HOW TO FUEL GUIDE: CYCLING TIME TRIALS

"The race of truth." This is how cycling time trials are often called, probably because, unlike other types of cycling races - such as road mass start races or criterium races - time trials quickly expose and relentlessly exploit all your weaknesses. For a successful time trial, many things must work correctly, and proper pacing of effort is especially important. If you start too hard, as the race progresses, you will increasingly just cling on and suffer, instead of gradually getting stronger and faster.

The world's best time trial riders often make this discipline look easy, yet they would probably be the first to say that it is not at all. If you have completed a time trial properly, your body's energy stores will be completely depleted when you cross the finish line.

Like criterium races, preparing for and competing in time trials is v-e-r-y difficult. Fortunately, nutrition is much simpler. This guide will help with that. Before we move on to nutritional suggestions and strategy, here is some basic information.

5 SIMPLE WAYS YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR SPORTS PERFORMANCE NOW

There are many steps you can take to improve your sports performance - and you should. The following are particularly easy to implement. Start them immediately, and you will soon notice significant improvements in your endurance and overall training performance.

1) Stay properly hydrated throughout the day

Since your body is about 60% water, it is vital to maintain optimal hydration levels throughout the day. Unfortunately, many people - perhaps including you - live in a state of continuous mild dehydration, which adversely affects sports performance and general health.

From now on, gradually increase your fluid intake, primarily by consuming clean, good quality water. Drink approximately 33–39 ml of fluid per kilogram of body weight per day. For an 82 kg athlete, this means 2.7–3.2 liters of fluid per day, in addition to the amount consumed during training. During exercise, consume 473–769 ml of fluid per hour.

2) Moderate your nutrition intake

It may be interesting to know how many calories you burn per hour during exercise, but this value does not determine how many calories your body can absorb from nutrition. The goal of calorie intake is to consume the minimum possible amount that keeps your energy levels at the desired and necessary level hour by hour.

For most athletes, this means 120–180 calories per hour. Athletes weighing more than 91 kg can consume 200 or slightly more calories per hour. If you find this to be insufficient, you can easily adjust it: simply consume a little more. It is always easier to resolve a situation where energy intake was too low than one where you overdid your nutrition and your stomach is already protesting.

3) Eliminate sugar

Most sports fuels consist of short-chain carbohydrates, i.e., simple sugars – glucose, sucrose, fructose, and other similar sugars. Hammer Nutrition fuels do not contain simple sugars. Instead, we use complex carbohydrates, maltodextrin.

Maltodextrin and certain simple sugars both rapidly increase energy levels, which is a desirable property. However, simple sugars consist of only one or two saccharide molecules, so energy levels can drop almost as quickly. After a few good minutes, you have to fight your way out of an energy deficit for another few minutes. This is often called a "quick rise and crash" and hardly makes winter sports or other physical activities enjoyable.

Maltodextrin is composed of many loosely linked saccharide molecules, so it provides fast-acting, yet much longer-lasting energy without extreme fluctuations in energy levels. Another advantage is that the body can digest and utilize larger amounts of calories for energy production without slowing down transit through the digestive system. You can efficiently digest up to three times more calories from maltodextrin than from any simple sugar, essentially eliminating the occurrence of stomach upset.

4) Do not eat in the three hours before training, races, and events

By not consuming calories in the three hours before training, racing, or other sporting events, your body enters an ideal physiological state to utilize its limited muscle glycogen stores as efficiently as possible. In parallel, it gains more effective access to the vast amount of energy available in body fat stores.

Apply this practice to all your workouts, even early morning ones. You can expect significant improvements in your endurance within a relatively short period.

Note: If you absolutely need some calories before starting your effort, consuming an easily digestible energy source, such as a serving of Hammer Gel, 5–10 minutes before the start is acceptable. Do not consume it earlier than that.

5) "Refuel the tank" as soon as possible after every workout

Your body wants to reward your workout efforts by strengthening the immune system, rebuilding muscle tissue, and storing larger amounts of readily available fuel in the muscles, i.e., glycogen. To achieve these endurance-supporting benefits, all that is required is to immediately provide your body with the necessary nutrients.

Ideally, this should happen within the first 30 minutes after exercise. The sooner, the better. You need complex carbohydrates and high-quality protein, such as that found in Recoverite and Vegan Recoverite.

SUPPLEMENT RECOMMENDATIONS

Race Day Boost

The Race Day Boost loading protocol, performed over the four days preceding a race – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for a Saturday race – saturates the body's cells with trisodium phosphate. Numerous studies support the beneficial effects of this compound on sports performance.

Trisodium phosphate supports the function of all three energy production systems – the ATP–CP system, the lactic acid system, and the oxygen-based, aerobic system – making it an excellent ergogenic aid. Race Day Boost improves the performance of the body's short-, medium-, and long-term energy production systems. No other product can do this. Since studies with trisodium phosphate involved athletes completing a 40 km cycling time trial, it is self-evident that Race Day Boost is a perfect choice for time trials.

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