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10 TIPS I WISH I KNEW AS A BEGINNER CYCLIST | JOSS ROSS

with Joss Ross

32:37·30 October 2023

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Making mistakes is part of cycling, but learning from others' can save you years of frustration. Anthony and Josh Ross from CyclingNews break down 10 things they wish they'd known as beginner cyclists—from nutrition and training zones to pacing strategy and why recovery matters just as much as the work itself.

Key Takeaways

You can't overeat during a ride—fuel aggressively with a mix of solids and liquids (rice cakes, gels, carbs in bottles) to avoid bonking and keep riding strong for hours.
Stop riding in zone 3 all the time; spend time in easy zones (1-2) and hard zones (4-5) to unlock different physiological adaptations instead of narrow benefits.
A power meter is the single best investment for going faster—it gives you immediate feedback on effort and pacing, and they're now affordable for any cyclist.
Know your starting point and your goal, then use training data to plot a realistic path between them—impossible journeys lead to burnout and poor decision-making.
Ride your own pace on distance goals rather than chasing faster riders; staying in the red compromises nutrition, hydration, and safety decisions.
Recovery isn't just for pros—sleep, stretching, and rest days are where fitness gains are realized, and listening to your body beats pushing through constant fatigue.

Expert Quotes

"I haven't known anyone ever that's gained weight by eating too much during a ride—it's pretty much impossible."

"The best advice he could ever give to somebody is watch the good lads...they have it nailed and it's so nuanced."

"Hard training doesn't make you faster; hard training gives you the potential to be faster and that potential is realized once you recover properly."

KEY QUOTES

“I haven't known anyone ever that's gained weight by eating too much during a ride. Yeah absolutely. It's pretty much impossible.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host

“If you want to be fast on a bike forget about the frames or the Wheels if you want to be fast on a bike a power meter is the best investment you can make.”
Joss Ross — Cycling tech writer at CyclingNews

“I did some metabolic testing recently with a company called Instinct and what it came down to for me is if I ride at 165 watts and eat 400 calories an hour I should be able to basically ride forever. But eating 400 calories an hour that is really hard.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT2 SECTIONS

