Reviewed for accuracy: This article is based on the published nutrition research of Prof. Asker Jeukendrup and the practical protocols used by Alan Murchison (Specialized Factory Racing, British Cycling) as discussed on the Roadman Cycling Podcast. Targets are conservative and performance-oriented; this is not medical advice. Consult a sports dietitian for individual conditions.
A 100-mile sportive does not finish where it starts. The rider on the start line at mile zero — fresh, fed, well-hydrated, talking confidently about pacing — is not the rider at mile 80. Whether those two riders are still in the same physiological state, riding the same effort, eating the same food, is almost entirely a function of nutrition.
Most amateur cyclists who blow up at mile 75 of a sportive are not under-fit. They are under-fuelled. The fitness to finish 100 miles is built across months. The fuelling to finish 100 miles strong is built across the previous 24 hours and the next 6.
This plan is the one used by riders inside NDY coaching at Roadman for events like the Etape, RideLondon, the Gran Fondo NYC, the Wicklow 200 and any 100-mile sportive of comparable demand. The numbers are conservative, the structure is repeatable, and the principles scale up to 200km and down to 60-mile rides.
What 100 miles actually costs
Start with the energy budget. A 75kg rider averaging 220 watts across a rolling 100-mile sportive is doing approximately 1,210 kJ of work per hour. With a typical mechanical efficiency of 23-25 per cent, that translates to roughly 700 kcal of metabolic cost per hour. Across a 5-hour ride that is 3,500 kcal. Across a 6.5-hour ride at lower pace it is closer to 4,500.
The on-bike intake will not match expenditure. The practical ceiling for in-ride carbohydrate intake is around 90g per hour, equivalent to 360 kcal — roughly half of hourly expenditure. The rest of the energy comes from pre-loaded glycogen, body fat metabolism, and the calories you put in before the ride starts.
The point of fuelling on the bike is not to match expenditure. It is to keep blood glucose stable, prevent the deep glycogen depletion that ends races, and keep the central nervous system fed enough that pacing and decision-making do not collapse. The riders who get this right finish strong. The riders who try to ride 100 miles on a banana and a gel finish if they are lucky.
If you want to model your own ride more precisely, the in-ride fuelling calculator takes weight, target hours and intensity and produces an hourly carbohydrate target.
The 36 hours before the ride
The nutrition that determines a 100-mile sportive starts 36 hours before the start, not on the morning of.
Two days out — normal eating, slightly elevated carbohydrate. Roughly 6-8g of carbohydrate per kilogram across the day, with a focus on cooked, well-tolerated foods. Now is not the time for a curry you have never had or a salad with seven vegetables you do not normally eat. Variety is for non-race weeks.
The day before — load. 8-10g/kg of carbohydrate across the day, distributed across breakfast, lunch and dinner. A 75kg rider is hitting 600-750g of carbohydrate. Pasta, rice, potatoes, bread, oats, fruit and sports drinks all count. Lower fibre than usual to reduce gut load on race day. Drink water consistently rather than chugging large volumes — better hydration markers, less sleep disruption.
Dinner the night before — early and predictable. Eat by 7pm if the start is early. Pick a meal you have eaten the night before long training rides. The plate of pasta you have used for 12 weeks is the right plate. The new pre-race meal idea you read about on a forum is not.
Race-morning breakfast — 3-4 hours before the start. 2-4g/kg of carbohydrate, around 20g of protein, low fat, low fibre. For a 75kg rider that is 150-300g of carbohydrate. A typical version: a large bowl of porridge with banana and honey, a glass of orange juice, two scrambled eggs or a Greek yoghurt, and a coffee. Eat it slowly, finish it 3 hours before the start, and let the gut settle.
60-90 minutes before the start. Optional small carb top-up if appetite allows — a banana, dates, a small bar. Sip fluids. No new products.
15-30 minutes before the start. Sip a sports drink or take a gel if you have rehearsed it in training. Otherwise leave it. The body is ready.
This is the protocol Alan Murchison walks through in detail on the podcast — the same protocol he uses with World Tour riders. The discipline is what makes it work. Nothing new on race morning. Everything tested in training.
Hourly fuelling on the bike
Once the gun goes, the fuelling clock starts immediately. Do not wait for hour one to begin eating. Start in the first 30 minutes.
The targets across the ride:
| Phase | Hours | Carb target | Format | |---|---|---|---| | Front half | 0-3 | 80-90g/hr | Drink mix + gels primarily; small banana okay | | Middle | 3-4.5 | 70-80g/hr | Add real food — rice cake, bar, half a sandwich | | Back half | 4.5+ | 60-75g/hr | Real food + drink mix; savoury preferred |
The 2:1 glucose-to-fructose ratio that Asker Jeukendrup's research validated is the foundation here. Glucose and fructose use different intestinal transporters. Combining them allows oxidation rates of up to 90g/hr without the gut distress that pure glucose at those quantities would cause. Most modern sports drinks and gels are formulated in this ratio. Read the label and check.
The practical execution that survives a long ride:
- Two bottles on the bike, one with carbohydrate drink mix and electrolytes (60-80g of carb per bottle), one with water for sipping and rinsing.
- A gel every 30-45 minutes in the first three hours. Set a watch alarm. Do not rely on remembering.
