Rice cakes, bars and gels you can make at home for a tenth of the price
Three kitchen recipes with the carbohydrate worked out per piece from USDA food data, and an honest look at where home-made ride food loses to the packet: shelf life, bulk and hard efforts.
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What to eat the night before a long ride
A bigger plate of something familiar, less fat and fibre, little alcohol, finished early. The glycogen targets behind that sentence, three menus that work, and what to leave off the table.
Hydration in the heat: sodium, ice and the pre-cool
Heat costs watts whatever you drink. What helps: starting cool with ice slurry, keeping body-mass loss under about 2%, matching sodium to how salty you sweat, and not drinking past thirst.
Fuelling on a budget: cheap carbs that work on the bike
Bananas, raisins, jam sandwiches and potatoes have been tested against gels and sports drinks and fuel a ride just as well. The grams per pocket portion, what they cost, and where they fall short.
Eating to recover from a big week, not just a big ride
A camp or a hard block leaves a hole one recovery shake will not fill. Carbohydrate scaled to the load for several days, protein spread across each day, and the signs you have slipped into under-fuelling.
Coffee-stop nutrition: the mid-ride food that helps and the food that sits
Cake and coffee is a good refuel; the fry-up is why the second half feels worse. How much caffeine is in the cup, why fat and fibre sit when you restart, and a ranked café menu.
Fuelling six days back to back
On one long ride, fuelling decides how you feel at the end. On six consecutive long rides it decides whether the week produces fitness at all. The daily rhythm, four traps, and why day four feeling grim is often a food problem wearing a training problem's clothes.
You dehydrate in winter too
Dehydration is a summer problem — that assumption sits behind almost every winter ride and it is wrong. Five reasons riders run short in the cold, what it costs, and the one change that fixes most of it.
Eating abroad without losing a day to it
The food is one of the best parts of a cycling trip and a reliable way to lose a morning. What to sort before you go, how to enjoy local cooking without gambling the queen stage, and when it stops being a fuelling problem.
Gels, drink mix or real food?
There is a mild moral dimension to this argument that does not deserve to be there. The real distinction is mechanical — how fast you need the carbohydrate and how hard you are riding when it arrives. Why most experienced riders end up using all three.
Bonking: what is actually running out, and what to do about it
Not ordinary tiredness — the shaking hands, the emotional flatness, the inability to decide anything. Why a bonk feels like a mental event, why "push through it" is uniquely bad advice here, and the mistake that happens two hours before the symptoms.
How much do you actually sweat? An hour with a towel and some scales
Two riders finish the same hot four hours having lost 1.2 kg and 4 kg. "Drink 500 ml an hour" is useless advice for one of them. The DIY protocol that gives you your own number, and how to tell whether you are a salty sweater.
Vitamin D for cyclists: a strong case, narrower than the marketing
One of the few supplements with real evidence behind it — and that evidence says something the labels do not. Why cyclists are a higher-risk group, what correcting a deficiency does, and what topping up when you are already fine does not.
Low energy availability and REDs: when eating less stops making you faster
Cycling's fascination with being lighter has a cost the arithmetic leaves out. What low energy availability actually is, why bodyweight is a poor detector of it, and why the performance argument fails on its own terms.
Iron and ferritin for cyclists: the blood test worth asking for
Low iron is one of the more common causes of unexplained fatigue in endurance athletes, and one of the few that is genuinely fixable. Why "your bloods are normal" can still mean you are short — and why you must never supplement on a hunch.
How much should you actually drink on the bike?
Most riders get hydration wrong in both directions. Here's a practical strategy by conditions, the simple sweat test that replaces all the guesswork, and why indoors is its own category.
Fuelling indoor rides: what to eat, drink and when
The physiology isn't different indoors — the conditions are, in four ways that change the numbers. A fuelling table by session length, and why the trainer is the best place to practise race nutrition.
Under-fuelling: the training mistake that takes you backwards
Not eating enough for the training you're doing is more common than the sport admits — and its first symptom is the one that makes riders train harder. The warning signs, and when to see a doctor.
Fuelling long rides: a simple carbs-per-hour guide that actually sticks
Bonking is a fuelling failure, not a fitness one. Here's a simple, no-nonsense carbs-per-hour plan for long rides — what to eat, when, and how much.
Carbs per hour: how to train your gut to take 90 g
Modern fuelling guidance asks for far more carbohydrate per hour than most riders can stomach — and the stomach is trainable. What the multiple-transportable-carbohydrate research actually shows, and a realistic protocol for getting there.
What to eat before a morning ride (and when there's no time)
What to eat before a 6 am ride, how long it really needs to settle, and what to do when you've got twenty minutes and no appetite. Including whether eating half an hour before genuinely causes a blood-sugar dip.