Fueling Mistakes and Intro

Both of us in our cycling Journeys have made some pretty catastrophic mistakes but we've learned a fair deal of stuff along the way 10 Things I wish I knew when I started all right so my first one is it's really about the the times that I have failed I haven't known anyone ever that's gained weight by eating too much during a ride absolutely yeah it's pretty much impossible I took me years to figure out that there's a better way to do this yeah I I think part of that is just like we're not special and we're not going to reinvent the wheel and like just stop pretending just someone has figured it out somebody's really good just follow a path hey everybody and welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Anthony I'm a former lawyer turn cyclist turn podcast host who's based in Ireland my goal with this channel is to introduce you to the people and to the ideas to help you optimize your health your happiness and your longevity now I know we've all heard the saying to air is human right well let me tell you when it comes to cycling both amateurs and pros make mistakes mistakes that cost you not just your time but they compromise your motivation and they undermine your health now imagine if you could avoid these pitfalls from the get-go imagine setting off on your cycling Journey armed to wisdom gleaned from years of collective experience that's why I've invited a special guest today Josh Ross from cycling news Josh is Tech genius when it comes to alling cycling he's ridden from the wet terrains of the Pacific Northwest to the Arid desert Landscapes and together today we're going to share 10 things we wish we knew when we started cycling but hang on one second this isn't just going to be a tech video Josh and I will be diving into our own personal cycling archives to reveal the mistakes sometimes embarrassing that we've made over the past decade trust me you'll want to learn from our mistakes rather than making them for yourself now before I jump into the show I do have one small favor to ask please take a second to subscribe to this channel as still around 90% of the viewers aren't subscribed and the bigger this channel gets the bigger the guests I can attract this is The Rance cycling podcast and now my dear friends it's Mr Josh Ross Josh welcome back to the roban CCL podcast yeah I'm excited to be here it was a lot of fun last time it's great to be back uh we had this concept we were talking about of our both of us in our cycling Journeys have made some pretty catastrophic mistakes but we've learned a fair deal of stuff along the way so I had this idea of transporting ourselves back to the very beginning with the knowledge that we've gained along the way because I know there's a listener tuning in right now that's at the very start of the journey that would benefit a lot from our learnings along the way so we want to create a little podcast on 10 Things I wish I knew when I started and we're going to sort of do it in a format where Josh is going to give one of his learnings on going to give one of my learnings and we can both kind of rib on each others maybe we agree maybe we don't disagree and we'll see how it works Josh since you are the guest I think it would be only polite for me to let you go first oh I appreciate it all right so my first one is it's really about the the times that I have failed because I'm I do long rides like that's my thing long endurance stuff um 100 200 300 miles um and the first one is when you feel like you can't keep going you need to eat and really what this is about it's not a bigger thing about nutrition necessarily it's just I have failed things where I have stopped I have felt like I wasn't trained enough I couldn't keep going and like I just didn't want to do this and you know I'll be back next year to train with better training and really all I had to do was eat like a lot I love that one because it also thinking about when I was getting started the power of stop at the E yeah we can jump into all the grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight per hour that the world tour guys are using now but very simply when you're getting started stopping to eat has a beautiful way of segmenting a ride it's like when you're reading a long story and you get to the end of a paragraph there's almost like a ah exhalation now I can regroup and go again that's why I used to love stopping to just eat it's that little bit of time to pause and reflect yeah actually that's what I um that's what I do on my long rides get to the top of the climb take a minute enjoy the view eat some food um but then there are have also found that there are times where like now I know there's this feeling um where I just need to eat like a lot like you know 400 500 600 calories like I just I got to inhale some food um and I I would have finished many things that I didn't if I had just known that well a great tip I heard from a friend who inherited from another friend of his is World Tour and that's how a lot of this stuff has passed along Whispers And Whispers And Whispers where if you get home from a ride and your first thought is man I need to eat you've under fueled on that ride you almost can't overeat on a ride during a Ride Like the logistics of overeating on a ride are very difficult I've known many people that have gained weight off the bike by eating too much I haven't known anyone ever that's gained weight by eating too much juring a riot yeah absolutely um yeah it's pretty much impossible I did some uh metabolic testing recently with a company called Instinct and um I had Sebastian Weber on the podcast really interesting guy nice yeah is I love their their system is really cool um but what it came down to for me is if I ride at 165 watts and eat 400 calories an hour I should be able to basically ride forever um but eating 400 calories an hour that is really hard it's really hard and a great tip for that for people is it's dividing your calories up between solids and liquids so having some carbohydrates in your bottle but I also like to especially on em rasing subdivide my solids into stuff that's more homemade like rice cakes homemade flap Jacks and more race specific stuff like I've been using the V Forte products they seem to sit with my stomach quite well but you know eating uh 4 day bars and gels as palatable as I find them eating them for the entire ride never sat well for me so having that mix of something like a rice cake from Hannah Grant's cookbook or one of these worldour shifts that always just seemed to work well or even a baguette you know I'm exposing my time racing in France there where you literally get sandwiches going out training off the DS but it works yeah you have to just change things all the time you should be eating all kinds of some salty some sweet some like just different all the time as if you you try to do like I do these long rides if I try to eat for like 12 hours just one thing it'll just after a while you just like I will you cannot nothing through these lips and then it just starts a downward spile okay my turn the one I wish I knew at the very start I call it now headless chicken riding when I started out cycling I didn't know anything about different training zones you know now I know there's zones one two 3 four five and there's associ associated physiological adaptation with spending time in each of these zones like if I want to increase my ability to oxidase fast if I want to improve my mitochondrial density I'll spend