140 grams of carbs an hour. Six Lotto-Intermarché riders, a three-hour test at 250 watts, with Professor Jan Boone and Kobe Vermeire, for a UGent study. The limit was 120. It has moved.
I heard it on the workshop radio, a 15mm spanner in my hand. Carbs, I never see them. I see what carries them: the bidon and the musette. And I have a question nobody is asking. Who rinses the bidons?
Because a sugary bidon, you know it, sticks. The cap sticks, the valve sticks, the cage sticks if the bidon has leaked. I know. On Sundays, in the van, I have a crate coming back from the race and waiting for hot water. The more sugar in it, the longer it waits.
Kobe Vermeire says Lotto-Intermarché is not the only team looking in this direction, but that its study with pro riders is unique. Fine. At my place, the study is unique too: a long-handled brush, a washing-up bowl, and the garden hose I get back out in October for the cyclocross.
Jan Boone told HLN: “If we manage to increase the amount of carbohydrates a rider can absorb and burn, he can keep performing at the same level for longer, including in the last hour of a race.” I know the last hour too. It is the one where the bottle cage starts to creak because a screw came loose on the first cobble.
The creak of the last hour, you heard it better from the back. At the front, there was the motorbike.
I’ll go and tighten the club’s bottle cages, then. And buy more brushes, mind you.
It’s true, we checked: HLN.
