Gels work. They are fast, portable and engineered for exactly this. They are also expensive, relentlessly sweet, and after the third one most people would rather stop than swallow another.

You do not have to choose one or the other. Most people who go long settle on a mix — something solid early, something faster later. Here is how to think about it.

Under an hour, you probably do not need anything

For a session under about 60 minutes, your existing glycogen stores will cover it. Eat normally, drink water, get on with it. Fuelling a 40-minute ride is mostly habit rather than need.

Over 90 minutes, start early and keep going

The common mistake is waiting until you feel empty. By the time you notice, you are already behind, and eating at that point often does not rescue the session.

The better approach: start fuelling before you need it, and keep topping up at regular intervals. Many endurance athletes work to something like 30–60g of carbohydrate per hour for moderate efforts, going higher for racing. How much you personally tolerate varies a lot, which is why the next point matters more than any number.

Practise it in training

The gut can be trained, and it needs to be. Trying a new fuelling strategy on race day is how people end up walking the last five miles.

Use your long training sessions to test what you can stomach at effort. What goes down easily on the sofa is not always what goes down easily at threshold.

Why real food works well early on

Solid food tends to sit better in the first half of a long effort, when the intensity is lower and your stomach is still willing. It is also more satisfying, which matters more than people admit on a five-hour day.

Oats are useful here: a mix of carbohydrate that does not hit all at once, plus enough substance to stop you feeling hollow. That is why flapjacks have been in cyclists' back pockets for about a century.

Our Salted Caramel bar, for example, carries 40.2g of carbohydrate per 62g bar — roughly an hour's fuelling for a moderate effort, in something that tastes like a flapjack rather than a laboratory.

"Always use your bars during the bike ride of the triathlon. It's easy to eat and digest and tastes really great." — Gareth E.

"Just did the peak grit ultra race, 400 miles and 44,000ft of climbing in two days, and lived on these bars. They were fantastic." — Richard G.

Practical points people learn the hard way

Unwrap before you need it. Anything that needs two hands is a problem on a bike. Open the top and tuck it in a pocket before the climb, not during it.

Cold weather makes everything harder to eat. Dense bars firm up. Keep one in an inside pocket rather than a saddle bag if it is properly cold.

Drink with solid food. It genuinely helps it go down and get absorbed.

Alternate flavours. Sweet fatigue is real. Four hours of the same sweet thing becomes unbearable in a way that is hard to predict in advance.

Eat on a timer, not on feel. Set a reminder every 30 or 45 minutes. Once you are working hard, appetite is a bad guide.

What about after?

Recovery is where protein earns its place. If the session was long or hard, getting protein in reasonably soon afterwards supports the repair work.

Our protein bars carry between 13.2g and 16g of protein per bar, and the whole protein range is Informed Sport certified— batch tested for banned substances, which matters if you compete in a tested sport.

Fuel for the whole session. Energy bars for during → · Protein bars for after →

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