There are a few things that can limit a person from reaching their full potential but I come across so many people making these two mistakes that I decided to write some words about them.

Not fueling enough

Especially on the bike, you need to have an idea of how many grams of carbs per hour you combust. I constantly see riders getting in like 10 grams per hour if fueling at all when they should be around 50 grams per hour during endurance rides. You need to fuel for what you are doing, if you are racing or doing a high intensity workout, getting as much carbs as your gut can absorb is far from a bad idea but if you are riding easy and you are well fat-adapted, you should definitely go with less but not so little that your body starts taping into your glycogen stores unnecessarily and makes it harder to recover to train days after days. Like most things, listen to your body and adjust accordingly.

Riding too hard

I spend most of my time at an RPE of 2/10 and I never felt better both on-the-bike but also off-the-bike. Keeping those endurance session easy is paramount, you want to train your body’s ability to burn fat more effectively, if you are riding too hard your body will keep relying on carbs and you will always be metabolically limited. Additionally, when you spend a limited time above your first threshold, you will not activate an autonomic stress response, so keeping it easy to accumulate work consistently is important. Volume is the main driver for endurance performance after all. If you make it a stressful workout aka a high intensity workout, make sure to do enough to get a progression from the intensity, doing enough to get fatigued but not enough to make progress is rather silly. Many cyclists are afraid of taking it easy thinking that if it’s doesn’t hurt I won’t make you faster, in my experience, having this “no pain no gain” mentality is a rapid way to hit a performance plateau and lose pleasure expressing your passion for the sport. I’d suggest riding your endurance volume by RPE and enjoying the days out. Ride in flow!

I hope this little article would be helpful for some. The second part has literally turned my life around! If you think you have some margin for improvement, give these a try and feel free to reach out!