From Bikepacking to Ultra-Racing - Part 2: Nutrition

Vom Bikepacking zum Ultra-Rennen - Teil 2: Ernährung

In the first part , we looked at how to structure your training sessions to prepare for your first ultra-distance race. Now we'll focus on an equally important factor: nutrition. What and how you eat directly impacts whether you can stand at the starting line full of energy – and whether you can sustain yourself for many hours. Max Kinzlbauer gives you practical tips to optimally prepare you for your race.

PART 2: NUTRITION

Training nutrition

Start practicing your race nutrition regularly from about three months before the race, for example during a long training session on the weekend. The goal is for your gut to be able to handle the amount of carbohydrates you plan to consume during the race.

This training of tolerance and, ideally, also of absorption, i.e., how many carbohydrates actually enter the bloodstream per hour, is very important and should be a regular part of your training for at least eight weeks.

Race Time: The week before

A complete rest day two to three days before the race is advisable. Plan easy training sessions for one to two days directly before the race.

However, this is individual. If you know a setup that works perfectly for you based on experience, you can stick with it.

In the final days before the competition, you should only eat easily digestible foods. Towards the end, avoid fiber as much as possible, focusing only on foods your body can process quickly and easily. The goal is to minimize the amount of food residue in your intestines that could swell and cause problems.

Starting about three to four days before the competition, focus on:

rice
White flour products
White noodles
potatoes
Easily digestible protein sources
If necessary, liquid nutrition such as Ensure, Fresubin, Fortimel, All-in and similar products.

Avoid the following if possible:

whole grain products
Vegetables (gradually reduce and then omit)
(also reduce fruit and then omit it)
lettuce
Very fatty foods

Carboloading

You can start carbo-loading three to five days before the competition, ideally after a somewhat more intense session in the morning or late morning.

During this phase, your daily calorie needs are met almost exclusively through carbohydrates. Your diet should be largely low in fat; a small portion of your calories can come from protein sources. A significant calorie surplus is not the goal; you don't want to gain additional body fat.

Cover your needs with the carbohydrate sources mentioned and additionally with liquid carbohydrates. Drink plenty of water with meals and snacks. It's not about excessive amounts, but about not forgetting to drink. Carbohydrates bind water, so it's perfectly normal for your body weight to increase slightly in the short term. These reserves of carbohydrates and water will be used up very quickly during competition.

During the weeks of immediate preparation, the following always applies:

approximately 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day
Sufficient sleep for good regeneration

The most important sleep is the night before the race. If the competition takes place on Saturday, the night from Thursday to Friday is crucial. The night immediately before the start is often filled with excitement. If you're well-rested by then, this isn't a problem. Try to reduce work and personal stress as much as possible in the days leading up to the race.

competition day

If you have an early start, definitely eat breakfast, either liquid or solid:

If you get up an hour before the start: approximately 1 g of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight
If you get up two hours before the start: approximately 2 g/kg carbohydrates
If you get up three hours before the start: approximately 3 g/kg carbohydrates

If you get up significantly earlier, eat relatively normally at first and then have one of the above options again one to three hours before the start.

It's not about being precise down to the gram. The information provided is a guideline you can use.

Special feature: "unsupported" ultra races

Races lasting approximately 24 hours

Since the intensity of these races is significantly higher, you should rely primarily or exclusively on carbohydrate drinks and gels. You might also add low-fat bars or easily digestible solid foods like rice, rolls, bread rolls, or pretzels, as long as that works well.

Because the race time is significantly shorter compared to multi-day events, you can bring and plan with a relatively large amount of tried and tested equipment.

If you are achieving very high wattage values in relation to your body weight, Max recommends focusing clearly on carbohydrate intake.

Races longer than 24 hours

In races lasting significantly longer than 24 hours, the overall calorie balance becomes more important than the pure amount of carbohydrates consumed. If you consume enough total calories, your carbohydrate supply is very unlikely to suffer.