time runting in zone one and zone two I knew none of that so headless chicken I was going out the door with no plan no idea what right I was doing and I was essentially just trying to maximize my available training time and what that looked like for me was default in into always riding kind of hard so if I had an hour available or 90 minutes available I went out and it was always tight chain it was always nearly like a TT for the available amount of time I had it was four hours on a Sunday or it was a n on a Tuesday it was just hard and what ended up happening to me there was I defaulted into zone three not that there's anything inherently wrong with riding in zone Tre but I only ever got the narrow benefit of those physiological adaptations associated with zone three and I never got any of the benefits of riding in zone one zone two zone four zone five zone six and it took me years to figure out that there's a better way to do this well I mean the thing at the the Trap of Zone 3 that new cyclists need to know and don't know is that it feels like you're riding really hard but you're actually not riding that hard so if you're just like oh I'm going to go out and do a hard ride you'll default to zone three but really you need to be in zone four five six if you're going to ride hard and you can't do that all the time so yeah I mean that's a really good and that's actually that was on my list too which is just the idea that you shouldn't you shouldn't be writing hard all the time and I have since learned that you can you can actually be a really strong cyclist never writing hard not that you necessarily want to do that but like you could yeah the problem with writing medium hard all the time is it's so fatiguing CU you're never riding easy that when it does come time to ride really really hard you don't have that freshness and I talked to Joe fril recently on the podcast and he's 80 and he looks phenomenal if you know if you don't know what I'm talking about it's the utter of cyclus training Bible yes he looks phenomenal at 80 years of age and he was saying to me the secret to it is two super hard workouts per week what super hard means super hard like your V2 Max efforts were described to me by an Old Coach Michael bar is go until you see Jesus and I say this all the time go till you see Jesus but you can't do that if you're riding around like 90% of your time in on tree you're too fatigued yeah absolutely I was actually just talking to a friend about how he said he said I I think I test better than I can actually ride and he had this idea that like uh you know he was somehow breaking his FTP test and I was like no it just threshold is really hard people don't think that like people have no concept that threshold is really hard and if you don't if you just try to do whatever without that sort of structure yeah you won't really be in threshold you'll be in zone three and you'll just be like kind of hard not hard you know what we're so conditioned to watching the pros on TV and hearing this like oh and they done narrow a threshold on this climb or they Rod the last climb at 7.6 watts per kilogram we don't realize that these people aren't human these are closer to robots than they are humans they're like cyborgs from another planet like most of us have conflicting demands on our time and that means conflicting demands on our energy and multiple ways that our cortisol is getting driven up so for us to go out and do 225 minutes after work at threshold that's a hard workout yeah it is really really hard H I forgot is it me yet next or you H it is me next okay so I am the tech guy and truthfully this is the only one that's super tech FOC but um I was working on our power meter buyers guide recently and um this is a longstanding thing that I have told people if you want to be fast on a bike forget about the frames or the um Wheels if you want to be fast on a bike a power meter is the best investment you can make and it's not like it's not like magic like it like really nice Wheels you put them on you feel faster you look faster the bike is great but when you stare at your power number all the time that is where like everything changes you start to have this even if you don't do any specific training you start to have this understanding of how you can ride and how hard you're writing and then when you just sort of read about whatever like this is like we were talking about when you just sort of read about threshold versus zone two versus whatever you then once you have those numbers all the time you're like oh you're like you get it in a way that you can't and even if you do nothing but throw a power meter on your bike and put the number on your computer it will make you faster and there so affordable now like my first parameter I'm not sure if I shared this story with you last time you're on the podcast my first parameter was 2006 2006 2005 it cost me €2,500 for an SRM I was a student who didn't have €2,500 so I went to the bank and I told them I needed a loan for a car to go in and out to University and I bought a SRM power meter one of the wired ones that were I I still loved it and I'm still fighting Bluetooth thinking hoping they'll go back to wires because if it didn't work he just wiggle it it was cool but it was amazing a totally revolutionized cycling for me and now I look not sure what are you what are you recommending in terms of buyer guys in parameters but all of the brand seem so affordable and so good now you know the the thing with the buyers guides is there's different things for different people um if you the one that I usually tend to tell people it like you know you just want to get started you just want something that works and is inexpensive than the 4i is a good way to go um the one that I that I really have uh that I really like recently is the rotor um they had the two in power SL it's about $1,000 and it's a beautiful crank to start with and then it has true Left Right power so you can see which leg is doing which and um you don't necessarily need that but uh it's fairly affordable for what it is and I like that one and the the beauty of it now is you can pair a daddy get from that parameter with an app like the Breakaway app which is using artificial intelligence to coach people and it's like I don't know it's $2.99 a month or something like that and you have a coach back when I got my SRM at first it was like you know I was like trying to decode the like the Vinci Code I was trying to get Hunter Allen's and kogan's handbook and reading through it after school and trying to piece this stuff together myself with Pope met articles and knowledge was very closely protected now it's been totally democratized since then so you can take that par meter and you can actually train like the best riders in the world instantly yeah yeah the power meter you can dive into it as deep as you want to dive into it um but yeah I I mean I just it just doesn't matter what Wheels you have you get yourself a power meter if you want to be fast no there's nothing wrong with good wheels too let me take a second to talk about today's show sponsor because of something really exciting to share with you it's a game changer that's been making a noticeable difference in my performance recently especially when it comes to sleep allow me to introduce you to pillar while we're all familiar with the importance of electrolytes and carbohydrates in 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Your Cycling GPS: Know Your Goals

