Getting your sportive nutrition right is of the utmost importance for a fast finishing time. Here, sports nutritionist Emma Barraclough guides you through all you need to know for sportive fuelling – from carb-loading to pre-ride breakfast, boosting with caffeine and avoiding the lure of feed station treats.
- How to pace a sportive
- 21 top tips for first-time sportive riders
- How to avoid weight gain while eating enough for cycling
Carb-loading before a sportive
In the week leading up to your sportive, it’s important to taper – doing less volume in your training – in order to reach the event rested and ready to ride, but you’ll need to think about your food intake as you approach the big day too. This has traditionally meant eating plenty of carbs in the last few days in order to fill muscles with glycogen in advance of the ride.
“Carb-loading seems like a very old term now, but it's still true that if you can build up your stored carbohydrate in your body – the glycogen stores – it will last you longer when you get into events," Barraclough tells BikeRadar. "The shift from that in recent years is that you don’t need to do the depletion phases in the week leading up to it – 48 hours beforehand is enough.”
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You can supplement carb-rich food like pasta with sports drinks to avoid bloating
Finding out how much you’ll need is pretty simple too. “That's where you would use grams per kilogram of body mass because it's very much determinant on your lean muscle mass and how much you're going to be able to store in your body," continues Barraclough.
What to have for pre-ride breakfast
Fuel quickly, then hit your carb goals
Stick to sports nutrition
Keep your head at feed stations
Know your gel ingredients
Save caffeine for when you’re flagging
You can read more at BikeRadar.com
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