Use products you've tested in training, as far as circumstances allow. Research beforehand what's typically available in supermarkets, small shops, and gas stations in the respective countries. Try testing these exact products during long training sessions.

You can generally rely on "unhealthy" products like chocolate bars, cola, or fast food without any problems, even exclusively. The body can handle a lot. However, for races that last several days, it's more beneficial for performance and subsequent recovery to use these products only in moderation. These are observations and experiences, not strictly empirically proven data. The risk of gastrointestinal problems is significantly higher with very "hard" food.

Max's recommendation: use products that are as risk-free as possible and contain few to no harmful additives.

And: as few experiments as possible in the race.

During the race

As soon as the race starts, the body begins supplying energy. In the first few hours, it also draws on muscle glycogen. Therefore, an extremely high energy intake is not necessary in the first two hours.

Recent studies show that with high carbohydrate intake, a larger proportion of energy is derived from carbohydrates. With lower intake, fat burning takes over a greater share. You generally don't need to worry as much about this "fuel."

It's important to gradually increase your carbohydrate and calorie intake to avoid an energy deficit. The shorter the race, the higher your intake can be.

However, Max also recommends not exceeding approximately 90g of carbohydrates per hour for 24-hour races and shorter. More would only increase the proportion of carbohydrates burned, but would very likely not improve overall performance. On the other hand, the risk of overloading the gastrointestinal tract increases significantly.

For races lasting longer than 24 hours, approximately 40 to 70 g of carbohydrates per hour are sufficient in the long term, depending on performance.

Don't drive beyond your limit

The sooner your muscles reach their energy limit, the sooner the crash will occur. This crash can be so severe that you'll be driving at "idle speed" for several hours.

Consistency is key to a good race. Don't let others tempt you to push yourself too hard at the start. Stay in your comfort zone, or close to it. The better you know this zone, for example through a diagnostic assessment, the easier this will be. Imagine you're attached to it with a rubber band that pulls you back whenever you overexert yourself.

If, for whatever reason, it's not possible to maintain this zone on that day, a lower output isn't an energy problem. Don't get nervous. Very few long-distance races are decided in the first hour. Try to find a consistent rhythm of effort and nutrition during the first few hours.

The longer a race lasts, the more important it is to consume protein. This serves two purposes: firstly, to protect the muscles, and secondly, because protein, along with sodium, can help prevent edema. Small portions spread throughout the day are ideal, provided the race situation allows it. If not, carbohydrates take priority. The body can also function for a certain period with relatively little protein.

Drinking, salt and sweat

Try not to drink more than about one liter per hour. Exactly how much is appropriate depends on the temperature and your physical condition. It's difficult to define a lower limit. Drinking is often more difficult when it's very cold. In such situations, calorie intake is more important. Drink according to your thirst, but aim for a few hundred milliliters per hour. You don't need to force yourself to drink large quantities in cold temperatures.

If you sweat heavily, additional salt can be helpful. Max recommends having about one to two grams of salt per liter of fluid on hand in such cases, or eating something salty during breaks, such as chips. While the fat content isn't ideal, it's acceptable occasionally. This amount is particularly relevant if you regularly see heavy salt stains on your clothes or skin.

It becomes even more precise if you know your sweat and sodium loss through testing. The goal is then to replace about forty percent of this loss. For this, you should know approximately how many liters you sweat in cold and warm temperatures, as sodium is always measured in milligrams per liter of sweat. If you don't have exact values, it's sufficient to add a little salt to your food or drinks regularly. Salt can usually be obtained without any problems at most rest stops.

magnesium

Caution is advised when it comes to magnesium.

Cramps are usually caused by overexertion, depleted glycogen stores in the muscles, dehydration, or a combination of these. Excessive salt loss, more specifically sodium loss, can also play a significant role. Magnesium is almost never the root cause. Even if there is an actual deficiency, you can't compensate for it during a race. That would require several weeks or months of preparation beforehand.

