FITNESS: Tips and Tricks to make your weekend ride worth it!

Photos: Tim Bardsley-Smith

For many of us, the weekend is the time where we can get out and take some time for ourselves, hitting the trails or gravel and catching up with friends. With our busy lives and families, it can be hard to spend time getting ready for these rides, and who hasn’t been out on the weekend feeling flat and weak, or turned up to a ride with only one sock?

Here we will go through some small life hacks to ensure you get the most out of your weekend time on the bike.

1. Fuel well

The old saying was ‘eating is cheating’, but food is totally legal according to the UCI, and can make a miserable ride turn into a pretty awesome one, so let’s prioritise good nutrition!

While it’s not necessary to do a full carbohydrate load for a 90 minute thrash on the trails, nutrition is key for those looking to ride further or harder. For longer or more intense rides, a steak and beer at the pub the night before is probably not your best option. If you’re headed out for a hard or epic ride, choose a meal the night prior with some hearty good quality carbohydrates: pasta, rice or potatoes. This ensures your glycogen stores are topped up and will help avoid the dreaded ‘bonk’. 

The morning of your ride, have a breakfast a few hours before and take some snacks if it is long and/or intense. A good rule of thumb is for longer easier rides over 2hrs (or rides 1-2hrs but more intense!) you’re looking at a minimum of around 40g of carbohydrate an hour. While World Tour riders will at times ingest up to 120g carbohydrate per hour (a truly wild amount to eat!), most of us aren’t needing that level when just riding. For more nuanced fueling advice or race nutrition plan please see a sports dietician.

2. Pre-hydrate and rehydrate

Though we are headed into cooler months, much of Australia is still reasonably warm through autumn and even into winter. Poor hydration is similar to poor nutrition: it impedes performance and can make you feel like a bag of rubbish.

In the days leading into your weekend rides, focus on hydrating well, ensuring your urine is light, or ‘straw coloured’. This is only one part of a hydration assessment, but the easiest one for you to do at home! During your weekend rides, ensure you’re drinking throughout, with electrolyte as well recommended for longer, hotter or more intense rides. For most rides, however, water is fine. 

FITNESS: Hot Tips from a Coach Who Has Been an Athlete

You can work out your fluid loss by weighing yourself naked prior to your ride, then naked after towelling down after your ride, and working out the deficit. Don’t forget also add the weight of water consumed (1ml=1g) to this deficit as well, and this will be your sweat rate. Aim to gradually replenish 125-150% of your sweat loss over 4-6 hours after your ride. 

Sweat rate is handy in knowing what you’re losing when training on the bike, but be careful and compare like for like: for example, if you’re making a race plan a hot and humid climate can elicit a very different rate to hot and dry or cool climates! For the rest of us, hydrating and rehydrating well allows us to get to work on Monday feeling a little less destroyed after a weekend slaying on the bike. 

Also, excessive alcohol or caffeine can also adversely affect your fluid balance so best to minimise if possible. You don’t have to take this advice, but you’ll probably be better hydrated and feel better during your ride if you do!

3. The Friday roll

I’ve never met an athlete that voluntarily takes a day off prior to their key event. Sure, your Saturday shred may not be the Olympics, but the same principles apply. If you have the means to do an easy ride the day prior to your weekend shred, take it! Whether it’s a commute to work or a short stint turning the legs over on the trainer, a short ride can work as an ‘activation’ to have you feeling better for that Saturday group ride.

4. Plan your route

For the more adventurous amongst us, planning a route is a great way to not be wandering, lost, around a forest for many hours. Don’t ask me how I know. In order to venture further, have a plan and a means to track your location. Be wary of apps like ridewithgps.com; while they’re useful for finding routes and can be a lot of fun, they also feature a lot of roads that simply don’t exist. Once again, don’t ask me how I know.

There’s nothing more soul destroying than being stranded in a paddock full of cattle in the middle of nowhere and having run out of hydration, and longingly gazing at fetid cattle creeks because you’re so parched. Cross check your route planning with google maps (drag the man onto the road to check it’s a road!) and/or Strava heat maps. 

5. Get your gear sorted

As the temperatures do eventually get cooler, the pull of a warm bed gets more difficult to resist. A sure-fire way to actually start your ride is to have everything ready to go: kit, hydration packs, bottles, maps loaded, computer charged, lights charged and on the bike, helmet and shoes and bike prepped and ready to go. A guaranteed way to stay in that delicious warm cocoon is by creating extra barriers in the morning, like sifting through washing to find your bike gear, loading the car, finding riding food and lights in the depths of the garage. Get it all sorted Friday night and getting out the door on Saturday will be much easier!

6. Mid-week stretch/mobility/strength

As we get older (and spend more time in cars and at desks) we tend to lose mobility and strength. In order to ride longer and without injury, some midweek strength and mobility can be a great way to support your weekend sporting pursuits. Even if it’s a simple yoga routine with some core stability, at-home circuit or actually heading to the gym to lift heavy, strength and mobility will support your body and your riding now and into the future.

7. Organise your crew

Accountability is another effective tool in getting us out the door and onto the bike, and as they say cycling is better with friends! Send a shout out to those with similar vibes to tee up a social ride on occasion. For those with heavy training loads, cycling can become a bit of a solo pursuit, but it’s important to weave in fun rides with mates, shreds on new terrain and the odd social ride to keep the enjoyment and stoke high!

8. Organise your brews!

It’s the reason many of us ride: the coffee (and/or beer!). While both of these can affect your hydration status and it’s probably best not to go too hard on either—especially leading up to a big ride or race—the social benefits of a post ride beverage or meal and catch up cannot be discounted. In our post-pandemic world we know that connection is so important.