Long Ride with Nutrition Practice: 90-Minute Fuelling Session

Session Overview

This 90-minute ride combines aerobic base building with nutrition rehearsal. Most athletes train the three disciplines extensively but never deliberately practise eating and drinking on the bike. This session fixes that — every 20 minutes you’ll take on fuel exactly as you plan to in your next race.

What You’ll Need

• Road or tri bike, or turbo trainer
• Race-day nutrition: gels, bars, or chews — enough for 60–80g carbs per hour
• Two 750ml water bottles (or a hydration system for long outdoor rides)
• GPS watch or computer with lap timer
• Heart rate monitor or power meter (useful but not essential)

Warm-Up (15 minutes)

15 minutes easy riding at zone 1–2 (RPE 3–4/10). Build cadence to 90rpm and let the legs loosen naturally. At the 10-minute mark, take a small sip of water and note how it feels to drink while pedalling at this effort — you’re already rehearsing race-day behaviour.

Main Set

60 minutes of steady aerobic effort at zone 2 to low zone 3 (RPE 5–6/10) — conversational pace where you could speak in short sentences. The discipline here is staying in zone 2 and fuelling on a strict schedule, not riding hard.

• Minutes 15–35: steady effort at RPE 5–6; take your first gel or bar at the 20-minute mark and note palatability, ease of opening, and any stomach response
• Minutes 35–55: continue at same effort; take nutrition again at minutes 40–45; keep sipping water every 10 minutes
• Minutes 55–75: maintain effort; final nutrition intake at minutes 60–65; aim for 500–750ml of fluid consumed total by this point

Cool-Down (15 minutes)

Reduce to zone 1 for 15 minutes. Use this time to assess your nutrition strategy: was the product too sweet at speed? Difficult to open with one hand? Did you feel any GI discomfort? Write down your notes immediately — these are the insights that prevent nutrition disasters on race day.

Coaching Notes

• Practise unwrapping gels and bars with one hand while maintaining control of the bike — this is a skill, and it gets faster with repetition
• Aim for a minimum of 60g of carbohydrate per hour for any ride over 75 minutes; under-fuelling on long rides compounds fatigue in the final third
• If you experience bloating or discomfort, try reducing the quantity per intake and spacing it more evenly — some athletes do better on 4 smaller intakes than 2 large ones
• Use this session to finalise what you’ll carry on race day: gels, bars, or liquid nutrition — whatever works in training is what you race with