What magnesium reliably does when overdosed: It seeks the fastest way out of the body, via large amounts of fluids, which is diarrhea. This is doubly bad because you lose fluids, unabsorbed carbohydrates, and time.

Isotonic, hypertonic, hypotonic

How should a drink be composed: isotonic, hypertonic, or hypotonic?

Max's short, deliberately provocative answer: plays almost no role in the everyday life of ultra races.

It's important that the drink contains carbohydrates and therefore calories. Purely hypotonic, meaning just water, makes little sense, except in genuine emergency situations involving dehydration, which ideally shouldn't occur at all.

In practice, you don't need to focus on osmolarity and precise isotonicity. Manufacturers like to emphasize this as a special feature of their products. In reality, everything mixes together in your stomach anyway: your drink, a gel, a few sips of something else, a piece of solid food. The supposed advantage is negated after a few minutes. Even if absorption takes a little longer as a result, this is usually easily manageable during races lasting many hours or days.

Example food items for on the go

Here is a small, incomplete list of products that Max considers useful. They are divided into carbohydrate sources, protein sources, and high-calorie fat sources.

Assign carbohydrates

Rice cakes
(not very high in calories, but they can be topped or spread with various ingredients and are unproblematic)
Corn waffles or corn products
White bread and white flour products
rice
White noodles
jam
Honey and maple syrup, also as a drink
Gummy bears, preferably the vegan version with more sugar
Cookies
Water ice, water plus sugar is perfect
Sweet spreads
Bars with very little fat
Sports products such as drinks and gels, as well as other "sugar water" drinks

Additionally:

Thick juice that is easy to transport
Tea with sugar
Pure sugar dissolved in water
Lemonade or iced tea
cola

assign protein

lenses
nuts
tofu
Chickpeas, for example as falafel
yogurt
Dairy products in general
eggs
Meat, here Max would be very careful
Canned tuna, preferably in brine rather than oil, depending on taste.
Packaged salmon, usually with plenty of salt
Protein bars

Fat, high in calories

Cookies
Ice cream with lots of sugar and fat, preferably pre-packaged to minimize the risk of bacteria.
Spreads containing fat; the fat is not ideal, but occasionally it's not a problem.
pre-packaged salmon
Protein bars, which are often very high in chocolate and fat

Important NOTE:
Avoid using light products that contain sweeteners or sugar substitutes instead of sugar, thus providing no energy but potentially causing digestive problems.

Please also check sports products to see if they actually contain sugar or if the sweetness comes from substances such as aspartame, acesulfame, cyclamate, saccharin or sucralose.

In summary

Drive within your own range. You might even feel underchallenged.
Ensure you have a consistent and sufficient supply of carbohydrates and calories every hour from the very beginning. There will always be periods when this supply is difficult. Therefore, it is important to keep the deficit as small as possible.
Include as much sugar or maltodextrin in your diet as is well tolerated without making you feel sick. Standing still means losing. A hundred watts less due to reduced pace is still better than zero watts at handover.
There will be times when consuming carbohydrates or calories is difficult, for example, in cold weather or during a low mood. Use gentle pressure, not force. If it's really impossible, slow down and wait until it gets better. It will get better.
Keep moving unless there's a compelling reason to stop. Keep rolling, keep pedaling, keep riding. If you're feeling unwell, keep riding slowly.

Every small aerodynamic improvement, even one that saves just a watt, adds up over the entire race. Don't stand up unnecessarily, and avoid clothing that flaps in the wind. A slightly less aggressive, but sustainable aero position is often more valuable than an extremely aerodynamic posture that you can no longer maintain after a short time. Try not to constantly turn your head into the slipstream; tuck it in slightly without bending your spine excessively. This, too, is part of your training.

caffeine

Caffeine doses of approximately three to a maximum of six milligrams per kilogram of body weight are well-researched. The crucial point is that you test caffeine during training before using it in a race.

