Nutritioninterview

RACE WEIGHT & CARB TIMING MISTAKES | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

with Dr Tim Podlogar — Nutrition consultant to Tudor Pro Cycling (former Bora-Hansgrohe nutritionist); research fellow at the University of Birmingham and assistant professor at the University of Primorska; R&D lead for NDurance

44:06·13 February 2026

LISTEN NOW

Listen on

Spotify Apple Podcasts YouTube

DR TIM PODLOGAR

Nutrition consultant to Tudor Pro Cycling (former Bora-Hansgrohe nutritionist); research fellow at the University of Birmingham and assistant professor at the University of Primorska; R&D lead for NDurance

PROFILE →

Dr Tim Podlogar is one of the most influential cycling nutritionists working today — performance nutrition consultant to Tudor Pro Cycling, formerly with Bora-Hansgrohe, research fellow at the University of Birmingham and assistant professor at the University of Primorska. He sits at the intersection of laboratory science and pro-team practice, and is the R&D lead behind the NDurance / Hexis fuelling product line. His work has shaped the modern consensus around carbohydrate periodisation and gut training.

Verified profiles

researchgate.net

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Dr Tim Podlogar (Tudor Pro Cycling nutritionist): 90g carbs/hour is the ceiling for 95% of amateur cyclists. Going higher doesn't make you faster — it just leaves you short of breath and gut-distressed.
Jonas Abrahamsen at 58kg was a poor pro with no wins. At 78-79kg he's winning Tour de France stages. Light isn't always faster — body type and genetics matter more than the number on the scale.
Genetic frame check: look at your parents. If they have natural muscle mass without training, you probably do too. Climbers don't manufacture themselves from non-climber bodies.
Body weight experiments belong in the off-season — December-January-February. Don't try to drop or add 2kg mid-season. Pro riders often regain significant weight off-season then drop it in the run-in to racing.
Creatine is a useful gateway: you'll gain a bit of lean mass and water weight. If your power scales up with the extra weight, that's a signal you could carry more. If it doesn't, you're better at your natural weight.

TOPICS

CHAPTERS

Most amateur cyclists are taking too many carbohydrates per hour. Dr Tim Podlogar, nutrition consultant to Tudor Pro Cycling and PhD researcher behind the NDurance product line, says 90 grams per hour is the ceiling for 95% of amateurs. Going above that doesn't make you faster. It just leaves you short of carbohydrate budget for the rest of the day.

Key Takeaways

The gravel racing trend of 120-150 grams of carbs per hour works for professionals because their total daily energy expenditure is enormous. For an amateur doing a two-hour session at moderate watts, pushing 120 grams on the bike means the rest of your daily carbohydrate budget is gone. Glycogen stores still need to hit 6-7 grams per kilogram to support recovery and the next session. Podlogar's point is simple: you can absorb more than 90 grams, but absorbing it doesn't mean you're using it, and the daily math stops working.

On heat, the number most people miss is a 30% reduction in carbohydrate absorption when your skin temperature climbs toward 36-37°C. That's not just a hot summer day abroad. That's overdressed on a cold climb. Podlar's fix is to front-load carbohydrates before the session rather than trying to hit your on-bike target in conditions where absorption is compromised. The insulin concern you might have heard from Huberman or Attia applies to sedentary people with full glycogen stores. If you're depleting through training daily, the insulin spike after a session is doing exactly what it should be doing: pushing glucose back into the muscle.

Dr. Tim Podlar is a PhD researcher and nutritionist for the Tutor Pro Cycling team, and a consultant who contributed to the development of the Endurance product line. Podlar recommends a maximum of 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour for 95% of amateur cyclists, based on research conducted on non-professional populations. He cites evidence that exceeding this threshold can cause GI distress and reduce total daily carbohydrate availability, which compromises glycogen stores that should reach 6-7 grams per kilogram for adequate recovery. In a study he conducted simulating a 3 to 3.5 hour race followed by a performance test, Podlar found no performance difference between front-loaded, back-loaded, or evenly distributed carbohydrate intake across the session. He notes that heat exposure can reduce carbohydrate absorption by up to 30%, with the key variable being skin temperature approaching core temperature, specifically skin temperatures of 36-37°C eliminating the thermal gradient needed for effective heat dissipation. The 1:0.8 maltodextrin-to-fructose ratio used in the Endurance gel formulation was supported by research available from 2017 onward, predating most consumer gel products that used 2:1 ratios or excluded fructose entirely.

If this changes how you think about fueling, the World Tour Nutritionist episode on weight loss covers how daily carbohydrate targets interact with body composition in more detail. And if you're still working out how to actually hit those targets across a training week, the episode on fasted training gives you the cases where it's worth doing and where it costs you.

Protein Before Bed - Builds Cyclists Muscles Faster (New Study)

CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE

Each tagged with the strength of evidence behind it.

