Originally Posted by
merlinextraligh
Drinking recovery drinks, and eating carbs to recover after a 25-35 mile ride is a significant reason that a lot of cyclists are fat.
Go out and do a hard 100 miles, and if you're going to do it again tomorrow, you need a recovery drink or some carbs to take advantage of replinishing glycogen stores.
1-2 hour ride, particularly if you don't have a big ride the next day, just eat a normal helathy diet.
So your advice would be for a 49 yr old novice road rider to jump right into doing centuries at a race pace after months of doing easy 10-15 mile casual rides?
FWIW, I weigh daily (I'm on the tail end of losing 150+ bs), and I typically weigh 1.5-2.5 lbs more the day after a big ride if I don't eat anything right after the ride. After yesterday's ride, I was down a half pound. I'm assuming that giving my body a few carbs and calories (a modest amount - 150-200 calories and 8 or 10g carbs + still kept to my daily 1700-1800 calorie/100g carb standard) meant my body wasn't hoarding water to repair tired muscles.