I'm Gonna Eat 298 Grams of Carbs Tomorrow

I’m doing a 200 kilometer brevet (bicycle ride) tomorrow. This will require a 50% basal rate during the ride, and for a day or so afterward. I’ll be slurping down pure carbo sports gels, slamming down carb drinks, and munching a few Jelly Bellies. Cool, eh? My calculations for a ride of this length shows I’ll need about 300 grams of carbs.


I might eat a Snickers just to pay homage to Phil Southerland.

My ride is here:


Enjoy the weekend!

I’d love to know how it turns out. Is that like an 8-10 hour ride? And where did you get your calculations for needed carb intake? I get a low after riding only 5 miles.

I’d also like to know how you calculate. I tend to bonk because I wait until my sugar level tells me to eat versus eating like an athlete every 1/2 hour or so. Trying to change my thinking this season, and now carry more food with me than ever before, and try to use my gel paks for emergencies and need to still keep my basal at about 48%. Tomorrow I’m doing a 57 mile ride with a few decen climbs. Lowering my basal about an hour before I start helps to keep sugars from bottoming out.

East a Snickers for me also!

Eat a Butterfinger for me along with that Snickers!!!

How did the ride go?

Just got home from the ride. It was AWESOME! This ride was a Randonneurs USA sanctioned event. This means it was a qualifier for bigger rides (and races). Not that I have any planned. But for instance, if you want to ride the Paris-Brest-Paris, or the Race Across America (RAAM), birthplace of Team Type 1, you have to ride a 200k, 300k, 400k, 600k. And I think, for P-B-P a 1200 k as well. All while averaging 9.6 MPH. So to do a 600k you have to finish in 40 hrs.

So I did my little 200k like this:

5:30 AM - turn basal down to 50%
6:30 AM - Peanut butter & banana sandwich, yogurt, chocolate soymilk (about 60 grams carb.)
7:00 AM - Start riding your legs off
Every 45 minutes - 25 gram sport gel
Every 45-60 minutes - 24 oz water
Every 2 hrs - 24 oz electrolyte carb drink
4:00 PM - ride ends.
5:00 PM - protein dinner
24 hrs later - set basal up to 75%

The ride went great. I finished in the middle of the pack.

In two weeks I’m doing a 60 mile ride in the La Sal mountains of Utah. 5000 feet of elevation gain. The Colorado Tour de Cure has a killer 100 mile ride that climbs a lot - I gotta get in shape (meaning I gotta be good enough to drop some non-diabetics 20 years my junior!)

If you’re interested - I learned my calcs through a Diabetes Exercise and Sports Association seminar in Denver, CO. They had a guest speaker from the University of Colorado School of Sports Medicine. She specialized in diabetes and diabetic athletes. Great seminar - the very short story was this: Keep your insulin going, turn the basal down if exceeding 90 min, don’t exercise within 2 hours of a bolus, start at 150 or so, eat the purest form of glucose practical (gels), go like hell!

Glad you enjoyed the ride. I’m also needing to get in (better) shape for a Tour de Cure – in my case, the Basking Ridge, New Jersey ride. I’ll be riding further than I have before (50 miles – nothing compared to what you did), and the area is hardly “flat”. I wanted to do the Matheny ride earlier today but ran too short of money to handle the entry fee…