Do you need protein after every ride? What the evidence says
The thirty-minute anabolic window turned out to be far wider than anyone thought. What the research says about per-meal dose, daily totals and whether an endurance rider needs a shake after every easy spin.
Caffeine for cyclists: how much, how long before, and the catch
Caffeine is one of the few supplements with genuinely strong evidence behind it. The effective dose, when to take it, why habitual coffee drinkers still respond — and what it costs your sleep if you time it badly.
Beetroot juice, nitrates and cycling performance: does it work?
Dietary nitrate genuinely improves exercise economy in some people — and does close to nothing in well-trained athletes. What the research shows, the dose and timing that matter, and the mouthwash mistake that cancels the whole thing.
Creatine for cyclists: useful, or just extra weight?
Creatine is the most researched supplement in sport, but almost all of that research is about lifting and sprinting. What it does for a cyclist, what the water weight costs your watts per kilo, and who it actually suits.
Recovery drinks: do you need one, or is a meal enough?
Rapid refuelling matters enormously when you're riding again in six hours, and barely at all when you're not. How glycogen resynthesis actually works, and when a recovery drink beats a plate of food.
How to eat on a 5-hour ride without wrecking your stomach
Gut trouble ends more long rides than legs do. Why it happens — drink concentration, intensity, dehydration, what you ate the night before — and the practical changes that fix it for most riders.
Carb loading before a gran fondo: how to do it properly
The old depletion-week protocol is long dead. What a modern one- to two-day carb load looks like, how many grams per kilo you're actually aiming for, and why the scale goes up before a good ride.
Cycling and alcohol: what one beer actually costs you
Alcohol interferes with glycogen storage, muscle repair and — most reliably of all — sleep. An honest look at what the evidence supports, where the dose stops mattering much, and where it really doesn't.
Riding fasted: what it does, what it doesn't, and who should avoid it
Training low raises some of the enzymes that burn fat, but improved performance is a much harder thing to demonstrate. Where fasted riding fits, where it backfires, and who should not do it at all.
Electrolytes explained: sodium, cramp and what actually helps
Sweat sodium losses vary enormously between riders, and the popular explanation for cramp may be the wrong one entirely. What electrolytes do, what the cramp research says, and the risk of drinking too much.
Low-carb and keto for cyclists: what the evidence actually shows
Fat adaptation is real, and it comes with a bill at race intensity. What the controlled studies found, where periodised low-carb differs from chronic keto, and the narrow set of riders for whom the trade is worth making.
Sodium bicarbonate: the oldest legal ergogenic aid, and the stomach problem
Baking soda has one of the largest effect sizes in sports nutrition for efforts of one to ten minutes, and one of the worst side-effect profiles. The dose, the timing, the ways riders make it tolerable, and why it does nothing at all for your gran fondo.
Beta-alanine: the tingle, the buffer, and whether it's worth it
Four to six weeks of daily dosing to raise muscle carnosine, an odd skin-prickling side effect, and a benefit concentrated almost entirely in efforts of one to four minutes. Who that describes, and who should save their money.
Vitamin C, tart cherry and the adaptation you might be blunting
The free radicals you are trying to mop up are part of how training works. Where high-dose antioxidants have been shown to dull adaptation, where tart cherry still earns its place, and the simple rule that resolves the contradiction.
Eating for cycling after 40: what actually changes
Anabolic resistance means the same protein does less than it used to, glycogen comes back slower, and thirst stops being a reliable signal. What genuinely changes with age — and how much of "masters nutrition" is the same advice in a different font.
Omega-3 for cyclists: what it does, what it doesn't
A supplement with a plausible mechanism, a decent safety record and a thin performance record. What EPA and DHA appear to do for muscle and recovery, what the direct performance trials show, and the dose that is actually studied.
Plant-based cycling: the four nutrients worth planning around
A well-planned plant-based diet supports serious training; the planning is the operative word. B12, iron absorption, the omega-3 conversion problem and protein distribution — plus the one that catches everyone out, simply eating enough.
Your gut bacteria and your riding: what the research can and can't say yet
Endurance athletes really do have different gut microbial profiles, and no probiotic on a shelf has been shown to make you faster. Separating the genuinely interesting findings from the marketing built on top of them.
The refuelling window: how real is it, and when does it matter?
The thirty-minute window is real, quite small, and almost irrelevant unless you are riding again tomorrow morning. What the research actually supports, the dose per kilogram, and the specific situations where the clock genuinely matters.
Drinking too much: hyponatraemia and why more water isn't safer
It looks like dehydration, it is treated the opposite way, and drinking more makes it worse. Who exercise-associated hyponatraemia actually happens to, why salt tablets are not the answer, and the symptoms that mean call for help now.
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