If you plan to spend more than ninety minutes on the bike
you should consider taking on calories starting at the first hour. You can eat your calories in the form of
gels, bars, blocks, candy or good old fashioned food, you can drink your
calories in the form of energy drinks, or you can do a combination of both.
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| Which one is actually an "Energy Drink?" |
After three years of eating my calories and drinking only
water I’ve decided to change my ways and return to my old methodology of
drinking the majority of my calories and only eating enough to provide some degree
of satiation. This is because I’ve found
it nearly impossible to dig food out of my jersey pocket, upwrap it and ingest
it all while attempting to hold position in a fast paceline. If I’m alone going long and slow sure I’ll
eat, but if I’m hammering on a group ride I find that tend to forgo eating and
end up bonking.
The first step in finding a suitable energy drink is
determining what is an “energy” drink and what isn’t. “Energy drink” or “sports drink” are kind of catch-all
terms, and don’t really tell you too much about what you are
buying/drinking. More accurate terminology
would be: electrolyte replacement drink, stimulation drink, and energy drink.
Gatorade, Skratch, Nuun, Powerade and similar products are
electrolyte replacement drinks, they are designed to replace minerals that you
sweat out during exercise, but contain few calories (i.e. energy). These products are great if you’re getting
the bulk of your calories via food, but don’t count on them to ward of bonking.
Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar and similar products are sold as
“energy” drinks,but they provide little in the way of energy (once again we’re
talking calories here). A better name
for this type of product would be “stimulation” drink, because they stimulate
an adrenal (fight or flight) response. A
stimulation drink may be effective before a short race such as a criterium or Cyclocross
event but the “energy” spike they provide isn’t going to get you through a long
training session or road race.
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| Perpetuem - 2.5 scoops per bottle |
Carbopro, Sustained Energy (Hammer), Perpetuem (Hammer) and
Infinit are examples of true energy drinks, in other words they provide
calories. Some products, such as
Carbopro, are calories and only calories, others, such as the Hammer products
and Infinit provide both calories and electrolytes. Some brands tout the ideal carbohydrate to
protein ratio and other miscellaneous claims, I’d recommend ignoring all that
and just find a product that yields somewhere north of three hundred calories
per bottle (a good rule of thumb is to figure out if you can get three hundred
calories out of three scoops). Three hundred
calories per hour after the first hour of exercise is a good rule of thumb, so
if you’re going out for three hours plan on drinking two bottles.
The biggest problem to overcome when finding a suitable energy drink is
finding something that your stomach can handle.
The bulk of the calories in all of these drinks comes in the form of
carbohydrates, some examples are fructose, sucrose, glucose, dextrose and
maltodextrin. You are going to have to
look at labels and figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. If you feel bloating and GI upset then you
know it didn’t work. Buy the single
serving packs, find out what works (or more importantly what doesn’t) before
you invest the forty to fifty bucks on the big jug.
I find that the Hammer products to be fairly tolerable, but
what you have to remember about Hammer is that they don’t use preservatives so only
add water just prior to the ride/race and clean out your bottles that same day.
