How to fuel Cape to Cape | Oceania XCM Champ Brent Rees on fuelling an MTB stage race

In the cycling and off-road mountain biking world, beyond all the flashy mechanical advancements, the latest trends in performance and marginal gains have taken over the sport. This shift isn’t limited to professionals; it’s filtered down to amateurs, juniors, and hobbyists all striving to get the best results — and the best feeling — on the bike.

In my opinion, the most significant change in the past decade has been in nutrition, both on and off the bike.

Lately, there has been a notable shift in how we think about fuelling during training, racing, and recovery. The cycling scene has finally shed the harmful “eating is cheating” mentality that plagued the sport for years. Gone are the days of athletes restricting food and calories 24/7 — completing 5-hour training rides on water alone, then starving themselves to lose weight in an attempt to boost power-to-weight ratios.

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That outdated thinking has been replaced with a much healthier and scientifically backed philosophy: “High input = high output.” Studies continue to prove the enormous benefits of proper fuelling, not just for peak performance but also for recovery. There’s now a greater emphasis on achieving a healthy, sustainable body weight tailored to the individual and their racing goals.

This new perspective has led to a surge in performance across all levels of cycling. In fact, most endurance and stage races today are as much about how well you eat as they are about strength and stamina. The more your body can process and absorb, the more — and longer — you can perform.

Learning from the Best

I’m incredibly grateful to have had access to professional nutritional advice throughout my cycling journey. At one point, I worked with a full-time nutritionist who weighed everything I ate for months to meticulously track macro and micronutrients, as well as total calorie intake. While it was tedious, the experience taught me a great deal about what’s actually in the food we eat and how it affects performance.

That said, all nutritional advice should be approached with caution and personalised. Everyone is different, so it’s important to experiment and test fuelling strategies during training, not on race day. Smaller events can be great opportunities to fine-tune your approach before your big goal race — like Cape to Cape.

Quick disclaimer: I’m not a qualified nutritionist — just sharing the knowledge I’ve gained racing across Australia and around the world.

Pre-Race Nutrition

Over the years, I’ve embraced a “simple is best” approach to nutrition. The two main considerations for pre-race fuelling are timing and what you’re eating.

Cycling is an endurance sport with consistent high energy expenditure and explosive bursts. The body primarily uses carbohydrates to fuel these efforts, so maximising your carb intake before, during, and after the ride is key to keeping glycogen stores full and performance high.

Research suggests aiming for 3g of carbs per kilogram of body weight, around three hours before your event. Stick with low-fibre, high-GI foods like white rice, white bread, or pasta to avoid digestive issues on the start line.

Examples:

• ½ cup of dry white rice with honey, banana, salt, and yoghurt can provide 150–200g of carbs (depending on quantities and yoghurt type).
• A large glass of juice with three slices of white toast topped with jam, peanut butter, or honey also packs in 150g+ of carbs.

That main meal three hours out gives your body enough time to digest, so you’re not bloated when it’s go-time. Then, top off glycogen stores with a small carb-based snack about 30 minutes before the start.

In hot climates—or if you’re a heavy sweater—electrolyte or sodium supplementation is also wise to prevent cramping.

On-the-Bike Fuelling

The goal during the race remains the same: get in enough carbs. Professional athletes aim for 80–120g of carbs per hour, but for most riders without years of gut training, 60–100g per hour is a solid target.

These carbs can come from drink mixes, gels, chews, lollies—whatever your body tolerates best.

Example fuelling plan for a three-hour Cape to Cape stage:

• 1 bottle of plain water (cleanses the palate and provides a neutral option)
• 1 bottle with 75g of carbohydrate/electrolyte drink mix
• 6 energy gels across the stage:
  • 1 gel on the start line (15 minutes before)
  • 1 x 30g gel every 30 minutes

Total carbs = 255g over three hours (~85g/hour)

It’s essential to practice this fuelling plan well before race day. Incorporate your drink mix during training rides and simulate race-day intensity at least three times to fine-tune your body’s response.

An important side note:

It’s worth diving a little deeper into the type of sugar being used, especially when trying to maximise carbohydrate intake for fuelling. Since the body can only absorb a limited amount of carbohydrate per hour, failing to balance glucose and fructose intake can lead to issues. Recent research suggests that a 1:0.8 glucose-to-fructose ratio may result in better carbohydrate uptake by the muscles, potentially improving performance, particularly during prolonged endurance efforts.

Why the 1:0.8 ratio?

Research shows that including slightly more glucose to fructose can enhance overall carbohydrate absorption, enabling higher intake with a reduced risk of gastrointestinal discomfort. Most gels and drink mixes will be based around this ratio, using various carbohydrate sources. SIS, Maurten, Carbs Fuel, Fixx Nutrition (Ed’s note: Brent is currently a Fixx Nutrition athlete), and a number of others all use this ratio.

Some other products like Neversecond, Infinite Nutrition’s high-carb blends and Precision Hydration use a 2:1 glucose to fructose ratio. Which is the right one for you? That I can’t tell you, try them all and see what you like.

Common types of carbs | Decoding the ingredients list

Carbs can be broadly subdivided into sugars, starches and fibres. Sugars and starches are what you want to focus on to fuel an endurance event. When you look at the ingredients list on your drink mix or gels, you’ll see many very long words that seemingly require a degree in dietetics to understand.

