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Why Nutrition is so Important in Cycling

There are four nutrition periods for a cyclist. The primary sources for fluid loss are sweat and urine. It is important to monitor your fluid loss

Riding nutrition

There are four nutrition periods for a cyclist when planning their cycling nutrition. These four periods include training, pre-race, post-race and non-race. The priorities in your nutrition intake for cycling are as follows: water, calories and electrolytes. Other vitamins and minerals have importance, but only during ultra-distance riding. On the contrary, there are not any special requirements in a cyclist’s nutrition for rides under an hour. You will only need to be concerned with fluids and calories for competition and training over an hour. If you compete in an ultra-distance event, you must also concern yourself with electrolytes. Although, water, calories, and electrolytes are the normal order of importance any weak link in your nutrition may be a performance-limiter. For example, a lack of sodium may limit your performance even if your water and energy levels are up to adequate levels.

Food Pyramid

In order of priority

Consider this analogy; for a 40-kilometer “time trial”, the order of priorities may be:

• fitness of the rider
• bicycle-rider aerodynamics
• road friction
• bicycle mechanics

This is only a relative order of importance for the time spent in preparing for an event. In turn, if your bottom bracket seizes and even if you are in the best fitness of any rider in the trials you will not produce a great trial time.

Fluid losses

The primary sources for fluid loss are sweat and urine. The kidneys can rid the body of extreme excesses of fluids and can concentrate or dilute the urine with electrolytes if the body feels there is a need. In the hot dry climate of a desert it is possible to lose as much as 3.5 liters of fluids per hour. In sweat production there is both a fitness and acclimatization effect. In both fitness and acclimatization to heat and humidity, sweat is produced at lower body temperatures or in other words, you sweat more easily. The electrolytes concentrations in sweatis decreased when the sweat production is going through acclimatization and training. In comparison, females sweat less than males at the same body temperatures.

Enery BarsCarbohydrates may not be important

If you are competing in an event longer than one hour or longer than one half an hour in hotter climates it is very important to give your body adequate water replacement. Carbohydrate or electrolyte intake may not be as necessary for energy or balancing your losses of minerals in events under one hour, they may aid your body with hydration by increasing the rate of water uptake by the gastrointestinal tract. However, you will notice that during a 40-k time trial the cyclists with the best times do not drink water or fluids eve in desert climates. Although, in races when maximum effort is needed the body’s de-hydration will worsen your performance level a small amount.

Monitor you fluid loss

Although, no method of monitoring your body’s fluid loss is perfect, using a bathroom scale to monitor your weight can help monitor your status. Most of your weight loss is fluids although, you can lose fat and muscle weight during a multi-day event. Even though one quart of water weighs about 2 pounds a common bathroom scale can be misleading. On the average, glycogen binds three times its weight in water. Some weight loss in multi-day events means a depletion of stored glycogen rather than a hydration status since glycogen depletion is common in multi-day events. You body normally stores about 500 grams of glycogens. Usually no more than about 4.5 pounds of weight loss can be attributed to glycogen depletion.

Written by Sam · Filed Under Training