Ben Healey consumed 140 grams of carbohydrates per hour to win Stage 6 of the 2025 Tour de France—a fueling strategy that sounds insane but represents the new standard in World Tour racing. This episode breaks down exactly how Healey used precision nutrition to drop world-class riders, and reveals the critical insight that separates pro-level fueling from amateur mistakes: it's not about copying the numbers, it's about earning them through systematic gut training.
Key Takeaways
- The gut is trainable like your legs and lungs—pros spend months gradually building tolerance from 60g to 140g+ carbs per hour, while amateurs often jump straight to high intakes and get sick
- Match your carb intake to your actual power output, not to what pros consume—riding at 180-190 watts requires far less fuel than Ben Healey's 300+ watt effort, or you'll cause digestive distress
- Start fueling from kilometer zero with a 'drip feed' strategy (sips every 10 minutes, gels every 15 minutes) rather than eating reactively when hungry—by then it's too late
- Most amateur cyclists aren't undertrained, they're underfueled—that wrecked feeling at the end of a long ride is often empty tanks, not lack of fitness
- Track your symptoms and glucose responses in a journal as you gradually increase carb intake; fueling is a skill that requires discipline and deliberate practice, not guesswork
Expert Quotes
"If you're hungry, it's too late to eat. You're fueling to a strategy now. All day fueling to match the effort or as Sam Impy would say, fueling for the work required."
"The gut is just like your legs, your lungs, your heart. It's trainable. Most of us go out the door and we have an objective for that training session. We go and we train our VO2 max, our threshold, our sprint, but never our gut."
"Most of us aren't undertrained. We're underfueled. We finish long rides feeling wrecked, thinking we need more fitness. But often it's not fitness, it's empty tanks."