UCI Gravel World Championships

Florian followed his fueling plan to perfection, and since the lead group was faster than anticipated, he ended up consuming more than the ~118g/h he achieved at the World Champs last year and his 120g/h target. We’re seeing more and more elite level riders like Florian push higher than the recommended 90g of carb per hour, even over 120g/h, but this takes huge amounts of gut training. Florian and his teammates practise this year after year, and he even estimated pre-race he would have drunk over 500 bottles of PF Carb Only Drink Mix this season alone!

Florian missed two of his bottle handoffs on the day, which can certainly happen even to the best during hard and fast racing. Thankfully, Florian had prepared for this with backup options, managing to pick up two individual bottles and two musettes during the race, each with two bottles, which enabled him to hit his pre-planned ~1L per hour fluid intake. This is an impressive intake over a race where drinking is logistically challenging, and even though the conditions were mild, the relative exercise intensity was extremely high, so Florian would still have been sweating a lot. In addition to gut training for fuel intake, Florian has also used this protocol to improve his fluid tolerance. With his low-moderate sweat sodium concentration, he has built an individualised replacement strategy of ~50% PF Carb & Electrolyte Drink Mix and ~50% PF Carb Only Drink Mix to closely match the concentration of his losses.

With only two PF 30 Caffeine Gels on race day in Belgium, Florian fell just short of the general recommendations. Making his final pre-race carb dose a Caffeine Gel and/or swapping out another one or two of his PF 30 Gels for additional PF 30 Caffeine Gels could maximise the ergogenic effects from the stimulant, as there is some evidence to show even a moderate dose (4-6mg/kg) to have a significant impact on performance in comparison to a smaller, 1-3mg/kg dose like Florian consumed here.