EXPERT
Dr Tim Podlogar's recommended carbohydrate ceiling for amateur cyclists is approximately 90 grams per hour — exceeded only by the top 5% of trained athletes whose gut absorption capacity has been developed through structured fueling progression.
Source: Dr Tim Podlogar, nutrition consultant to Tudor Pro Cycling
ANECDOTE
Jonas Abrahamsen demonstrated structurally improved professional results after a body weight increase from approximately 58kg to 78-79kg — a counterexample to the universal "lighter equals faster" narrative in pro cycling power-to-weight discussion.
Source: Anthony Walsh, citing prior interview with Jonas Abrahamsen
PRO PRACTICE
Body weight experimentation in trained cyclists should be confined to the off-season (approximately December-February) — mid-season weight shifts of 2kg or more risk wasting form and adaptation accumulated across the preceding training block.
Source: Dr Tim Podlogar coaching philosophy
PRO PRACTICE
Creatine supplementation in lean cyclists at conventional doses (5g/day, no loading phase) typically produces minor weight gain via lean mass and water retention — Podlogar uses creatine response as a diagnostic for whether a rider should target a higher body mass.
Source: Dr Tim Podlogar nutrition methodology
OPINION
Genetic body composition tendencies (visible in parental morphology) strongly predict adult athletes' optimum weight for performance — Podlogar argues this is a more reliable indicator than chasing extreme low body weight against natural body type.
Source: Dr Tim Podlogar, on the Roadman Cycling Podcast

RESOURCES MENTIONED

KEY QUOTES

“Most gels were still malt to dextrin only or glucose only. There were no fructose in them and there were a few brands that actually had fructose in them but were 2:1 ratio. But then already at the time this was I'm talking about 2017 2018 it was pretty clear the research was already out there for a long time that perhaps the ratio of 1 to 0.8 is the ratio that should work for most people.”
Dr Tim Podlogar — Nutrition consultant to Tudor Pro Cycling; research fellow at the University of Birmingham; R&D lead for NDurance

“If you just perform well at a low body mass and don't have struggles with eating or keeping that body weight, I think that's probably what you are after. Whereas if you are really struggling to keep the body weight low no matter what they do and they need to starve themselves then they should ask themselves a question: what happens if I eat a little bit more, I'm a bit heavier, but then I will finally be able to do the training sessions that I really struggled with before.”
Dr Tim Podlogar — Nutrition consultant to Tudor Pro Cycling; research fellow at the University of Birmingham; R&D lead for NDurance

“When you go to the extremes what happens is also your energy expenditure outside the bike will go down, the recovery will worsen, and everything just shuts down, the body is in a survival mode. And then it also makes you binge eat perhaps on certain days and it's called a yo-yo effect. It's like well described in the literature.”
Dr Tim Podlogar — Nutrition consultant to Tudor Pro Cycling; research fellow at the University of Birmingham; R&D lead for NDurance

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT9 SECTIONS

Finding Your Ideal Cycling Weight

Do you ever wonder how you find your actual ideal cycling weight? Today I'm joined by tutor pro cycling nutritionist Dr. Tim Podlar. We dive into all things power to weight ratio today and we talk about why chasing the lowest number on the scales may actually not be beneficial. If you've ever wondered what your perfect race weight actually is, this is the conversation for you. Welcome to the Roadman podcast, Dr. Tim Podar. Dr. Tim Pelar, welcome back to the Roadman podcast. Good morning. Happy to be here. Tim, we spoke a little bit off air on this and so hopefully you can shine some insight onto it. I had Jonas Abrahamson on the podcast not too long ago. He was 58 kg and by his own admission and statistically quite a poor bike rider at that weight. Not many pro cycling victories to his name. He goes to 78 79 kg and now he's a he's a beast. He's a weapon. He's winning through the France stages. This is like a broad debate we're having on the Saturday spin quite a lot. Like my buddy who's 52 kg, would he be better at 60 kg? My friend who's 90 kg, would he be better at 80 kg? Is there a way we can figure out optimum race weight without obviously wasting a season by putting on 10 kg and then saying, "Oh, that was a bad idea. Let me try take that off next season." I think it's it's a really tough one. Um when it comes to like amateurs u we're talking usually not as about as lean athletes as we are talking about when we're talking about professional athletes uh so if you go to like extremes of the professional athletes um it's kind of really difficult because you can as you said ruin your uh season if you decide to just like bulk up and eat more um more food. Um I think the biggest kind of thing that you can or the best thing you can do is like because it's genetic you know like your body will try to gravitate toward towards certain um body mass um in terms of like muscle mass you're a bit more muscular or you're very like lean by nature um or like yeah with not a lot of muscle mass. If you're naturally not with a lot of muscle mass that means that you probably are gravitating toward lower body weight. um and trying to become bigger will just probably not really work that well because um you are just not built that way. Um probably genetics and an idea that I just came to my mind is if you just look at your parents and what they gravitate towards too. Um for instance my parents um they are pretty muscular. So I can't imagine that I would be one of those climbers um at any point because I just naturally have more muscle mass um even in the older age. My parents are not um even without doing a lot of exercise they have quite a lot of muscle mass. So I think this is something we can also learn um and think about uh when we deciding what kind of a rider or what kind of a body shape we actually have. Um and also like what were we like when we were younger did we really struggle with the body weight or not? And if there are riders that are really struggling to keep the body weight low um no matter what they do and they need to starve themselves then they should ask themselves a question. what happens if I eat a little bit more, I'm a bit heavier, but then I will finally be able to do the training sessions that I really struggled um with before. Whereas, if you just perform well at a low body mass and don't have struggles with um yeah um eating or keeping that body weight, I think that's probably what you are after. So, it's kind of really difficult question, but um it's about experimenting a little bit. Uh whereas when it comes to like amateurs um and people like me, I think we need to decide at some point like what do we want to excel at? What are the actually the the goals that we set for ourselves? And if we decide that we're going to be a time trial is then perhaps we can experiment and like work towards a bit higher body mass. Whereas if we are trying to uh go to the etal marathon or something in the Alps then we might be thinking about like how can we keep the body mass relatively low because extra weight will definitely not help us there. Um so these are kind of my thoughts um at the moment is one experiment slightly more dangerous than the other. So if I'm at low body weight and I'm looking at my training peaks, my weight correlation and I'm like, okay, maybe if I go up 2 kilograms now, I'll observe my power versus the opposite of that.

