{"id":1920,"date":"2020-09-08T15:21:45","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T15:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/ie\/?p=1920"},"modified":"2020-09-08T15:21:45","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T15:21:45","slug":"tour-de-france-race-nutrition-mountain-stages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/ie\/2020\/09\/08\/tour-de-france-race-nutrition-mountain-stages\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France Race Nutrition \u2013 Mountain Stages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The amount of food that Tour riders have to eat can change a lot from day to day. A flat stage requires a lot less carbs and energy than you might think as we discussed in the previous article. A hard mountain stage is the opposite. Riders often struggle to be able to digest enough food to cover their energy needs.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Mountain stages are often crucial for the general classification race. The Tour nutrition goal of every rider is to start the mountain stage with a full tank of energy, ingest as many carbs as possible on the bike and continue eating a lot to recover well. This is what a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.letour.fr\/en\/overall-route\">hard mountain-stage<\/a> fuelling plan might look like.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The day before<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>It\u2019s essential to start preparing the day before to replenish the glycogen reserves overnight. That\u2019s why dinner usually consists of a big serving of carbs in the form of white rice. Some protein source like chicken is typically included too. Riders are often also given a high-carb dessert like pancakes or a fruit pie to really get as much energy in as possible. The aim is to get about 2-3 g of carbs per 1 kg of bodyweight.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1923\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1923\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/2\/2020\/08\/pexels-dmytro-2732666.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1923 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/pexels-dmytro-2732666-1024x674.jpg\" alt=\"Nutrition\" width=\"1024\" height=\"674\" srcset=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/pexels-dmytro-2732666-1024x674.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/pexels-dmytro-2732666-300x197.jpg 300w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/pexels-dmytro-2732666-768x505.jpg 768w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/pexels-dmytro-2732666.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1923\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Riders are often given high-carb desserts like pancakes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><strong>Breakfast<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Breakfast contains the usual omelette, rice, and juice but much larger portions than before a flat stage. And riders will often go for pancakes with jam to hit the desired 2-3 g of carbs per 1 kg of bodyweight.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>On the bike<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The amount of energy bars, rice cakes, and gels riders have to eat is crazy high for mountain stages. A 6-hour stage can easily require 20 pieces of such carb snacks. But the secret weapons in mountain stages are energy drinks. Pro teams use special multi-source drinks that allow riders to absorb up to 90 g of carbs per hour.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1926\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1926\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/profimedia-0402730951.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1926 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/profimedia-0402730951.jpg\" alt=\"Tour Diet\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" srcset=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/profimedia-0402730951.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/profimedia-0402730951-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/profimedia-0402730951-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/09\/profimedia-0402730951-272x182.jpg 272w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1926\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A 6-hour stage can easily require 20 pieces of carb snacks. \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><strong>Recovery<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>All of this heavy eating continues even when the riders finish and get off the bike. They start with a large recovery drink, later they continue with rice with syrup to get a huge amount of carbs in, and they often keep snacking on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2017\/05\/02\/energy-bars-choose-right-one\/\">energy bars<\/a>, fruits, and even candy. This recovery stage calls for up to 5 g of carbs per 1 kg of bodyweight.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Dinner<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The size of their dinner varies depending on what stage comes next. Unless it\u2019s a rest day or an easy flat stage, the riders will still aim to eat 2-3 g of carbs per 1 kg of bodyweight and a good amount of protein to fulfil their Tour nutrition plan. They might have rice with salmon and fruit juice. Tour de France pros end the mountain-stage day with 15 g of carbs per 1 kg bodyweight or even higher. Don\u2019t try this at home!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The amount of food that Tour riders have to eat can change a lot from day to day. A flat [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":1932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[91],"global-categories":[],"class_list":["post-1920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nutrition-training","tag-tour-de-france-2020"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.3 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tour de France Race Nutrition \u2013 In the Mountain Stages<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/ie\/2020\/09\/08\/tour-de-france-race-nutrition-mountain-stages\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tour de France Race Nutrition \u2013 Mountain Stages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The amount of food that Tour riders have to eat can change a lot from day to day. 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