Shop and use the code roadman on your local website for 15% off your first order or for us listeners if you head over to deed.com pillar and use code roadman for the same 15% off your order the details of this offer are in the description below now back to the show that actually segue is nice to my next point I call it the GPS and right now I explain it to people as if you get into a car and you're using uh GPS or one of the old school garment on your dashboard it needs to know a couple of different data points to understand the journey it needs to know what your starting point is it needs to know where you're going and from those two it can plot the smoothest path between a and b as cyclist as a cyclist I never knew that and if I could Journey back and say to myself okay know your starting point have your power profile test where you're understanding your 10sec power your 30 second per 5 minute per 20 minute per and then know where you're going like what's your goal this season what's your goal over the next two years five years because once I know where I am and where I'm going now I can start to use amazing tools like parameters to plot the smoothest Journey between point a and point B that navigates around my lifestyle and very soon you start to realize okay this is an impossible Journey like if I get into my car in London and I want to drive to New York and I only I say I only have 10 errors available my GPS is just going to go well you have to cross Seas it's this is an impossible journey to make in this time frame much the same people sit out and they don't understand this they have a goal of maybe rid in a professional stage R so they have a goal of getting a professional contract and their starting point is quite low that's their goal and the amount of time they're allocating each week to this journey is like five hours a week you can say off the bat this is an impossible Journey like set a more realistic goal and they're going to get a lot more enjoyment out of the sport by chasing something that's realistic yeah I mean there a it's a it's a good reminder that in my discussion about the power meters that I sometimes forget to sort of wrap around the back of what are the tools actually doing which is yeah you you you have this idea of what you want to do with it um it tend to be fairly driven uh and I think that many of you know many cyclists are uh so yeah just understand you know what are you going to do what is possible what is yeah yeah all right let's see what I got so my next one is if you have a distance goal ride your own pace um and this is really I can remember the the thing about eating and this one really in many ways came from a raw F festive 500 ride um that I did where it was 500k in one shot in the winter in the cold and I show you're supposed to do it with a teammate my teammate the night before said you know what can't do this so I was like okay I showed up the morning of the ride and I paired up with some guys and they were way too fast for me and I chased them for 200 miles and didn't eat and and I failed that ride because I didn't ride my own pace also because I didn't eat but like I can do 500k I just need to just do my thing just like trust in yourself and just do your thing it's toxic for so many reasons because when you're on the edge like that everything is slightly compromised your decision making is compromised so you're more likely to slide out on a corner misjudge at descent also when you're in the red your nutrition and hydration just goes to Absolute pieces and when you're not staying on top of your nutrition strategy then it becomes a double self-fulfilling prophecy you're already in the red so you're not eating and now you're more in the red because you're not eating so it's just a bad news sandwich yeah and so now when I if I'm gonna do I did something in check this summer and I started the ride with three guys and they were all strong Riders and they were only going to do a couple hours they were just like seeing me off and I was going to do um you know from from Prague to Vienna and I just knew like as we're going up the climbs don't chase them there's absolutely no reason just ride my Pace I look at my power meter I know where I'm supposed to be I just do my thing it was no problem it also flips the other way as well that you are better off I find riding your pace rather than sitting back and waiting for people who are slower than you because they can often end up abandoning rids like that you can end up getting frustrated maybe again you don't stay on top of your nutrition strategy because it's too easy now and you don't feel like you need to eat both them are maybe it's not as toxic as trying to stick with fast people but I've had rides R where I've held back too much as well yeah I mean that's a good point I I will be honest I don't find myself in that position that often but it's usually when I'm the fast person it's on a short ride it's the it's the long ones where I'm like because I'm better at pacing now I have learned like you just got to do this thing I've got one uh is probably my favorite one out of all of uh mind that I wish I knew at the very start and it comes from a really aspirational character on my local group ride he's a legend here in our cycling called