Underfueling Risks and Creatine Dosing

If somebody's looking at their power data and they're trying to observe the effect of going down 2 kg because we're looking at over fueling sessions versus under fueling sessions, is there a inherent danger in trying to underfuel sessions? Yeah, definitely. And you do not want to do this in the in the main part of the season. You can perhaps experiment with that in the off season. So like let's say December, January time, perhaps February, but then after that you should probably stop and like just settle in. Um and one of the things that I see with for instance professional riders is that very often during the off season um many of them would like gain quite significant amount of weight and then like really try to lose like three, four, five kilos um in a matter of like a couple of months. Um and that's probably yeah that's per perhaps the time when they can think about their body weight um and see how they are at different um yeah body weights but um these extremes are not the best and I think one of the ideas of when you go from lower to higher body mass is like trying creatine for example we know that creatine will increase the power it's going to increase perhaps a body weight a little bit so if you start taking creatine you might gain a little bit more um lean body mass uh just because of water retention and being able to be stronger and see if you have performance benefits then you might be thinking like oh yeah perhaps I can actually push way higher numbers with higher body mass. So is creatine for a long time anyone I talked to was like same protocol no loading five grams of creatine a day pair it with a little bit of vitamin C to help with absorption. I have seen some debate. I think they're calling this the nanosphere now. The podcasters like Huberman, Peter Ailla, all these lads. I had seen debate around the dosage of creatine and people pushing creatine dosage 15 to 20 grams a day. I think it was Ronda Patrick uh was talking about a 20 gram a day protocol. Have you seen this research on higher creatine dosages or do you have thoughts on it? I'm not an expert in creatine, but I don't like extremes. So I would probably cyclist that when I work with I go slowly and relatively low doses just because usually they're so lean and so kind of small as compared to for instance bodybuilders that I don't want to go to extremes and then be sorry when two months later we are like three kilograms off our target body mass and um the rider is actually not performing as well as he should have. The point you bring up around weight loss, especially around hard training being my experience has been it's quite difficult around hard training. No, sorry, difficult is the wrong word. It's counterintuitive cuz I came out so I've been using Hexus tutor who you're working across to Hexus as well. Actually, if anyone wants to try my Hexus code, David from Hexus gave me one. It might still work. You're welcome to try and use it. It's just road man. It might work, it might not. Who knows? But uh My experience was so in the Christmas period I'm not a pro alete like I had a chance to chat with Darren Rafferty just before Christmas and I was like are you going to use using Hexus all the way through Christmas and he's like I'll pause it for a couple of days just over Christmas day I'm not trying to count stuffing and gravy on Christmas day using Hexus I'll be totally honest I paused it for a lot more than a couple of days was a lot more disciplined than me but he's paid to ride his bike so it's probably end of January almost by the time I properly got back on. And now you have this guilt. And this is kind of what I want you to speak to on it because a lot of us suffer this same thing regardless of the time scale. Some of us like have a bad weekend and then on Monday we feel like the need to, you know, quote unquote punish ourselves by having a lower calorie day. Same goes for me here. Like I had Christmas period where I overindulged a little bit which led bled into January. And now then it's back like start of February. I'm okay. I need to get back on this. I chat with Sam Impy and he's just like, just get back on Hexus. And it's really intuitively hard to in your head, you're like, I want to shed a couple of kilograms and then you open your Hexus and you're doing like a 2hour endurance ride today and your calorie consumption for the day is 3,800 calories and you're meant to lose weight with this. But somehow magically you do lose weight with this.