Here’s a basic overview to help you understand and cut through some of the most common long words you’ll find on the label of your drink mix.

Simple sugars

Glucose and fructose are simple sugars (monosaccharides), but are absorbed at different speeds and through different processes in the body. This is why consuming multiple sources of carbs is key to race fueling.

On average, you’re body can only absorb about one gram of glucose per minute — any more than that, it will be left sitting in your gut. Fructose can only be absorbed at about half that rate, but uses a different protein transporter and must be processed by the liver into glucose or lactate before your muscles can use it.

With that in mind, you’d only be able to process ~60g of glucose or ~30g of fructose using each of these as a single source, but together you can theoretically absorb 90g — again, everyone is a little different, and your gut can be trained to do more.

You may also see dextrose in the ingredients list. This is a simple sugar that’s chemically equivalent to glucose, but is derived from corn.

Disaccharides are made up of two monosaccharides, but are still considered simple sugars. The main types you see in ride nutrition are sucrose, which is one glucose molecule and one fructose molecule, and maltose, which is a pair of glucose molecules.

Complex Carbs

Complex carbs, starches or polysaccharides are longer chain molecules that generally digest more slowly. However, the star of the show in most ride nutrition, maltodextrin, is an exception to this rule because of its structure.

Maltodextrin is a complex carbohydrate containing ~10-20 glucose molecules, but it’s probably the most common ingredient in gels and drink mixes. Made mainly from cornstarch, your body can rapidly convert it into glucose because the amylase in your saliva starts to break down the bonds of the unbranched molecule, and it has a low osmolality, meaning your body doesn’t need much water to digest it.

Fancy carbs

Cluster dextrin is a highly branched carbohydrate molecule derived from corn starch, containing ~60-70 glucose molecules. What that means is it’s a soluble carb that passes through the gut quickly to lessen the possibility of gastric distress. But unlike maltodextrin, where the bonds holding the molecules together all break down at once, making for a speedy release of glucose, the bonds holding cluster dextrin take longer to break. This means a slower release of those glucose molecules and a prolonged fuel source for your muscles.

Hydrogels

Hydrogel is the current marketing buzzword, and the research is still developing as to whether they help your body to process more carbs. If you see pectin or sodium alginate on the ingredients list, you, my friend, are looking at a hydrogel.

The idea here is that when these ingredients hit your stomach acid, they form a gel that helps them pass through your stomach into the intestines faster, also known as gastric emptying. When your body is already maxed out and cannot process any more, and still you have a stomach full of carbs, is when you start to get the nausea and stomach cramping.

Again, the research into hydrogels is still ongoing, but the products containing pectin or sodium alginate are often expensive.

Cramping | What should you do when you get a cramp?

There are a number of different types and mechanisms of cramping in the human body, but the twinge you feel in your quad during a mountain bike race is likely Exercise-Associated Muscle Cramping (EAMC). These are short involuntary contractions of skeletal muscle during or after exercise.

The reason why you may be having cramps during a mountain bike ride or race could be caused by a number of reasons — poor fueling, undertraining, training the wrong aerobic system, electrolyte balance, sleep deprivation, illness, overheating, biomechanical issues, the list goes on and on.

However, the actual mechanism of the cramp is caused when the small muscles wrapping sensory organs fatigue, which causes misleading nerve signals to be transmitted to the spine and then back to the muscle. This spinal reflex initiates the uncontrollable and sometimes debilitating cramps.

Ensuring you’re properly hydrated and prepared for a race can stave off cramping; once it happens, it can be challenging to overcome. But there is a nifty trick backed by an increasing body of science to stymy these involuntary muscle contractions.

Because the cramp is a spinal reflex gone awry, if you can initiate another spinal reflex above the origin of the cramp, you can effectively trick your nervous system into forgetting about the cramps in your legs.

If you’ve ever had a cramp fix product or pickle juice, it’s not the sodium content which alleviates the cramp; it’s the oropharyngeal reflex that causes your face to pucker when it hits your tongue. Essentially, this creates enough noise to force your brain to focus on puckering your face, leaving your legs to keep spinning.

There are a number of products designed to taste horrible that will elicit this response, which also have a whole bunch of sodium to help you take on more electrolytes. In a pinch, mustard packets, hot sauce and, of course, good old-fashioned pickle juice can also have the same results.

Recovery | The Most Underrated Performance Gain

The recovery process is one of the most underrated performance boosters — and the best part? It can be mega simple to execute. In an age where marginal gains flood our Instagram feeds, sometimes doing less is actually more.

Recovery really comes down to two key elements:

• Fuelling post-stage with protein and carbohydrates
• Targeted rest, where you consciously relax and bring your heart rate down, allowing your parasympathetic nervous system to take over and do its thing.

I recommend travelling with a protein powder that’s easily accessible after the stage. Try to consume it within 20 minutes of finishing, as this is when your muscles are most primed to absorb protein and begin the recovery process.

Once you’ve had time to clean up, pack the car, and debrief the day’s adventures with your mates, it’s a great time to get in a solid high-carb meal. That could be:

• A pizza from the event centre
• A big serve of hot chips
• Or some pre-packed leftovers like chicken and rice or pasta from the night before

The goal is to refuel and relax, setting your body up to go again the next day.