Sean L he's 84 years old and he's still on our group ride every Saturday and he's able to he still Crush most catry males around the world at 84 years of age if you look at him from the waist down he looks 16 his legs are tan veined but he said to me one day the best advice he could ever give to somebody is watch the good lads and I just sat with and I was like I don't really understand it and as the longer I sat with it and tried to unpack it watch the good lads is so powerful because if you're out on a ride when are the good lads putting their ring capes on when are they taking them off they're taking them off in they don't take their hands off the bars in dangerous crosswind sections they take their hands off the bars when they go past the hedge row they take the range jacket on and off very fast in the most sheltered areas they drink at the appropriate times they get out of the saddle without pushing their bike back they Corner smooth they just they have it nailed and it's so nuanced and the more you watch the good lads the more you can learn when I went to France racing we had a a term that just banged into anyone who's been in France racing it's ler and ler in English is no real direct translation but it's kind of the apprenticeship or the craft to becoming a cyclist and I can't think of anything more Central to the craft of becoming a cyclist than this learning almost by osmosis from the good lads yeah that's I mean yeah I I think part of that is just like where not special and we're not going to reinvent the wheel and like just stop pretending just someone has figured it out somebody's really good just follow a path yeah like you can iterate upon their learnings but like you said it's just don't try and figure it out from scratch on your own excuse the short Interruption but I wanted to find a way to bring our little Community together to problem solve to share training advice and to support each other and what can sometimes be a lonely road as we all Chase health happiness and long vity through cycling to facilitate this I've set up a Discord Channel I'm going to leave a link in the description down below it doesn't cost anything to join it's totally free plus I'm also picking out random winners for spot prizes inside the Discord Channel if you'd like to join it click on the link down below all right let's see here I got okay so this is sort of a funny phrasing but a long ride is just like a short ride but longer and you're going to have to so I actually still sometimes do this um where I go oh I'm going to do this big ride so I need like and I get nervous about it and I'm like oh I'm GNA need this and I'm going to need this and like there's all this stuff and it's like no what I go out and I do like let's say two three hour ride around my house all the time and things certain C things unfold a certain way like my bike doesn't suddenly explode and I need like extra pieces and like it just when I go out for 20 hours it it's essentially the same like there's I have never had some crazy thing happen on some long ride that was somehow different from home and more and more I am learning that like it's just the same yes you're on your bike longer but like everything's going to be okay you've practiced like just take a deep breath so I see this come up um for new cyclists more they're like they're going to do their first century ride right and there is this big thing and they think oh my God like I need to do this so all this stuff somehow different and it's like no you you have done your training you know what it's like it will be the same yes it'll be a little longer but like it's the same and technology is such a safety net now as well like I remember when I lived in Toronto I used to do Long training rides but I didn't have a international data plan on my mobile phone so if I was heading like four hours I was living at kind of edge of Toronto on the Northern Edge and I used to ride n and I had a section I called it the Kill Zone like if anything happen to me up here I'm so far from being able to like t a lift call into somebody's house to ask to make a phone call I'm just screwed so the Kill Zone was the place I was like always breed a s relief when I got through the Kill Zone it's not actually called The Kill Zone it was just my my term for it but right now it's like you know just pick up your phone and it hit an Uber and you're back home yeah so easy like you'll figure it out that I mean that's another piece of this is that whatever crazy thing you think might happen like first of all it probably won't but if something does happen you will figure it out you'll figure it out like it will not be you're not putting your life in danger um I guess maybe there's somebody that is but like you're doing a century right there's you'll figure it out it's fine and another one I made this mistake for so long it's recovery isn't just for pros we're so conditioned to looking at professional riders in their space boots that inflate and are filled with chilly water that we think oh you know they need it cuz they're just finishing the tour to France sort of well the stage that's not for me and for years I used to look at my schedule and I'd say okay so I have college classes all day until maybe 7 p.m and I could come home and I