How Hexis Changes Weight Loss

Like we're seeing like we're loads of our athletes now in our uh in our not done yet community, our coaching community are using Hexus and the results have been ridiculous. People are shedding weight, but intuitively it makes no sense because we're all eating so much more food than we would have otherwise eaten if we had self- selected based on the idea that we're losing weight at the moment. Like help me get my head around this. What's going on? I think it makes you gradually lose body mass rather than do it like quickly as we would intuitive intuitively do um ourselves because yeah as you said you would just like try to cut uh the calories um wherever possible and then you go to the extremes and then when you go to the extremes what happens is also your um energy expenditure outside the bike will go down the recovery will worsen um and everything just like shuts down the body is like in a in a mode when survival mode. Um, and then he also makes you binge eat perhaps on certain days and it's called a it's called a yo-yo effect. It's like well described in the literature. So you lose weight and then you gain it back on and then you lose it again and um gain it back on. Uh whereas with like structured nutrition advice, be it a caxis or working as an with a nutritionist, you kind of set the goals and you try to create a small energy deficit day after day. Um and this still allows you to recover. You're well fueled for the session still and um in the long term you can yeah lose weight because simply um you did not restrict yourself too much. you just do and consistently train and um yeah, still push high numbers. Um and that's kind of the magic of it because there's a huge mental component to dieting, at least for amateur athletes, we wrap food up in morality and we tag some foods good foods, other foods bad foods. Do you find that at pro level as well? Do you need a buy in into this or is this generation just so accustomed to weighing food that it's just automatic? Yeah, it's it's it's it's kind of interesting when I work with young riders these days and I have one young rider um he's 19 and he just logs the food automatically. There is no question being asked like he just expects the numbers to be there uh in the app and he will log the log the food in no problem. Whereas if you talk about to older riders they would be like oh that's that's yeah I don't want to do that. Can't imagine Ala Philippe likes Logan. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't work with him, so I wouldn't dare to comment, but yeah, with older writers, it's more difficult. Um, I also see it myself. It's a burden to me to actually log the food in. Uh, whereas for young riders, it's just like a normal thing to do. Um, it's so, but I think that's we take our hang-ups and sorry for bracketing you in. I know I think you're a few years younger than me, but like I think as a slightly older generation, we take our hang-ups and we project them onto the upcoming generation. I've had this experience as well where I've spoken with 22 year old world tour riders. And when you talk to the the exorld tour rider who's 40, 44 years old, they're like, "Oh, I could never race now because I could never do that log and it's such a mental fatigue." You talk to the 22 riders, 22 year olds, it's like zero cognitive stress from uploading this food. It's just like brush my teeth, log my food instant. It's automated. Yeah. I could be part of the problem that we have had experience of trying to um lose body mass or be like very strict and you know restrict your calories by I don't know 1,000 kilo calories a day and somebody telling us um not me but in general like you need to really restrict your intake to be able to um lose body mass. So you're kind of afraid of logging the food because you know you will be under control. Whereas for young riders they don't have that ex bad experience with logging the food and just feels like setting up like sending an information about the body was in the morning. So this particular rider that I have in mind if he's light in the morning he will be alarmed and he would message saying oh my weight is down I don't feel good this morning. Whereas for an older rider, it would be the opposite. Low weight. Well, amazing. That's going to be my day. Um, so it's a like generational gener generational shift in here. And it's kind of nice to see uh this to happen because this means that this young guy, I'm not concerned about high number on the scale after glycogen loading.

Weighing Habits and Fueling Windows

He actually wants that and he will feel good about it. Um also I will know I be in control of his kind of dietary intake and this is not going to trigger um any kind of problems with his overall diet. Um whereas for older people it's it can be triggering and it can be a burden and yeah lead to mental problems. Sam Imp has me doing an evening weighin and then a morning weighin the next morning. What's the idea of that? Um, yeah, it's I don't know what some had in mind, but I I don't think it's like a a bad idea like to measure your body mass at different times because um yeah, for instance, I kind of like to always weigh myself after the training and I take that as a benchmark because I kind of sweat similarly during the sessions. The sessions are uh similar of similar length. Um it would be interesting to look at before the sessions where like before the rides because this is when the way that you're actually going to go to the start line. Um so I think it you have different strategies on how to look at your body mass. Um but for instance in the evening you it can be indicative of like hydration in the evening. It can be indicative of um how well you fueled um in the evening. Um, so yeah, can be a useful piece of information. You just don't want to overdo it and like step on the scale every five minutes. But yeah, I I think most of us are like we feel like it's a reflection of our watts per kilo value. So we want to like, right, I've had a big dump first thing in the morning. Now I'm getting on the scales. It's a good time to weigh. It's a good time to weigh. It's not like an evening idea. Uh let me pivot for a little uh second and I want to talk about intraworkout fueling. uh you were involved or maybe I'm overselling how involved you were uh creating the endurance gel like what goes into that because this is kind of a gateway to my next question where I think our last conversation finished off where we were briefly started talking about the idea of 90 versus 120 grams of carbs per hour and maybe it's not a good idea to just mimic exactly what the pros do that you might have slightly different absorption levels so let's kind of troion horse that conversation in with the you know how involved were you in creating the endurance gel because it's a brand that I found myself just using for 12 months exclusively now I find it very palatable and I find it very very cheap compared to the other gels insanely cost effective compared to the other gels that's why largely I've gone to it I'm sure you had more sciency reasons than me for being involved yeah I think now I've been working with them for like half a year five in a five years and a half as a consultant. I don't have anything with the directly with the business. But the idea was um so when I was a PhD student um obviously I was low on the income I could not afford to buy expensive gels myself. So I started doing gels myself at the time um in the in the in the school actually um in the lab. Um, and one of the things that I also started noticing at the time was that I was just not happy with the kind of what was there out there in the market. So most gels were still uh mold to dextrin only or glucose only. There were no fructose in them and there were a few brands that actually had fructose in them but were 2:1 ratio. So two um of moltoextrin and one unit of um fructose. Uh but then already in the time this was I'm talking about 2017 2018 um at the time it was pretty clear the research was already out there for a long time that perhaps the ratio of 1 to 0.8 is the ratio that should work for most people. Um and I started making those gels myself. Um and at some point um because I was I'm Slovenian and the company actually comes from Slovenia. uh so for endurance um that at the time I don't think the brand endurance actually existed um so I went into the discussions with the owner of the company um I was complaining on the um social networks over their claims um because they were selling um yeah they were saying things about um the composition of the gel that just I did not think it they were true um so we had a bit of heated discussions with them and at some point they asked me oh do you want to help us to actually improve and get better and then I was like okay yes sure because I really want to help athletes to have a choice that is in my opinion a good one and then I had this opportunity to actually help them create a product lines or endurance from scratch pretty much.

