{"id":639265,"date":"2026-04-30T20:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/639265\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T20:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:04:12","slug":"sports-science-writer-alex-hutchinson-on-how-the-high-carb-craze-has-changed-fuelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/639265\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports science writer Alex Hutchinson on how the high-carb craze has changed fuelling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the 2022 Tour of Flanders? That\u2019s when Mathieu van der Poel took his second victory in that Monument. Afterwards, images of a sticker on his stem surfaced. It seemed to be his fuelling strategy in code. Some code breakers<\/a> figured he was taking in roughly 120 g of carbs per hour. That was a key point in the high-carb revolution that we\u2019re in the midst of today.<\/p>\n

On the latest episode of the Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast, which is a special cross-over episode with our colleagues at Canadian Running Magazine, Shakeout Podcast host John Gay speaks with sports science writer Alex Hutchinson<\/a> about the current high-carb fuelling practices in running and cycling. The discussion applies to marathon runners, Tour de France riders, and even cyclists like you. Below are some highlights, edited for clarity, from the in-depth discussion.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

SUBSCRIBE Apple Podcasts<\/a> | Spotify<\/a> | Pocket Casts<\/a> | YouTube<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | Simplecast<\/a> | RSS<\/a><\/p>\n

John Gay: Was there a moment that you can point to where high-carb fuelling practices came into the mainstream?<\/p>\n

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, the first was when Eliud Kipchoge was running the Breaking2 marathon project in 2017<\/a>. He was using this new product called Maurten<\/a>, which was carbohydrates encapsulated in a hydrogel. I had no idea what they meant by that. At the time, that wasn\u2019t so much the idea of taking huge amounts of carbohydrates, but it was the idea that, wait, there\u2019s still innovation to be done within the realm of how quickly and how effectively we get carbohydrates to our muscles. So that generated some interest.<\/p>\n

Then, for me, the next beat would probably be in 2022 in the cycling world. There was a photo that went around of Mathieu van der Poel\u2019s nutrition plan taped to his handlebars. It showed when he was going to take gels and drinks throughout. People added up the numbers and they\u2019re like, \u2018He\u2019s taking, like, 120 g per hour of carbohydrates.\u2019 But the sports nutrition guidelines only say 60 to 90 g. So that\u2019s when I started making some calls and looking into the science. I realized that this carb trend had been going on for a while\u2014in fact, for four or five years in the peloton where athletes were taking way more than scientists were recommending.<\/p>\n

John Gay: What\u2019s the role of carbohydrates in recovery?<\/p>\n

Alex Hutchinson: Studies have shown that even the people on a high-carb diet only have about 60 per cent of fuel in their tanks the morning after a hard workout the day before. It takes maybe 24 hours to restock. For most of us, we\u2019re doing another run before that, so there\u2019s this constant battle to stay fuelled. It\u2019s very hard to get back to full fuelling by the next day.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re riding in the Tour de France and you wait until the end of a stage to try to refuel, you\u2019re fighting an uphill battle simply to get in enough carbohydrate and to have enough hours to get refuelled before the next day. So, by taking in more carbs during that exercise, even if some of them you don\u2019t even use during your run or your Tour de France stage or whatever, you\u2019re ahead of the game in terms of fuelling for the next day. I think for cyclists, that\u2019s probably the most significant, because they\u2019re doing three weeks of back to back to back racing.<\/p>\n

For more, listen to the full episode, embedded above. Even better, subscribe to the Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast (and the Shakeout Podcast<\/a>, too) on your podcatcher of choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remember the 2022 Tour of Flanders? That\u2019s when Mathieu van der Poel took his second victory in that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82,11588],"class_list":["post-639265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}