Just copying their intake is not going to help you ride faster or enjoy your own rides more, though. Everything that our racers eat and drink is tailored to their unique physiologies and the extreme demands of their efforts.

At a race like the Tour de France, riders can consume up to 10,000 calories per day, taking in 120 or more grams of carbohydrate per hour on the bike during the hardest stages. They'll drink three or four bottles of fluid per hour and eat Amacx bars, gels, and chews, chock full of electrolytes and carbs, while their hearts beat close to their limit. Everything that they take in is optimized for multi-week, world-class racing performance.

What can you learn from them to better fuel your own rides? We asked our team's Head of Nutrition, Dr. Anna Carceller, to help us break it down.

The key factors to consider are the duration and intensity of your rides and the weather conditions.

The duration of your rides should determine how much you eat on the bike. Glycogen stored in your muscles and liver should be sufficient to fuel rides of 60 to 90 minutes. Rides of moderate length, up to 2½ hours, will deplete your glycogen stores, so carb intake becomes important. One Amacx gel plus a bidon of energy mix per hour should be sufficient. For longer rides, fueling is decisive, especially at higher intensities. This is where higher intakes – 90 or even up to 120 grams of carbs per hour – can make a real difference for racers.

"From about 60 to 90 minutes, you need to start eating carbs every hour," Anna says. "As a guideline: over two hours, around 60g/hour is fine; over three hours, you should be thinking about pushing past 90g/hour. That's the point where the glucose-to-fructose ratio starts to matter – the standard ratio is 2:1 (glucose:fructose) for 30 to 60g/hour, but above 90g/hour it shifts to roughly 1:0.8, weighting more toward fructose as intake increases. Ninety g/hour is already a very high intake – going up to 120g is a lot."

Tour de France racers can average 300 or more watts for hour after hour. That's why they will sometimes consume 120 or more grams of carbs per hour during a race. Most recreational athletes don't push that much power, though, and will be better off with a more moderate intake of fuel.

A rider pushing 400 watts will burn roughly double the amount of total fuel in a given time as a rider pushing 200 watts for the same duration.

Relative intensity is also important to consider. If 200 watts is your threshold, you will burn a much higher proportion of carbs at that power than a pro rider for whom that power output is relatively easy to maintain. The harder your effort is for you, the more carbs you need to consume. What makes that tricky is that it is harder to absorb carbs when you are going hard.

"The higher the intensity, the worse your body is at absorbing carbs – a common misconception is matching intake to intensity," Anna says. "At high effort, blood flow shifts away from the gut toward the lungs, legs, and heart, reducing absorption capacity. So you need to fuel ahead of a hard effort rather than during it, so the carbs are available for use once you're pushing hard. A lot of people think 'I'm about to do a VO2 max effort, so I need to eat more right now' – but in fact you won't absorb it while pushing hard, so you need to anticipate the effort and fuel beforehand.

"Relative intensity also matters. A Tour de France rider holding 200W, well under their threshold, burns proportionally far fewer carbs than someone for whom 200W is close to their max – it comes down to energy turnover relative to capacity."

Unless you are pushing Tour de France numbers, 60 to 90 grams per hour is a good target for rides longer than 60 to 90 minutes.

Weather conditions are an important factor to consider when you are planning how to fuel your rides. If it is very hot, it is often harder to eat solid food on the bike, so you may want to consume more calories in liquid form. In very hot or cold weather, your body burns significant amounts of energy to maintain its temperature, so you may need to fuel more, especially on longer rides.

"Heat significantly blunts carb oxidation capacity, especially in women, which is why gut training in hot conditions matters," Anna says. "Energy needs are actually higher in any extreme temperature, because thermoregulation has a cost whether it's hot or cold. In heat specifically, blood is diverted to the skin for sweating and evaporation, reducing gut blood flow and carb absorption. In cold, absorption isn't much of a problem – the body constricts blood flow to the limbs and keeps blood centralized, so gut absorption is largely unaffected. The bigger issue in cold weather is texture: bars and gels can get hard and difficult to eat. Thermoregulation still costs energy, though – roughly 200 to 300 extra calories per hour."

Now you know how to customize your fueling strategy based on the duration, intensity, and weather conditions of your rides.