could squeeze in like a two-hour training ride so I'd ride from like 7:30 to 9:30 come home have dinner go to bed I would have been much better riding for 60 minutes and coming home and having some recovery stretching doing some foam rolling getting a proper recovery drink but I never prioritized any of these things and it was only when I got a chance to write with some better writers that I got this phrase engraved into my head where they said her training doesn't make you faster her training gives you the potential to be faster and that potential is realized once you recover properly and I had this light bulb moment go ah like those days I was coming in at like 9:30 at night on my hands and knees and literally falling into bed and thinking I was training hard that that level of fatigue meant I was training harder than everyone else it didn't that level of fatigue just meant I was ruined my body was close to shutting down that's not a normal level of fatigue so I wish I knew that I mean that is uh very much about our earlier discussion about like understanding when to ride hard and when to not ride hard and like that whole idea of like you just can't be everything all the time you can't go 1010 you need to just like I'll back and sometimes that means not even being on the bike and there's some really cool recovery gadgets now for like optimizing recovery like I'm think I mentioned the kind of space boots but I've played around with a power dot as well like those electromagnetic stimulators there's massage guns or anything else that you've come across you know I for me the best recovery is just to have this schedule uh and then listen to my body where where I go okay so I ride five days a week I take two different days off and those are like protected recovery I do not ride on those days then midweek if I'm just like feeling like just terrible like no just it's okay you know I'm not going to lose any Fitness in fact I'll probably gain it just like take the time and so in terms of gadgets and stuff I don't have a lot of recommendations it's more about for me it's more about just listening to my body I also love the see that's like it's free I live right beside the sea and it's a very powerful recovery to for me on a recovery day I'll of do 60 minutes and even on a cold wet day finishing the session by jumping into the sea I it just feels like we are meant to be in the sea and that's cool that's that's a cool I don't actually live that close to the ocean these days but um that is a cool um idea all right you're all right so this is the last one and in many ways we already talked about this in fact I think I just said it a second ago but not every ride has to be or should be Max intensity um and that's you know we've talked about this a lot but it's just just right just like I I guess what I what I would say to to put a different spin on it for this this you know bullet point is that um make sure you have fun because if you're just like out there just miserable just like every ride as hard as you can it's like is that really what you want to do on a bike maybe just like go out chat with your have fun just to M ride sometimes you know we couldn't have queued that one up more perfectly for my final one because this is something that I wish somebody had to told me when I first started having aspirations of chasing professional contracts and traveling abroad winning races my bike I got so caught up in the numbers in the metrics in being you know quote unquote the best that I forgot why I started cycling in the first place that cycling isn't this imaginary destination that when you get there everything is going to be perfect and you're going to suddenly find happiness cycling it's about the journey it's about the dayto day it's about the wind in your face the sun on your back it's about the trails the road the adventures it's about that sense of fatigue and accomplishment you feel after a long ride or the camaraderie when you're riding with friends or that deep connection even you get with nature when you go on a solos spin through these Scenic and epic Landscapes and it's so easy to get wrapped up in the competitive aspects whether that's beating your own straa time or chasing a pro contract but for me cycling has been much more rewarding since I took a moment to appreciate why I started and to appreciate the world around me and even the subtle changes in seasons and animals and I wish I knew that at the very start yeah I mean I think that's a really good one and that is really about just enjoying yourself I mean yeah I get to ride in such beautiful amazing places and there were times in my life when all I did was stare at my bike computer and now I'm like no I'm I'm going to look around Josh I love this conversation I think it's going to be valuable for so many people starting out their journey in cycling I'm sure myself and yourself are going to make a lot more mistakes as we continue on air cycling road so we'll get you back to recap more of that at some time down the road Josh thank you very much for your time yeah it a pleasure thanks so much if you enjoyed that episode please press here for another conversation that I know you're going to love and don't forget to subscribe to the channel and share it with your clubmates