Inside the Hexis Endurance Gel

So start with the drinks, continue with the gels, um then progress to choose some other products. And the idea was let's make the products as simple as possible. So don't like go crazy with different types of carbohydrates that have really no uh scientific evidence behind them, but just use the simple products which is molto dextrin and fructose in 1 to 0.8 ratio. um and make the products accessible to as many people as possible. I think that was kind of the main goal um and all along. And that's why I also was like, "Okay, yes, I will help you." Um because I know that you're actually doing good for the um consumers. Um it's not just about marketing. Since this video has been recorded, I've actually lost the weight. I've gone from 88 to 80 kg. I can't actually believe it because the crazy thing is I'm eating way more than ever before. Some days my jaw is actually getting sore. I'm eating so much. But I feel amazing on the bike. My power numbers are not quite back to my best, but I'm trending there very fast. But importantly for me, my big hesitation when I got back training was, yes, I had the time available to train, but I couldn't do it if it meant sacrificing energy, the focus to come and have highlevel conversations on the podcast. And I have so much energy off the bike. Like I'm coming in the door fresh after three hour rides. It's wild. I've never experienced it before. And I want you guys to check this out. I chatted with Sam Offair and his co-founder David at Hexus. And they've hooked up an amazing discount code for the Roadman listeners. So if you want to try Hexus for yourself, it's honestly the biggest leap that I've seen in cycling ever. Forget aerodynamics. It's fueling properly. So, if you go over to hexus h e xis.live and you use the code roadman when you're checking out, you're going to get 25% off your hex's plan. Go just test it out. Trust me, it's a game changer. And but like anything, I guess there's there's too much of a good thing. And that's maybe where our last conversation dropped off where we ran out of time where it's like we've seen this trend I think more so in gravel where people are privateeers and they don't have the benefits of you know you'd rarely see one to tutor guys coming out and being like hey I had 180 grams of carbs an hour in the race today because they get the benefit of working like with worldass experts like you. It's seems to be more in the gravel space where we're seeing articles after races like Unbound particularly jumps out at me last year. Cam Jones, I think I can't remember. I had them on the podcast, but it was a big number. I'm going to say like 150 160 grams of carbs per hour. But just because you can take more doesn't mean you can use more. Is that correct? Yeah. So, endurance product line is made around the number of 90. So, 45 grams uh product. So 45 + 45 gives you 90 and not 120 like with um three times 40 because my kind of understanding or like how I see it is that for 95% of people out there up to 90 grams per hour is the sweet spot. And this is what research shows because research actually is done on amateur athletes like you and me. And that's where we see um that 90 grams per hour or thereabouts kind of improves performance the most. If you go over what we then hap what does what happens is that we either over consume calories um on the bike. Uh we might get GI issues if you're not used to those amounts. But more importantly, if you keep the energy balance, that means that you will have less carbohydrates of the bike and then your glycogen stores will suffer. And because your daily energy expenditure is so much lower than for professionals, you actually might um have a problem with the performance because glycogen stores in the body are still really important. Um so you might actually be doing yourself a disservice um by going too high. Can we test this? Like because people ask me all the time, what's the golden link between the podcast guests you have? What do they all agree on? And I spent some time over the new year period thinking about it. And I think one of the commonalities I've seen from all the guests is they care so little about the mean. Like just because a 500 person double blind placebo test said ketones are effective which I don't think that test has ever said that but just using that as an example like Dan Lurang at Red Bull doesn't care about that. He he cares about the effects of ketones on Primos Rugglitch like a case study of one and I think that's been the main shift for me.

Personalizing Carb Intake Targets

It's like the high performers care about the individual rather than averaged out data. How do we go about moving away from the averaged out data of saying, "Hey, 90 grams is good for most people to hey, what's good what's perfect for Tim?" Yeah, it's it's a tough question. Like one thing that we can definitely do and it's doable and it's there are services out there is measuring how much you can actually use the ingested carbohydrates. But you will get a really high number. So for example, I would probably get a number that would say well I can take up to 120 grams per hour uh without problems. But if I then pull all the calculations together and prepare myself for a training session that is only like two hours long and I do I don't know 230 watts for two hours on average for training sessions and I fuel this training session 120 grams per hour that would mean that for the rest of the day I will not have a lot of carbohydrates left as a budget. So I can't measure glycogen stores um myself unless I do a biopsy or go into the MRI which are both out of something that I could do u on a daily basis. Um especially not amateurs. Um that means I need to still rely on the evidence that is out there and the evidence when it comes to carbohydrate intake and the relationship between um to glycogen stores is pretty strong. So it's not like one study, it's actually loads of studies. So we know like approximately how many grams per kilogram of carbohydrates we need to get to certain levels of replenishment of glycogen stores. So then I put everything all this kind of information together and I first set a target. Okay, it's a hard session. Um I need to have in the recovery between the previous session and this session I don't know let's say six or seven grams per kilogram of carbohydrates. how much budget do we have to actually fuel the session and then I decide how to fuel the session. um I might actually say oh this is really important session so let's fuel more because I will end up the day in surplus but for the benefit of actually the session be it a race or just being able to push as high number as possible that's my goal of the session and then for a low intensity session I might say okay let's compensate now on the calories so I will go lower on glycogen because well it's an easy session and I can um go a little bit lower and then again decide right on the budget and um work around the numbers. So, it's kind of a game of numbers at the end of the day. It's really interesting. But do environmental factors change your ability to utilize carbohydrates? Anecdotally, I feel totally different training in cold weather. Like my body doesn't feel like it interacts with the carbohydrate in the same way. Now, I could be totally off the mark because I've never seen any data on this. Yeah, we don't really have a lot of data on cold and I think the cold weather is something that we can interpret in different ways. Like we can go out in cold weather, wear a lot of clothes and actually do a heat training up the climb because the clothes uh don't allow us to actually dissipate a heat or we can go out and be actually cold um and like freeze. Um I think if we are like kind of slightly cold, let's talk about the proper cold. I don't think technically there should differences especially because the uh blood flow to the muscle and the intestines should be um just normal. Um not not yeah not a big problem. Um the issue becomes hydration because the body if it's feeling cold will naturally try to reduce the blood volume. um plasma volume and that's why you need to pee way more in the cold um just because you want to get rid of the extra water and then could have an effect when you do the intervals after half an hour or an hour and then you heat up and you can't dissipate that heat away um which could be a problem but we know that for instance um the heat has a big effect on how many carbohydrates we can use um that we ingest. So we see a reduction of up to 30%. Um so yeah quite significant and and like maybe let's let's define heat because I I hadn't thought about that that you can get to heat in two ways there. You could get to overheating on a cool day which is obvious when you said it but I'd never considered that before. Like how hot do I need to be if I'm you know I'm using a core body temperature. What's my deviation from baseline? I think it's not just the core body temperature.

