Roadmen, in today's podcast, I'm going to talk to you about what food…
Roadmen, in today's podcast, I'm going to talk to you about what food you should be eating out training and how often. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long changes? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back, roadman, to another roadman cycling podcast. A question I get asked an awful lot is what do you take out training with you to ease and what's your ease when I'm out training? If you get this wrong, it goes very, very bad. I remember one day I'm based in Dublin and there's a seaside town about 90 minutes from where I'm living called scurries and I rode out there and I was riding back and it was about two and a half hours into the ride and the wheels completely fell off. I had no money with me, I had no phone with me and I got a cyclist say the knock. I hit that wall and if you've hit that wall before, you know, it's like your body says, time to power down all non-essential systems. It's like a Captain Cork and Star Trek moment and the lights literally were going out for me. I could barely turn the pedals. I didn't think I was going to make it home. And I shit you not. I had to go up to somebody on the side of the road who was selling strawberries out of the back of a van and like a homeless man, I had the beg for a ponet of strawberries to get me home and I promised them I'd come back out the next day and pay them for them. I did but that was a valuable lesson that I talk with me on fueling and the importance of it because when it goes bad, it goes real bad. So on today's podcast, I want to focus on two things. What's your G-Eats when you're on the bike and when should you eat on the bike? Like, how often? Before I jump into that, I'd like to remind you all of how this podcast is funded at patreon.com. You can head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore waltch. That's our Patreon page. Now with a slight change to the Patreon page, I have been saying if you're enjoying the podcast, buying me a pint of beer. But I've actually added in some different levels to the Patreon podcast now. But at the basic level, if you buy me a beer now, you're going to get access to a new podcast, a members only Patreon podcast once a month. I'm calling this the secret podcast. So once a month, you will get a secret podcast in return for buying me that beer. So if you'd like to check out the secret podcast, please head on over to patreon.com. I'm going to put the link in the bio and buy me the price of a pointed beer. Okay, so what should you eat and when should you eat? So essentially we have two different engines. We have a fat engine and we have a sugar's engine. So it is possible to get like a specific type of training effect, i.e. metabolizing fats as a fuel source without eating carbohydrates. That's a topic for a different day. I want to focus today on fueling true carbs as a fuel source. It's our second engine, it's sugar, carbs, that's our fuel source. So if you're head now for a ride that's 90 minutes or less, you typically don't need to bring any food which the reason is our muscles are very efficient at storing this energy source called glycogen. So our muscles are loaded and ready to go with about 90 minutes of glycogen. So if you're head now for less to 90 minutes. The good news is you don't have to go stuffing things in your back pocket. You can just go for that ride, eat normally before, eat normally after and you're going to be fine.
Now this voice is if you're going over 90 minutes you're going to…
Now this voice is if you're going over 90 minutes you're going to need to fuel. I typically try and fuel twice every hour. So on the half hour if you're a complete newbie to this fueling strategy I sit in the alarm to go off every 30 minutes and every 30 minutes you want to be having something sugary. So I'm talking here a cereal bar, a piece of cake, a cross on with some jammer Nutella, anything like that. Hike like same-like index foods is gonna do you. Sean Kelly, we're gonna say for the purpose it is one of the greatest cyclists of all time. That's my partisan boyus Irish but he definitely up there with the greatest. He had a saying that if you're hungry it's too late to eat and this is one I try and take to heart when I'm out on the bike. You want to be eaten before hunger hits. So that's why I go with that 30-minute strategy and our body is better at absorbing small amounts of carbohydrates over periods like a small amount of carbohydrates, 30 minutes and then another small amount, 30 minutes later rather than like a big dump of carbohydrates, 60 minutes on the air. So smaller more often is better. I typically try and break up my ride and think about it as a two-part ride or even a sliding scale might be a better analogy. And if I'm going on a four-hour ride, I use this sliding scale to think about, I want to have more solid, real-type foods closer to the start of the ride and more sports-specific stuff towards the end of the ride. The reason is I'm generally getting quite fatigued towards the end of the ride and the effort it takes to unpack, to chew, to digest that specific food. It's