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why do I bonk on long rides even when I feel fit enough?+

Joss Ross from CyclingNews argues that most ride failures blamed on poor fitness are actually caused by under-fuelling. Your body cannot sustain output without a steady supply of carbohydrates, and arriving home hungry is a clear sign you were in a caloric deficit during the ride itself.

How much should I eat on a long bike ride?+

Ross states it is nearly impossible to overeat on the bike during sustained effort. Beginners consistently eat too little, so err on the side of more food rather than less. Aim to fuel consistently throughout the ride rather than waiting until you feel hungry.

Should beginner cyclists use solid food or energy drinks on rides?+

Both have a place, and varying between solid and liquid fuel sources is recommended. Solid food suits longer, steadier efforts, while liquid carbohydrates are easier to consume at higher intensities. Ross advises beginners to follow established fuelling protocols rather than improvising their own approach.

What training zones should a beginner cyclist focus on?+

Structured training zones give your rides clear purpose and prevent the common mistake of riding every session at the same moderate effort. Ross recommends learning the zones early and following established programmes rather than guessing at intensity, as this builds fitness more efficiently and reduces the risk of under-recovery.

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Episode#2372

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5 CRUCIAL WINTER TRAINING TIPS I WISH I KNEW SOONER | RIDER SUPPORT

Welcome to this week’s episode of Rider Support where we dive into the crucial steps every cyclist should take before embarking on their winter training journey. Whether you're gearing up to maintain your form or planning to build strength during the colder months, this episode is packed with...

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Episode#2359

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10 YEARS OF CYCLING KNOWLEDGE IN UNDER 5 MINUTES

In this episode, Anthony reflects on over 10 years of cycling knowledge, sharing the most valuable lessons he’s learned from riding and speaking to experts. From changes in his views on nutrition and training to insights gained through real-life experience, Anthony distills a decade of cycling into...

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Key Takeaways

You can't overeat during a ride—fuel aggressively with a mix of solids and liquids (rice cakes, gels, carbs in bottles) to avoid bonking and keep riding strong for hours.

Stop riding in zone 3 all the time; spend time in easy zones (1-2) and hard zones (4-5) to unlock different physiological adaptations instead of narrow benefits.

A power meter is the single best investment for going faster—it gives you immediate feedback on effort and pacing, and they're now affordable for any cyclist.

Know your starting point and your goal, then use training data to plot a realistic path between them—impossible journeys lead to burnout and poor decision-making.

Ride your own pace on distance goals rather than chasing faster riders; staying in the red compromises nutrition, hydration, and safety decisions.

Recovery isn't just for pros—sleep, stretching, and rest days are where fitness gains are realized, and listening to your body beats pushing through constant fatigue.

Expert Quotes

"I haven't known anyone ever that's gained weight by eating too much during a ride—it's pretty much impossible."

"The best advice he could ever give to somebody is watch the good lads...they have it nailed and it's so nuanced."

"Hard training doesn't make you faster; hard training gives you the potential to be faster and that potential is realized once you recover properly."

KEY QUOTES

“I haven't known anyone ever that's gained weight by eating too much during a ride. Yeah absolutely. It's pretty much impossible.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host

“If you want to be fast on a bike forget about the frames or the Wheels if you want to be fast on a bike a power meter is the best investment you can make.”
Joss Ross — Cycling tech writer at CyclingNews

“I did some metabolic testing recently with a company called Instinct and what it came down to for me is if I ride at 165 watts and eat 400 calories an hour I should be able to basically ride forever. But eating 400 calories an hour that is really hard.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why do I bonk on long rides even when I feel fit enough?+

How much should I eat on a long bike ride?+

Should beginner cyclists use solid food or energy drinks on rides?+

What training zones should a beginner cyclist focus on?+

10 TIPS I WISH I KNEW AS A BEGINNER CYCLIST | JOSS ROSS

Key Takeaways

Expert Quotes

KEY QUOTES

Fueling Mistakes and Intro

Your Cycling GPS: Know Your Goals

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

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10 TIPS I WISH I KNEW AS A BEGINNER CYCLIST | JOSS ROSS

Key Takeaways

Expert Quotes

KEY QUOTES

Fueling Mistakes and Intro

Your Cycling GPS: Know Your Goals

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

RELATED EPISODES

5 CRUCIAL WINTER TRAINING TIPS I WISH I KNEW SOONER | RIDER SUPPORT

DO BRITISH CYCLING AIM TO WIN AT ALL COSTS? - TOXIC SPORTS CULTURE

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10 TIPS I WISH I KNEW AS A BEGINNER CYCLIST | JOSS ROSS

Key Takeaways

Expert Quotes

KEY QUOTES

1.Fueling Mistakes and Intro

2.Your Cycling GPS: Know Your Goals

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

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10 TIPS I WISH I KNEW AS A BEGINNER CYCLIST | JOSS ROSS

Key Takeaways

Expert Quotes

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1.Fueling Mistakes and Intro

2.Your Cycling GPS: Know Your Goals

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READ THE GUIDE

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Fueling Mistakes and Intro

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Fueling Mistakes and Intro

Your Cycling GPS: Know Your Goals