Core vs Skin Temperature in Training

I think it's a combination of skin and um core body temperature. I remember years ago I was training um doing interval training workouts um in the lab in the school um in the morning before I started my work. Um, and I was crazy enough to do a few sessions with a rectal theister. Um, so I've been doing a lot of experiments on myself and I remember doing um I think at the time I was really big fan of doing four times or five times 8 minute intervals and my core body temperature during these intervals got to 39.3° which would be like considered really cold. Um but my skin temperature was really low. We're talking about probably like below 30° because the cooling was amazing in that lab. Uh whereas what happens in the heat is that your skin temperature will be like 36 37° um and your body temp core body temperature might be only 38.5 and you would be absolutely like struggling because there would be no gradient uh between the temperature um core to skin. So the the heat simply can't really travel that fast from the the core sensors. They measure skin temperature and then use that as a a proxy I guess for your entire temperature. No, they use heat flux and the skin temperature. Yes. Okay. Um I'm not a big fan of the sensor um just because I don't think it's that accurate. But I like to see the skin temperature for example. So I know that if the skin temperature is going to go up and I see a trend of skin temperature during the interval workout or when I'm riding outside to go up that means that I'm really overheating. If the skin temperature is going down actually I'm cooling down. And this is actually what happens when you start doing intervals. So I remember this session that I just uh mentioned. So 39.2 core temperature. So the skin temperature during the intervals was going down and when I was um stopped the skin temperature went back up um just because of the cooling and I started sweating and when you start sweating more so during the interval work it should cool you down meaning skin temperature should go down. Um if this does not happen then you have a problem. So the closest the skin temperature is to your um core temperature, so closer to 37, the worse you will be feeling. How do we adjust our carbohydrate intake on days where we know we're going to be in warm conditions or we're going to be overdressed on a cold day. I think this is when something like Yeah. And again, you need to kind of manipulate the carbohydrate intake. So what we know in the heat is that you go through the glycogen stores a bit quicker um because of the heat. This means that you might want to do redistribute some of the carbohydrates more to before the session to fill up the glycogen stores and slightly reduce the carbohydrate intake on the bike. Um we don't really know where the limitation actually is. Is it absorption or is it the muscle uptake? Um but without going into the details I think in the heat you should listen to your previous experiences on whether you have gastrointestinal issues in that in those conditions or not and how well you actually feel with this um high carbohydrate intakes. Um and then you might want to either stay the same or reduce by 10 20% um the intake um and redistribute that to either recovery or before the session and does the timing of the carbohydrate like I'm not specifically referring to hot days but also I'd like to hear your thoughts on hot days on this. Does the timing of the carbohydrate during the session matter? By that I mean if my prescription for the day is 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour and I take two gels at the top of each hour, is that any different than having a linear distribution of say Haribo which is fed every five minutes across the hour but I also hit 90? Um yes it's it's another of those yeah questions that we keep getting asked and like we think about. So I did actually recently a study where we did we simulated a hard training day or a hard um or a race. It was three hours of cycling then followed by performance test. And what we did was we had three different conditions. Um either start with a lot of carbohydrates and then reduce towards the end with the idea being you will provide a lot of carbohydrates at the start and prevent GI issues towards the end when you actually do the performance test or gradually increase. So don't raise the insulin level at the start and initiate some fat oxidation and then provide most carbohydrates before or when it actually matters for the performance trial or just keep it constant. Um and we saw no differences.