Regular coffee drinkers don't need to completely quit. They can do it, for example for two weeks; the longer the break, the more sensitive they will be afterwards.
People who don't drink coffee often react to even small doses. Sometimes, as little as one milligram per kilogram is enough. This should also be tested during training.
People who consume too much caffeine and are not used to it may develop nausea.

Whether the caffeine comes from tablets or coffee is basically irrelevant.

The longer a race, the lower the average performance, the better the digestion, and the more you can get closer to "everyday life".

Most important principle:
Don't do anything in the race that you haven't tried in training.

After the race, it is advisable to eat a higher salt intake for one to two days to counteract water retention.

Bonus: Which carbohydrate drink makes sense for which distances?

Currently, many products have a glucose-to-fructose ratio of 1:0.8. This means that for every one part glucose, there are 0.8 parts fructose. More common are mixtures with a ratio of 2:1, i.e., two parts glucose to one part fructose.

Max deliberately avoids giving product recommendations. On the one hand, theoretically anyone can mix their own drink. On the other hand, the composition can easily be checked via the ingredient list, which should be standard practice for health reasons.

Not everyone is the "do-it-yourself" type. But if you understand the basic composition, it's easy to distinguish between sensible products and those that are excessively expensive. In nutrition, judgments like "good" or "bad" are difficult. More accurate terms are "suitable" or "unsuitable."

A brief theory:

Only three types of sugar pass directly from the intestines into the bloodstream: glucose, fructose, and galactose. All other carbohydrates are broken down into these simple sugars in the intestines before entering the bloodstream. Maltodextrin is a longer-chain sugar, but it behaves like glucose and is readily absorbed. Ultimately, everything is broken down into glucose, because only glucose is directly available to cells as an energy source. Fructose must first be converted into glucose in the liver and is therefore not immediately available.

Fructose can cause problems in high quantities. Anyone who drinks a liter of apple juice on an empty stomach will quickly understand this. Nevertheless, we need fructose for maximum energy intake; otherwise, we'd max out at around 60 to 70 grams of glucose per hour. Currently, approximately 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour is considered the upper limit for long-distance running. Anything more than that tends to cause problems in long-distance events: glycogen stores aren't significantly conserved, and performance doesn't improve further; only the proportion of carbohydrates burned increases. The apple juice example illustrates what higher fructose levels can mean.

In long-distance running, nutrient intake should be high enough to support performance, yet low enough to be tolerated over many hours or days. The quantity isn't huge, but the duration is very long. Food components that remain in the intestines for extended periods can accumulate over time.

What to do?

The solution is simpler than many think:

Take the amount of water you drink or sweat out in one hour.
Add the amount of maltodextrin you wish to administer, up to approximately 70 g per hour. Glucose would theoretically also be possible, but it is significantly sweeter and leads to sensory fatigue more quickly.
Maltodextrin with a maltodextrin value of 6 is similar to starch and relatively neutral in taste. There are also maltodextrins 12 and 19, which are closer to short-chain sugars and taste sweeter. For long-distance travel, maltodextrin 6 is usually the most palatable because it dissolves well in tea or soup.
At higher doses, you can add fructose until you reach a total carbohydrate intake of approximately 100g per hour, for example, 60 to 70g of maltodextrin plus the rest as fructose. Higher doses would require more fructose, which Max considers not very practical.
If your performance drops significantly during the race, your carbohydrate requirements will also decrease. In that case, you can continue with pure maltodextrin.

If taste and solubility aren't important to you, then the question of the ideal drink is practically answered. This is the cheapest option. Those who enjoy experimenting can use this as a basis to create their own product.

Many factors contribute to the higher cost of commercial products: raw material prices, quality differences, storage, machinery, logistics, packaging, insurance, cost of living, taxes, regulatory inspections, and voluntary certifications. Smaller manufacturers face high fixed costs, while large producers can scale up through volume and lower procurement costs.

