﻿-Paris–Roubaix, the hell of the North, without question
one of the toughest and most brutal races in all of cycling.
It's long at over 250 kilometers, but the riders also have to deal
with the fearsome cobbled sections, and the weather
can be really tough as well,
but in such a long, fast, technically demanding and chaotic race,
how do the pros find time to eat, and what do they eat?
Well, to find out the answers to those questions and more,
I've come to speak to Trek–Segafredo sports dietitian,
Stephanie Scheirlynck.
Now, many of us, including myself,
are never actually going to race Paris–Roubaix,
but hopefully, the information that we can find out
will be applicable to any long cycling events that we do too.
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-I'm now on the Trek–Segafredo team bus and I'm joined by Stephanie
who's going to talk us through
the nutrition that the guys use during Roubaix.
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-What do the guys eat before a huge race like Paris–Roubaix?
-Well, everything starts the day before actually
because in the morning, there's not enough time
to really load up for something as heavy as Roubaix.
We always start a day before.
Obviously, there's not a lot of training
on that day, but we try to let them eat
as if it was a training day so that their body can actually
not burn the carbs and the energy we give them, but stock it
like a reserve for tomorrow.
-What sort of things are they eating and what sort of things
do they not eat?
-What sort of things do they eat? The focus is on carbs.
It's their fuel for tomorrow, so it means bigger
quantities of pasta, rice, bread, bananas, oats,
cereals, everything that contains carbs.
What do they not eat? French fries, chocolate. Why not?
It's not that it's forbidden for them, totally not, but on that day,
the more they eat of fat foods, the less they will
eat of carbs and that's actually what they need.
They eat bigger quantities than other days, but they
don't eat until they get sick.
A lot of recreational cyclists very often think that riders really
overload themselves, but that's not actually true.
-How strictly is it monitored?
Are they weighing the amount of carbohydrates and calculating
the exact amounts of carbohydrates that they're taking on?
Is it just a bit more relaxed than that?
-It's a bit more relaxed because they are used to it.
We have a home nutrition system, and on some
days at home, they also need to try this out.
When they come to the races, they don't need
a scale to measure everything because they
actually know how a portion of pasta looks like the day before Roubaix.
-You mentioned there, pasta and I've heard other
dietitians and nutritionists say that the riders are
eating pasta, but there's a lot of people watching at home,
there's a bit of a trend going on, isn't there?
Anti-gluten. What's happening?
Are the riders avoiding gluten, or is that not a thing?
-It depends. Every rider is different.
There are riders who feel like they better avoid gluten.
For them, we take rice or we take a pasta because there are
different kinds of pasta without gluten as well,
but it's not something we standardly recommend to eat gluten-free.
It depends on who you are and how you feel about having gluten.
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-Moving on to the morning of the race,
what are the guys then having for breakfast?
-Thanks to the day before, they already have energy in their bodies.
What do we have? Most riders have a mix.
They don't eat a whole bowl of oats,
overload it, but they eat some oats, maybe an egg,
some bread, some pancakes.
Those are really something they like a lot.
Pancakes are really good because
if you make them yourself, you can choose which
kind of fluids or which kind of milk you use.
You can take less eggs and add more carbs.
Actually, that's a good thing to do at home as well, but no
croissants, not too much bacon and eggs because on that day,
you might be nervous as well and you need carbs so why would you eat
other things than that.
-Because they're nice? [laughs]
-Tomorrow, you can eat whatever you want,
but on that day, the main focus is on performance.
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-Then, when we get on to the actual race itself, how much,
in terms of numbers of calories or whatever, are the riders
burning in a race like Paris–Roubaix?
-A lot more than what they can take.
It means that you need the day before,
you need your breakfast, and you need to refuel every hour
to make sure you don't get hunger flat, or you don't have any problems.
The Roubaix guys mostly
have more muscle mass and are heavier, so I would say
easy 7,000, 8,000 calories they would burn.
Of course, your stomach is the limiting factor, so it means that
even though you are burning a lot of calories, you cannot
refill every one of them while you are
riding, but what you can, we try to refill.
-What do they eat then during the race and how often and do they eat?
-They eat every hour starting from the beginning.
A lot of recreational cyclists make the mistake
by thinking that their breakfast is okay for the first two
or three hours, then when they start feeling hungry and thirsty,
they start refilling, but actually, that's too late.
The professional riders, they know that for each hour that they are riding
they can refill up to 90 grams of carbs per hour.
This means 360 calories only while they are burning a lot more every hour.
-What does that look like in terms of sports nutrition stuff?
-Most riders prefer on starting with drink and food, then while they go
to the end of the race, in the final, they switch to energy gels.
They would drink one bottle at least per hour.
Let's say that the bottle
contains a normal dose of carbs because you can play with that amount.
-That'd be what, 40 grams?
-Yes, 35 grams per bottle.
It means that they still need around 50 or 60 extra grams.
For the first part of the race, we always make rice cakes.
Actually, it's only rice.
-I like rice cakes.
-Yes, so pure carbs, riders like it as well.
It's something tasty to eat.
It's easy to eat and to digest as well.
Bananas sometimes, as well, or we also have homemade sports cakes, so
low in fat but high in carbs.