Insulin, Glycogen and Longevity

Um so performance was exactly the same. So it doesn't really matter. Very interesting. However, that was in a race kind of type of scenario of 3 hours, three hours and a half. Um if it's a like long endurance ride, um I see it a lot with like type 1 diabetes um athletes that um they would need way more insulin at the start of the ride if we start fueling a lot. Um and we don't really want that much insulin during like prolonged endurance rides. So it's better to actually stack the intake over time and like progressive um feed so that you start a bit lower and then increase the amounts as the the day progresses. if you have like 4hour low intensity endurance drive for for example you mentioned insulin I had heard before kind of the carbohydrate wave hit cycling and we all started upping our carbohydrates massively both on and off the bike I'd heard kind of a correlation between inverse correlation between insulin spikes and longevity like the more times you spike your insulin throughout the course of the day the less likely you are to live a healthy long life is there a metabolic risk do you think of exposing ourselves to high levels of carbohydrates for prolonged times. Um, no, I don't think so. Um, it's actually the opposite, I think. Um, so when it comes to athletes, um, we deplete glycogen stores after every pretty much every single session. So, our stores are always like going up and down. Um, so we need insulin to actually replenish glycogen stores and that's just a normal thing um to happen. um we get a spike in glucose, insulin kicks in, allows the glucose to flow into the muscle, we replenish glycogen stores and we repeat the next day. Deplete um replenish uh deplete replenish. The problem becomes in inactive people. So sports directors or coaches sitting in the car um that don't do the actually exercise um if they keep eating the same way as the riders, insulin levels will go up. um but their glycogen stores are already full because they haven't done any exercise. So glucose has nowhere to go. Um and that's when we have a problem because then insulin says um tries to help glucose to be cleared away uh from the bloodstream. Muscles are full, organs are full. So we need now glucose has nowhere to go. So we will increase the insulin production even more. Um and it's becomes a vicious cycle and the body is then really struggling to get um the carbs stored somewhere. Um and that's when the health problems actually start to occur. Every rider chases that feeling, the one where the bike just disappears, where the pedals turn easy and the road hums beneath you and for a few fleeting seconds everything just clicks. No effort, no noise, just flow. That moment isn't luck, it's engineering. The coin that only comes from obsession. For over 20 years, Parley has refined the art of carbon. Every layer placed by hand. Every angle tuned by feel and data until response, balance, and speed exist in perfect harmony. You don't notice it partly because it's flashy. You notice it because it feels right. Because every input, every climb, every corner happens exactly how you imagined it would. customer production. Every frame goes through the same uncompromising process, traceable, tested, and finished by people who still believe craftsmanship matters. Parley doesn't chase trends. They chase that moment every rider lives for when the bike and the body move as one. Parley cycles engineered for that feeling that keeps us coming back. That was a really good explanation of that. I've heard that talked about a lot of times and that made more sense to me than anyone has ever explained it. To finish up on this, not everyone agrees with you on we've talked a lot about carbohydrate carbohydrate intake, but there was a paper that I know you were getting into it on Twitter about this sort of like 602 references in this paper that talked about carbohydrates aren't essential for performance. What? What? Yeah. Exactly. Uh yeah, exactly. What? Um I don't know. So we know like we for the last probably 15 years, we have this movement of people that promote a low carbohydrate um diet lifestyle and think that carbohydrates are not essential. And if you think about it, um the glycogen stores are in a way actually really just a buffer of the um carbohydrates. So we eat the carbohydrates, then they're stored in the glycogen. And this is kind of a buffer so that we don't get glucose um yeah floating around indefinitely. Um but interestingly that the um human or the nature made us to use this gly glycogen um during exercise and it actually helps us to push a high number watts and gives us a lot of energy and we've known from athletes that yes glycogen and carbohydrates are essential for performance. um day in day out. It's also it's not just performance on the day, it's also the recovery, preventing the breakdown of protein during exercise um and so on and so forth.

Low-Carb Studies and Cherry-Picked Science

And I just feel like in theory, yes, if you do a like a ultra marathon or something ultra um there is a way that you can do it on a low carbohydrate diet with minimal amounts of carbohydrates, but that's basically a survival mode. It's possible but is it um the best solution? Probably not. Um and that paper kind of my first reaction was well now give this diet to today pagatcha. Um and maybe we will finally have a season when his will not be as dominant. So yeah, just go for it. Um it's going to be a great experiment and I would be looking forward to it. Um, but it's just not going to happen because we know how important carbohydrates are. But these studies are kind of baffling. And I think that's as a a lay person, you lose a lot of faith because there's so many studies. And if somebody takes the time to cherrypick, and you can do this with anything. You can do this with podcast. I'm sure someone could take my 1400 podcast, take sections out of, and make me look like a total buffoon by clipping them all together. when you strip back context and you put a bunch of stuff together. Do you know what? When I read the abstract to this, I was kind of reminded of that Simpsons episode where Homer Simpsons given a presentation in the power plant and he starts it off with uh statistics can prove anything. 94% of people know this and he has this reference to that statistic. It kind of felt like that that yeah, statistics can prove anything. Yeah. When it comes to like data and um the scientific literature like in the past when the science was kind of like in the early days um if you wanted to publish this your paper or your manuscript went through the very rigorous peer review when like experts in the field reviewed what you've written um checked if that makes sense um and everything was then yeah it was if it got accepted to be published it was probably of very good quality. The problem is in these days in the that um we have journals that are publishing um pretty much everything. Why? Because it became a big business. Um so even though we have still peer review uh the peer review is sometimes done by sometimes done by inexperienced um researchers or researchers that just don't have the knowledge because re uh researchers that are doing the reviews are not paid to do that. So the quality of the work they do is getting lower and lower. Sometimes you might get a reviewed by your friends that think just like you are. Um, so that again like something would just go um past the review without any major comments or you might go to a journal that's actually not from sport science just like happened in this case. It's I think the journal about endocrinology um and they are not experts in sport science. So the reviewers were like oh yeah yeah this makes sense. Insulin is bad. Um high carbohydrate diet is bad for general public. it's probably also bad for athletes. So, let's just I think yeah, they thought that was a good thing. But, um you know, it's we need to doubt the science. Um and it's really difficult to say that because that means that when there is something published that let's say stupid example would be vaccines, we can find evidence pro and against um and we can interpret the data in whatever way uh we want. And I think it's about here who do we trust and what kind of um associations and what kind of experts we end up trusting. Um and this is the last bit of kind of protection uh we have that we know that we who we can trust and in this case um this person so professor Tim Nogs has been very controversial and everyone knows about it. Um so that's probably the reason why people perhaps can't trust um this review. Um, but it's really difficult even for us researchers to know what is true and what isn't. So, we'll mark that one and file it in the debunked column with the with the m with the moon landing. Tim, thanks for chatting. Enjoyable as always. Hopefully, we'll catch up for a round three in the next few months. Thanks for hanging

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How many carbs per hour should amateur cyclists eat during training?+

Dr. Tim Podlogar recommends a ceiling of 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour for 95% of amateur cyclists. Consuming more than this does not improve performance and typically results in gastrointestinal distress rather than additional fuel availability.