- One real-food item per hour from hour three — a rice cake, half an energy bar, a banana, a small sandwich.
- Refill at every feed station. Do not roll past them assuming you have enough on board. Fluids run out faster than calories.
The instinct most amateur riders have at hour one of a sportive is to eat conservatively because they feel good. That instinct is wrong. The first 90 minutes is when gut function is best, glycogen is being drawn down fastest, and front-loading carbohydrate intake produces measurably better outcomes than reactive eating later. If you are the rider eating gels at hour four because you finally feel hungry, you are already hours behind the curve.
Hydration and electrolytes
A 100-mile sportive in mild conditions costs roughly 500-800ml of sweat per hour. In hot conditions or on a hard ride, that figure can double. Drinking less than 500ml per hour for four-plus hours produces measurable performance loss before any conscious thirst.
The targets:
- Fluid intake: 500-1,000ml per hour, varying with temperature and effort.
- Sodium: roughly 500-1,000mg per litre of fluid for most riders. Heavy sweaters and salty sweaters need the upper end; lighter sweaters in cool conditions need less.
- Other electrolytes: potassium and magnesium contribute, but sodium is the one that matters most for a 5-6 hour ride.
The simplest practical model: one bottle of carb-and-electrolyte drink mix per hour, supplemented with plain water as thirst dictates. If you sweat very heavily, add a sodium-only tab to the second bottle. Do not start the ride dehydrated — pre-ride, drink steadily across the morning rather than gulping a litre at the start line.
Hyponatraemia — too little sodium relative to water — is rare in a single sportive but worth respecting. If you find yourself drinking large volumes of plain water without electrolytes for hours, you are at risk. The fix is straightforward: carry sodium tabs, use them in at least every second bottle, and trust salt over plain water when you have been on the bike longer than four hours.
Real food vs gels
The argument between gels and real food is older than carbohydrate science. The honest answer is that both belong on a 100-mile ride, in different phases.
Liquid carbohydrate and gels are faster, more concentrated, and less demanding of gut function during high-intensity efforts. They are the right choice when the pace is hard, the climb is on, the group is moving. The first three hours of most sportives — when riders are still grouped, the climbs are taken aggressively, and the average power is high — favours liquid and gels.
Real food becomes more important from hour three onwards. Flavour fatigue is real and arrives faster than most cyclists expect. The seventh gel in a row stops working not because of any physiological change but because the sensory system simply refuses. Variety helps. So does savoury. Half a peanut-butter sandwich at mile 70 is a different fuel source psychologically than another fruit-flavoured gel.
Feed stations are the simplest place to get this right. If the feed has bananas, rice cakes, half-sandwiches, salted potatoes — eat them. Stop for 90 seconds, eat properly, top up bottles, and roll on. The riders who skip feed stations to save time usually pay for it twice over later.
Alan Murchison's recommendation for a sportive — and the one we use inside the coaching programme — is to plan two real-food checkpoints around miles 50 and 75 and treat them as compulsory rather than optional. The 90-second stop is investment, not delay.
The recovery window
The ride does not end at the line. The recovery window — roughly 30 minutes after finishing — is the highest-leverage nutrition window of the day, and the one most cyclists waste because they are tired, busy, and want a shower.
Inside 30 minutes:
- 1.0-1.2g of carbohydrate per kilogram (75-90g for a 75kg rider)
- 25-35g of protein
- 500-1,000ml of fluid with electrolytes
Format is open. A rice bowl with chicken works. A smoothie with milk, banana, oats and a protein scoop works. A recovery shake works. A sandwich and a pint of milk works. What does not work is "I will eat properly when I get home in an hour." That hour is the hour you needed.
A proper meal should follow within two hours of finishing — a real lunch or dinner at the higher end of carbohydrate and protein targets. Hydration continues for the rest of the day. Most cyclists finishing a 100-mile sportive are still measurably under-hydrated 24 hours later.
The mistakes that end 100-mile rides
Three patterns account for most sportive failures.
Under-fuelling in the front half. "I felt good so I didn't eat much." This is the single most expensive habit in sportive nutrition. The damage is done at hour one and the consequences arrive at hour four.
Trying new products on race day. A new gel, a new bar, a new drink mix, a different breakfast — any of these introduced on the morning of the ride is a coin flip. Most cyclists who report a "race-day stomach" are reporting an untrained stomach.
Skipping feed stations to save time. Two minutes saved at three feed stations is not worth the slow collapse from hour 70 onwards. Stop. Eat. Drink. Roll on.
The corrective is not complicated. Plan the day before. Plan the morning. Plan the hourly fuelling. Use the fuelling calculator to set the carb target. Test the actual products in long training rides for at least four weeks before the event. Stop at every feed station. Eat the food. Finish strong.
If you want a complete event preparation programme — fuelling included — the 12-week sportive plan is the standard build, and the broader sportive preparation guide covers training and pacing alongside the nutrition. NDY coaching at Roadman wraps the same framework around your event, your weight and your gut tolerance — the application is where the conversation starts. The principles do not change. The execution does.
Got a specific question — what to do about a known sensitive stomach, how to handle a hot start, whether to pre-load caffeine? Ask Roadman for an answer drawn from the actual conversations with Alan Murchison, Asker Jeukendrup, and the rest of the nutrition guests on the podcast.