extra strain, it's extra stress on the body. So I'll typically start out with something like I'll make a wrap like a fajita wrap the night before I ride and if there's nothing specific you need to be putting into this. What I'll try and typically put into it is some like ham off the bone or chicken with some cream cheese and I'll chop this up into four little sections, wrap them in tin foil. The reason I chop them up into four sections each of them become bite-sized so I'm not trying to unwrap with no hands on on the bars in a crosswind, a la Chris film. I'm not trying to unwrap a whole sandwich and eat it. I can take one thing out of my pocket, I can stuff it in my mouth and that's me done. I'll do the same with a cross on if I choose to go with that and I go with a cross on maybe some jam and no tell it in it. And I'll chop that up into three sections, wrap them individually and tin for, stick them in the back pocket. So I'll try and eat that stuff right at the start of the ride. Then as the ride progresses, I'll move the things like cereal bars, maybe even a little piece of cake that's wrapped up like a carrot cake or something like that that's wrapped up in tin foil and then towards the end of the ride if it's a really tough ride I will move to sport specific stuff like a cliff bar or like a you know a cliff shot or something like this cliff blocks I think they're called they're really cool it's rare I'll do that on a training ride I'll typically try and stay with the Force II options the sandwiches and the cakes and the cereal bars. Races are different that I will start introducing that more sports specific stuff towards the end of the event. What I try and avoid is gels at all costs and to be honest I try and avoid a lot of the commercial sports bars. We're talking you know high-fives, power bars, stuff like this and I'd encourage you to get into the habit of looking at the back of the bar and looking at the ingredients and if you're looking at a ward and thinking what the hell is that?
I've never seen a ward with 42 letters in a hydroploxic affordifying
I've never seen a ward with 42 letters in a hydroploxic affordifying. What are these wards? So these things that they have on the bars, they're not food, they're food substitutes. These are the sort of food that they give to monkeys when they're sending them into space for two years to keep the monkeys alive. It's not fit for human consumption. So I would say if this is a bar that you could leave out on the counter and the bacteria won't even go and eat it, you should probably think twice about adding that into your diet. But that's just me. That's just a humble podcaster. So with that rant, and I'm sure every sports bar company in the world now is going to send me, I actually once got a message off of sports bar company saying, how do we get a better review on your YouTube channel? And I said, well, make a better product. And that's kind of what I feel like with that stuff. Some of them I do really like Cliffbar and there's a couple of other ones that are made just out of dates and natural ingredients But that's essentially what I'd be looking for in the back natural ingredients Order stuff you can transition to late in a ride instead of the sports specific stuff. It's like dates. They're like nature's jail or bananas They're trusty old friend So that transition from real foods to purpose made foods we'll call them is one that I typically trying to do when I'm in a race and or I'm planning a particularly hard training ride what I will do is batch cook energy balls and energy balls for me they've been they're they've grown out in necessity really I start making these I make them once a week on you know what I'll try and find the how to voil ago I had a page to where we started selling the energy ball cookbook I'll see if I find a Linkita energy ball cookbook and I'll pop it into the description. I basically experimented with a bunch of recipes of making my own purpose made energy balls. The balls were great because I could just whack one into the melt when I was racing and I wasn't having to consume all this crazy preservatives and additives that it was just ingredients like dates, honey, nuts, a gab syrup, stuff like this. But I made some cool varieties of Frero-Rochet balls and no tela balls and cool shit like that. So I will try and find a link to that and I'll pop it in the description. Rob Man, I hope that helps you think about your fueling out on the bike and that Sean Kelly saying is a pertinent one and want to remember if you're hungry, it's probably too late to eat. So I would say go heed this advice and don't become like me, A man on the side of the road in Lycra, sweating, babbling, completely glycogen to pleases, and begging a stranger for a punnet of strawberries. Roadmen, I'm gonna chat to you again tomorrow. Until then. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join, arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14-day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner advanced, there's meal plans shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoyglink.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.