What is the ideal race weight for a cyclist?+

Dr. Tim Podlogar argues that optimal race weight is largely determined by genetics, and that riders fighting their natural body composition tend to underperform. He points to Jonas Abrahamsen, who won a Tour de France stage after moving from 58kg to roughly 78kg, as clear evidence that chasing the lowest possible scale number often harms rather than helps performance.

When is the best time to experiment with weight loss as a cyclist?+

Dr. Tim Podlogar recommends confining any weight experiments to the off-season, when training load is lower and calorie restriction is less likely to compromise recovery or adaptation. Restricting calories during hard training blocks risks undermining the quality of those sessions and delaying fitness gains.

Does heat affect carbohydrate absorption during cycling?+

Yes, heat reduces the rate at which carbohydrates can be absorbed and utilised during exercise. This means cyclists riding in hot conditions should be especially careful not to overshoot their carbohydrate intake, as the gut's capacity to process fuel is further limited compared to cooler environments.

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

Weekly insights from the podcast. The stuff that actually makes you faster.

READ THE GUIDE

The written companion to this episode.

How to Get Faster at Cycling: 12 Evidence-Based Methods That Actually Work

There are exactly two kinds of cycling advice on the internet: stuff that sounds clever but doesn't work, and stuff that sounds boring but d…

Best Cycling Training Podcasts for Age-Groupers

Most cycling training podcasts are aimed at pros or total beginners. Here are the shows that actually speak to the age-grouper balancing rea…

Breathing Techniques for Cycling: How to Breathe for Performance

Most cyclists never think about breathing until they're gasping. But how you breathe affects oxygen delivery, core stability, and how hard t…

FREE TRAINING PLANS

UNBOUND →

USE THESE TOOLS

RELATED EPISODES

More episodes you might enjoy

Episode

Nutrition47:12

HOW PRO CYCLISTS STAY LEAN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

Dr Tim Podlogar is an exercise physiologist and performance nutritionist at Tudor Pro Cycling, previously with Bora-Hansgrohe. He came on the Roadman Cycling podcast to talk about exactly how professional riders stay lean, and one calculation mistake that's probably been keeping you in a calorie surplus

with Dr Tim Podlogar

Episode

Nutrition30:38

5 CYCLING TRAINING MISTAKES SLOWING YOU DOWN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

Half the riders on your group spin are starving themselves thinking it makes them faster. It doesn't. It makes them slower, cooked by hour three, and raiding the fridge the second they get home. This episode on the Roadman Cycling podcast covers the five mistakes Anthony sees week in, week out,

Episode

Nutrition1:31:12

WHY PROS' 120G CARB RULE FAILS AMATEURS | ROADMAN CYCLING

Dr. Sam Impey works with Tom Pidcock, Filippo Ganna, and is an adviser to Exo Analytics. His message for amateur cyclists is blunt: the 120g carbohydrate per hour protocol you're copying from the pros is probably doing you more harm than good. The energy maths don't add up, and overfeeding can

with Dr. Sam Impey

LIKED THIS EPISODE?

Join the Clubhouse to discuss this episode, ask Anthony your questions, and connect with serious cyclists.

Join the Clubhouse — Free More Episodes

RACE WEIGHT & CARB TIMING MISTAKES | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

44:06·13 February 2026

LISTEN NOW

Key Takeaways

RACE WEIGHT & CARB TIMING MISTAKES | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

CHAPTERS

Key Takeaways

You Might Also Like

CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE

RESOURCES MENTIONED

KEY QUOTES

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

RELATED EPISODES

HOW PRO CYCLISTS STAY LEAN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

5 CYCLING TRAINING MISTAKES SLOWING YOU DOWN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

WHY PROS' 120G CARB RULE FAILS AMATEURS | ROADMAN CYCLING

RELATED CONTENT

WHY PROS' 120G CARB RULE FAILS AMATEURS | ROADMAN CYCLING

5 CYCLING TRAINING MISTAKES SLOWING YOU DOWN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

HOW PRO CYCLISTS STAY LEAN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

LIKED THIS EPISODE?

RACE WEIGHT & CARB TIMING MISTAKES | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

CHAPTERS

Key Takeaways

You Might Also Like

CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE

RESOURCES MENTIONED

KEY QUOTES

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

RELATED EPISODES

HOW PRO CYCLISTS STAY LEAN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

5 CYCLING TRAINING MISTAKES SLOWING YOU DOWN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

WHY PROS' 120G CARB RULE FAILS AMATEURS | ROADMAN CYCLING

RELATED CONTENT

WHY PROS' 120G CARB RULE FAILS AMATEURS | ROADMAN CYCLING

5 CYCLING TRAINING MISTAKES SLOWING YOU DOWN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

HOW PRO CYCLISTS STAY LEAN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

LIKED THIS EPISODE?