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...at this point, if you need to be hand-held, or are a high-maintenance rider, you're in the wrong class.
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The rest and transitional days in the indoor Tour were a chance for the riders to gather their thoughts, replenish their energy, and look forward to the stages yet to come. For the most part, riders stick to routines they have developed over years of riding. There is a rhythm to stage riding, and it is best not to disturb it.
Since the body has been accustomed to hours in the saddle, we went on rides on our transitional days. While the intensity was lower than racing, they were also not merely recovery rides. The key to was to keep the body going. Riders would have gladly taken multiple days of complete rest, but they would pay a hefty price for it during Tuesday’s grueling stage. Too little activity on transitional days often leads to heavy and sluggish legs the following day, and that would be a recipe for disaster when the route to the finish includes the 21 fabled switchbacks of L’Alpe d’Huez.
FOOD or FUEL?
The main dietary goals during the indoor Tour are fueling for performance and recovery, and a rider’s diet significantly impacts performance. So much so that foods that you would not normally eat become new fuels during the last week of intensity.
During the indoor Tour, riders consume an average of 2000-3000 calories a day, more on particularly longer or harder days. Some of these calories are eaten during sit-down meals: breakfast, a pre-race meal, and dinner. The rest are consumed on the bike during the stage or through snacking in between meals. No matter the time of day, it is rare to see an indoorTour rider without either food or drink in his hand.
Riders break their traditional 40/30/30 eating plans and aim to get about 70% of their calories from carbohydrates (CHO), 15% from protein, and 15% from fat for the third week of the tour for performance on the 5 stages and three hour finale’. While endurance athletes burn a mixture of all three macronutrients for energy while riding, CHO is primary fuel for aerobic performance. When a rider is well below their lactate threshold, the energy coming from CHO and fat are somewhat balanced, but as the intensity increases and their aerobic engine can’t supply energy fast enough to meet the rising demand, the anaerobic energy system kicks in to fill the gap. Since this energy system primarily burns carbohydrate, the percentage of total energy coming from CHO increases as well.
The body can store fat very well, and even extremely lean riders have plenty of fat to use for fuel. In contrast, there is a limit to the amount of CHO you can store in muscles and in the liver: about 1250-1500 calories. Since this is only enough fuel for a few hours of riding, it is essential that riders ingest CHO during and between stages.
The importance of carbohydrate cannot be overstated. Not only is it the primary fuel source for endurance performance, it is the only fuel the brain and central nervous system can use. The brain cannot produce energy from fat or protein on its own, it can only take glucose (sugar) from the blood. This is part of the reason bonking (running low on blood sugar) is so detrimental to performance. The confusion, nausea, and disorientation that go along with bonking are more due to the brain running low on glucose than a problem with energy-starved muscles. When push comes to shove, the brain acts defensively to make sure it gets enough fuel. It forces you to slow down or stop exercising so it can use what sugar you have left to maintain your basic bodily functions.
Protein is also an important nutrient for endurance athletes. Long endurance riders derive 10-15% of their energy from protein, and it is also essential for tissue repair and immune system health. Since tissues are the main storage form of protein, riders have to make sure they ingest enough to prevent the body from breaking down muscle or connective tissue for energy, cellular repair, or the immune system.
It is hard work consuming upwards of 3000 calories a day, so cyclists, during indoor tour weeks or on long building periods in outdoor training, try to eat foods that are rich in calories and nutrients. During breakfast and dinner, they get their carbohydrates from pancakes, potatoes, rice, pasta, cereal, whole grain breads, and fruits and vegetables. Protein sources include eggs, meat, chicken, and yogurt. Their fat intake is usually the result of the way their meals are prepared. Willy, the Discovery Channel team’s chef, uses monounsaturated oils when he cooks, such as olive oil, and the team consumes some butter and cheese with meals as well.
On the bike, riders eat a mixture of energy gu's and bars, gels, pastries, sandwiches, fruit, and other foods. The outdoor tour soigneurs prepare musette bags with small sandwiches, often ham or turkey and cheese with butter on a roll, and some directors like to save the sweeter pastries until later in races. As strange as it sounds, a sweet treat still lifts people’s spirits, even animals like in the Tour de France. Our favorites are gu, figs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, as well as fruit like bananas on rides longer than one hour, etc.
Riders aim to ingest 250-350+ calories per hour while riding HIGH END. While some of this comes from the aforementioned foods, the rest comes from sports drinks. With the extremely hot weather in the Tour this year, riders are drinking between 2-3 bottles per hour on the bike, and it is important for about half of that fluid to be sports drink. Not only do sports drinks provide CHO, they are also an important source of electrolytes.
The central nervous system (CNS) controls every nerve impulse in the body, and needs sodium, potassium, and calcium to conduct electrical signals that contract muscles and run all bodily functions. You lose a lot of electrolytes through sweat. To prevent muscle cramps and more severe CNS consequences from losing too many electrolytes, riders try to make sure at least one of every three bottles they drink contains sports drink, with accompanying electrolyte tablets.
When a rider eats also influences performance. When they wake up, they have effectively undergone an 8-10 hour fast, so breakfast is an important start to the day on an intense stage ride day. Since indoor Tour stages typically begin in the early afternoon or evening, the riders also eat a pre-race meal about three hours before the start. This meal is almost entirely carbohydrate. In between the pre-race meal and the start, riders continue grazing on bars and fruit and they are almost never without a water bottle. Riders continue eating as soon as the stage begins and take small bits of food every 10-15 minutes.
Immediately following the stage rides, indoor or outdoor, tour riders create another musette bag or cooler containing more food and bottles. The big difference is that these post-stage bottles usually contain a recovery-oriented drink with a lot of carbohydrate and a little protein. The body is most efficient at replenishing CHO stores in the first 60 minutes after exercise, and a little bit of protein in the drink helps muscles absorb CHO from the bloodstream. The riders continue working on recovery on their way home, in the car, in the team bus; the Discovery Channel bus, for instance, is equipped with blenders so they can make smoothies on the way back to the hotel.
Poor nutrition or any sort of stomach problem causes serious problems for the Tour competitor. The energy and hydration demands of the events are so huge that even a slight caloric or fluid deficit spells big trouble. Learning proper nutritional and recovery habits is part of the learning process riders go through on their way to becoming successful riders. Younger and less experienced riders run into trouble because they get behind in their nutrition or hydration, and it is nearly impossible to catch back up.
You have to Step Up, Wake Up, and possibly Grow Up.
You have to take Responsibilities for your actions and your choices. These rides were meant to challenge you, as a person, as an athlete, as a project manager of your health, nutrtition, sleep, recovery. training, performance, attitude, and personal growth. Bonking is just unacceptable, you've been doing this too long, it's just bad management.
These rides were designed out of love with a spirit of challenge, no different than a few of us embrace on a regualr basis in our own racing seasons.
You've been awesome, you are awesome, you're prepared, you can do this... but you have to step up and take this seriously... IF you want to get results. ...if not, you can ride like all the others.
gary.