If you want to use a ready-made product that has already proven its taste, a few simple points apply:

Use a product with as few ingredients as possible.
For up to about 60 to 70 g of carbohydrates per hour, a pure maltodextrin powder or a maltodextrin-based product is sufficient.
Maltodextrin is usually produced from corn, potatoes, rice, or wheat. The starch is enzymatically broken down into shorter chains, ultimately yielding maltose and dextrose. It is plant-based and has a very neutral taste.
Malto 6 is the most neutral, Malto 19 the sweetest.
Maltodextrin is always gluten-free, even if it comes from wheat.
For higher doses up to about 90 to 100 g per hour, a mixture of maltodextrin and fructose in a ratio of 2 to 1 is recommended.

From today's perspective, even higher dosages make no sense in terms of tolerability and performance over long distances. This may be different in professional road cycling, where extremely high energy expenditures per unit of time are common. For amateur cycling marathons, Max recommends not exceeding approximately 100 grams per hour.

A ratio of 1 to 0.8 can be useful, but is very unlikely to be significantly superior. The higher the fructose content, the sweeter the drink tastes. With increasing duration and heat, the risk of gastrointestinal problems or a sensory aversion to sweetness also increases.

There are countless varieties of carbohydrate powders. If you don't care about the exact ingredients and taste is your priority, you can use almost anything. Sweeteners and flavorings from well-known manufacturers generally have no proven health risks, and if you tolerate them well, there's nothing wrong with using them. Of course, the industry has a sales interest, so it's only of limited use as a source of advice. A quick look at current research shows that mixtures with dosages up to 120 g per hour are essentially designed for professional athletes with extremely high performance levels.

Myths surrounding carbohydrate drinks

"My carbohydrate drink has a special additive that really packs a punch."
Muscles ultimately only utilize glucose as an energy source. We'll disregard ketones, as they are irrelevant for performance in this context. Every carbohydrate, whether from pasta, maltodextrin, table sugar, or chocolate, is broken down in the intestines into glucose, fructose, or galactose before it can enter the bloodstream.

"I have a slow carb drink."
The idea behind this is to release sugar into the bloodstream more slowly and perhaps prevent insulin spikes. However, under stress, complex and simple sugars behave very similarly with regard to insulin release.

Example: You want to consume 10 to 40 grams of carbohydrates per hour during a low-carb session. You put this amount into a 500 to 750-milliliter water bottle, which you drink over the course of an hour. This way, you're already consuming several small doses in sips. Why do you need an additional fiber-based carrier that sits in the intestines and releases slowly? This can make sense if you're not active. During cycling, especially long distances, it's problematic if poorly digestible carbohydrates accumulate in the intestines. The longer and the more carbohydrates accumulate, the greater the blockage and the higher the risk of experiencing the benefits of wearing white cycling shorts.

Summary

Long distances of approximately six hours or more

For relatively low performance compared to the threshold: pure maltodextrin, possibly with flavor from a source that is as natural as possible and has a low fructose content.
For performance just below the sweet spot range: ratio of maltodextrin to fructose 2 to 1.

These two points can be combined in very long races: At the beginning you drive with higher power and a slightly higher carb supply, as the power decreases and you can adjust the supply accordingly.

Long distances with high performance up to and beyond the threshold, classic cycling marathons

Ratio 2 to 1 in one-day races.
A ratio of 1 to 0.8 is used if you know that supplies will be difficult at the end and you want to "stockpile" carbohydrates in advance.
A ratio of 1 to 0.8 in stage races to support recovery between stages.
A ratio of 1 to 0.8 is appropriate if you have a very high threshold of five watts per kilogram or more and use such amounts in training three to four times per week.
A ratio of 1 to 0.8 is recommended if you specifically want to train your gut tolerance. Whether this actually increases absorption is not yet definitively proven, but it is suspected.

This article was written by Max Kinzlbauer , an experienced ultra-cycling coach and Christoph Strasser's coach. You can find out more about his work here.
@mk_training_max

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