THE SHORT ANSWER
Sam Impey, sports nutritionist, world tour performance researcher, has appeared on the Roadman Cycling Podcast 2 times. Here's where Impey lands on in-ride fuelling. The positions below are drawn from those conversations, quoted directly.
WHO IS SAM IMPEY?
Dr Sam Impey is one of the WorldTour-facing performance nutritionists most relevant to the modern fuelling conversation — working with Tom Pidcock and Filippo Ganna at the elite level, advising Exo Analytics, and publishing on carbohydrate metabolism. His usefulness for the Roadman audience is that he is the rare practitioner willing to publicly say: stop copying the 120g/hr pro number — that protocol is built for 8–12 g/kg/day workloads across 20–30 hours of training and is the wrong starting point for amateurs.
IMPEY ON IN-RIDE FUELLING
Impey’s key positions on in-ride fuelling.
- Stop copying the 120g/hr pro number — amateur fuelling should scale to total energy output and gut-training history, not to what Pidcock or Ganna eat at the Tour.
- Above FTP, glycogen burn becomes exponential — the fuelling target jumps not because of intensity per se but because of glycogen depletion rate at and above threshold.
IN IMPEY’S OWN WORDS
Verbatim from Sam Impey’s appearances on the podcast.
“Your training quality should always be maintained. That that's really what we're we're trying to we're trying to drive training qualities is the most important thing here because you do that that will your body will adapt you know do it well fueled your body will adapt and also change the way the the priorities in which it holds mass it'll change your system mass so because you fuel the training sessions well your body will inherently go well I don't I don't need as much fat reserves because each day each session is being fueled well.”
“Carbs which are stored in your body as glycogen, they need three grams of water to store one gram of carbohydrate. So, it's a heavy fuel, but also what we can do is again because we're going fill the tank, empty the tank, fill the tank, empty the tank, that tank gets gets slightly bigger as you get fitter.”
“by changing how much you're fueling during the session, that will change how much energetic stress is put on the muscle. You're changing the cost of the work almost. Exactly. Yeah. You're changing like the you're changing the flux through the fuel tank if you think about it.”
HEAR IT ON THE PODCAST
Episodes where Sam Impey covers in-ride fuelling and related ground.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
What does Sam Impey say about in-ride fuelling?
Sam Impey, sports nutritionist, world tour performance researcher, has appeared on the Roadman Cycling Podcast 2 times. Here's where Impey lands on in-ride fuelling. The positions below are drawn from those conversations, quoted directly.
What is Impey's main point on in-ride fuelling?
Stop copying the 120g/hr pro number — amateur fuelling should scale to total energy output and gut-training history, not to what Pidcock or Ganna eat at the Tour.
Which Roadman Cycling Podcast episodes cover Sam Impey on in-ride fuelling?
Impey discusses in-ride fuelling in these episodes: "Eating for Race Weight: Cycling Nutrition with a World Tour Coach", "Why Pros' 120g Carb Rule Fails Amateurs | Roadman Cycling".
MORE FROM IMPEY
EXPLORE THE TOPIC
Cycling Nutrition— The Complete Guide →OTHER EXPERTS ON IN-RIDE FUELLING