Foldable Bikes Party: How carbs can help you perform at your best

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A good sportive or gran fondo nutrition strategy can mean the difference between feeling strong and wanting to throw your bike in a ditch. Just as getting in the base miles prepares you for the long ride ahead, the key to successful sportive nutrition begins well before your event.

Sports nutritionist Emma Barraclough knows the science and practice of getting your fuelling right inside and out. Here she explains why carbs remain the primary source of fuel for high-performance endurance events and how to work out how much you’ll need.

Why carbohydrate and how much do you need?

Carbohydrates are quickly absorbed by the body and are used to top up muscle glycogen stores, which is essentially the fuel used to power your legs.

Carbs have long been adopted as the primary fuel source for high performance endurance sport, but diets such as high fat, low carb have been gaining momentum in the endurance world over the last couple of years. Emma explains why cyclists should still be preoccupied with counting carbs.

“If you want to perform at your very best level, carbohydrate is the only fuel source that can be metabolised fast enough to give you that energy in that scenario. So if you've dropped the carbohydrate content in your diet — and you're mainly using fat — you'll struggle to hit the same performance levels that you would do purely on carbohydrate.