Most riders prefer that food in the first part,
then they switch to energy bars which
are low in fat, low in fiber, low in protein, so only carbs as well,
about 20 or 30 grams of carbs per bar, so they would eat two per hour.
Then in the end, when you feel
this is getting heavy or maybe sometimes also dangerous to eat,
then a gel is really quick and easy to take.
-Roubaix is a very distinct event and it strikes me
that it can often be quite hard to eat especially
at certain moments of the race,
for example, on the cobbles, you don't want to be reaching into your pockets,
and also, the weather is often different from
later in the year when it's a lot warmer.
How do these things affect what the riders would eat during the event?
-Well, it does affect it.
What we do is not actually change the food a lot, but we can
play with the drink.
You could add some more energy into the drink because we use a formula.
We have an Enervit drink who has a formula which
you can go up to more carbs in the same volume without stomach issues
and this makes that you don't have to eat anymore or not that much anymore.
-In a massive event like Roubaix,
how much caffeine are riders taking, and when do they take it?
-It depends from rider to rider because most of them already
feel a little bit stress and then caffeine
sometimes is too much added to that.
Some of them start with caffeine already.
It means obviously, we always have coffee with us in the team.
It can be coffee, but we also have caffeine shots.
Then, during the race, we have gels with caffeine in it,
but it takes about half an hour to get to the peak.
This peak continues for, it depends from
rider to rider, but for about two or three hours,
but the peak can go down again, so that's why in the race we
try to get the peak again with a gel
that gives you some carbs as well, some minerals, but also
it's really individually.
I think also as a recreational cyclist, it's best to
test it in training to see because some guys
don't need a lot to already feel the difference,
then others need a little bit more.
-Do any of the riders have, I don't know, weird
requests or weird things that they like to eat because I know Conor
Dunne who works with us, he loves
peanut butter and jam sandwiches, swears by them.
-Yes, we have some riders that like them as well.
Really weird preferences, not really, but what
I always try to recommend, the chef and me we try to
give a lot of variety, but we have a lot of Italian riders
and they prefer pasta, always pasta, and it's okay.
It's just that I think that it's good to have some variety,
but in the end, they still prefer the pasta.
-Not on the bike though?
-Not on the bike, no.
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-After the race is finished, I guess it's all about recovery, then because
these guys have got to do other races.
What food are they taking on as soon as the race is over?
-The first thing we do is to give them protein and carbs in the fluid
formula because it works really fast.
If you would say,
I come into the bus and I eat chicken and rice, that protein and carbs,
but that comes into your stomach, then you need some digestion, then
when the protein and the carbs finally arrive in your muscles, it's
so many hours later.
That takes way too long, so we have
a protein shake, a recovery shake.
It's a combination of protein and carbs together.
It works really fast.
It goes immediately into your muscles and they can start recovering.
This doesn't replace your meal.
It means you take this first, then you take your shower, then we have,
depending on what type of race it was because, for example,
in the Tour de France, we have stages that are just with a flat profile.
We have time trials.
We have mountain stages, so depending on what type of race it was,
the recovery meal depends on what you did today.
Dinner later that day, depends on what kind of stage is it tomorrow.
-Something that I found quite interesting,
you were saying that it's important to get there with the recovery.
It's important to get the carbohydrates in and the protein.
I think a lot of people who are watching this
might be wanting to lose weight, and they think that
"I won't have any carbohydrates.
I will just recover and just have protein."
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
-In some periods, for example, winter we also have riders who say, "Okay,
I gained a little bit weight and I want to lose it again."
What we will never save on is recovery
because even as a recreational cyclist, if you say,
"Okay, I want my bodyweight, my body fat percentage."
because obviously, you don't want to lose your muscle mass.
If you want to lose some weight, some body fat,
then its always important to keep your training quality high.
I mean before, during, and after your training session you should do what
is best for your training, then later
after training, you can say, "Okay, how am I going to do this?"
At the end of the day you need to create an energy deficit.
It means that you need to eat a little bit less
than what you need, but you cannot make the difference
before, during, and after your session
because then you will lose training quality as well
and then you might lose weight but you're not a better rider.
-How long does it take
the pro riders to recover from a massive effort like Paris–Roubaix?
-It depends on how the race was for you, but
we are lucky that the next day they don't need to race again.
Roubaix is the last one of the Flemish Classics,
but it takes sometime, yes. I would say, if you've
loaded up very well, If you've eaten and you drank what you needed
during the race, if you take your recovery shake, some
extra supplements, of course,
then, maybe you had a party because you had a good race,
I think a couple of days later, you will feel back to normal again.
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-How do you rate a massive portion of frites
as a recovery strategy after Paris–Roubaix?
-I think since the next days there's not an important race to come,
and if you took your recovery shake first, then
you might have fries and enjoy them.
-Excellent news.
Right, thanks very much for time, Stephanie, great talking to you.
We'll see you later.
There you have it. That was Trek–Segafredo's
nutrition strategy for Paris–Roubaix.
I hope you found this informative, and if you have,
then please give it a like. Hopefully, you've
learned somethings that you can apply to your own monster rides.
I'll tell you what, all this talk about eating and fuelling,
it's made me hungry. I'm going to get some food.
Bye.