Why nutrition decides how your ride ends
Nutrition is probably the worst understood part of amateur cycling. Most of what is out there is written by brands that want to sell you their gel, so the message always ends in "take this product". We go the other way. We tell you what your body needs when you ride and how to cover it, without pointing you at a brand.
This is the nutrition pillar of the MoguWind blog, and behind it is Bidón, the free tool that builds a plan for your next ride. No accounts, no signing up, free.
Cycling nutrition guides
Below you have the most recent guides, ordered by date, and at the end the most read. It runs from the basics, what to have for breakfast, to the fine detail, how many grams of sodium you need if you sweat buckets in August.
The three moments of cycling nutrition
Everything you eat around the bike fits into three moments. Mixing them up is where most mistakes start.
Before. Set off with your glycogen stores full and well hydrated, but without an overloaded stomach. It depends a lot on how long before you eat. A big meal needs 3 hours, something lighter 1 or 2, a quick snack 30 minutes.
During. The goal changes. Now it is keeping blood sugar steady and replacing fluid and salts. The general range is 30 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour depending on intensity and duration, and 500 to 1000 ml of water per hour depending on heat and how much you sweat.
After. The first 2 hours after the effort are when the body refills glycogen best. Take carbohydrate and protein there, in a ratio of about 3 to 1. Each moment has its own article on the blog. This pillar is the way in.
How much to eat, in grams, per hour on the bike
The short answer is that it depends. The useful answer is this.
For a ride of under 90 minutes at low or medium intensity, you do not need to eat anything during the ride if you had a good breakfast. A bottle with water and salts is enough.
For rides of 90 minutes to 3 hours, between 30 and 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour. That is roughly 1 energy gel or 1 bar every 45 minutes.
For rides over 3 hours or high intensity, you can go up to 60-90 grams per hour, with the warning that your stomach has to be trained to absorb that amount, and not everyone tolerates it.
Once you go past 90 grams per hour you enter professional cycling territory, with dual carbohydrate transporter protocols (glucose plus fructose in a 2:1 ratio) that let the gut absorb up to 120 grams per hour. This is useful on very long events or gran fondos but it needs practice beforehand.
Each of these ranges has nuances we cover in the specific articles on the blog. What matters here is that you see the structure.
Get an exact nutrition plan for your next ride, free.
Build your plan in Bidón →How much water to drink, in millilitres, per hour
The answer also depends, this time above all on temperature and on how much you personally sweat.
In cool conditions (below 15°C), between 400 and 600 ml per hour is usually enough.
In mild conditions (15-25°C), between 600 and 800 ml per hour.
In warm conditions (25-35°C), between 800 and 1000 ml per hour, and often more for heavy sweaters.
Above 35°C it stops being about drinking. Thermoregulation as a whole takes over, and there what you change is the start time or the route, not the bottle.
Drinking a lot of water without salts is not the answer either. The more you sweat, the more sodium you lose, and drinking only water can end in hyponatremia (dilution of blood sodium) that gives symptoms like dehydration but needs the opposite treatment. Mineral salts, at least in moderate amounts, are needed on any long ride or in summer.
The products on the market, in short
In the cycling ecosystem there are four main categories of nutrition products.
Energy gels. Roughly 20-30 g of carbohydrate per unit, fast absorption (10-20 minutes). Easy to carry, useful in low moments. They exist with and without caffeine, with and without electrolytes.
Energy bars. More complete than gels, 20-40 g of carbohydrate with some protein and fat. Slower absorption but more filling. Better for long rides where you will get bored of the sweet taste.
Isotonic drinks. They combine carbohydrate with salts, in concentrations the gut absorbs efficiently. They replace water plus gel for many cyclists, with hydration added in.
Pure salts or electrolytes. No calories, only sodium, potassium, magnesium. Useful when you already have enough carbohydrate and only need to replace salts.
On the blog we explain when each category makes sense, without recommending specific brands. The final decision depends on your gut tolerance, your taste preferences and your budget.
The classic mistakes that lead to the bonk
The bonk, that moment when the legs shut down and the head stops working, always has the same cause. You have emptied your glycogen stores and not been topping them up. It happened to me once on a nothing climb, 30 km from home, for setting off without breakfast thinking I could hold on. I could not. The mistakes that get you there are almost always the same.
Setting off without breakfast. Zero stores at the start, the bonk arrives sooner.
Starting to eat when you are already hungry. When you feel hunger on the bike, you are already 20-30 minutes behind. You have to eat before you are hungry.
Drinking only water on long rides. You lose sodium, cramps appear, performance drops without you knowing why.
A single kind of carbohydrate in high doses. The gut saturates the glucose transporters above 60 g/h. If you need more, it has to be a glucose plus fructose mix.
Trying new products on event day. Any new gel, bar or drink gets tested in training first. The stomach on the big day is not for experiments.
How Bidón sorts this out without making you do the maths
Bidón is the answer to the question "fine, but how much and when exactly". You tell it what route you are doing (or hand it the GPX), your weight, your level and your preferences, and it gives you a concrete plan. At this minute, eat this and drink this, at that minute, repeat. No brands, no sponsors, just the maths of what your body needs.
Like the rest of the MoguWind suite, it is always free. No sign ups, no email, no data we sell to anyone. You can send the plan straight to your bottle (device/experience) or leave it in automatic mode so it adjusts as you go.
Nutrition adjusts to the ride you are doing
A common mistake is to think of nutrition apart from the route. The route rules. A ride with a strong headwind burns 20 to 30% more energy than the same one without wind, so you eat more. A hot one makes you sweat and drink more. The plan bends to the real conditions of that day, not to a generic table.
That is why Bidón builds the plan taking into account the forecast wind profile (integrated with MoguWind Plan), the total climbing and the estimated temperature. It is not a generic table, it is a plan built for that route on that day.