BONUS: From Gels & Guesswork to 120g an Hour | LITP: Chronicles

Life in the Peloton, presented by MAAP

Mitch Docker

Fitness, Sports, Wilderness, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2026

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is a cheeky bonus excerpt from the full episode. To listen to the whole thing — and get access to future Chronicles — become a PODIUM Member (our foundling tier) via our Substack. 👉 https://lifeinthepeloton.substack.com/about Sitting down and having a yarn with my mate Sveino is one of my favourite marts of the month. Sharing a huge chunk of my pro career with Svein and travelling the world racing our bikes together feels like a lifetime ago now, and sometimes we land on a topic that really brings home just how far the sport has come in the time since we both hung up our racing wheels. This month is no different. Guys, welcome back to the Life In The Peloton Chronicles, exclusively for you Pelo members. After knocking out an epic 240km ride as part of MAAP’s Equinox Experience and Curve’s Border Run on the weekend that saw me absolutely creeping up to the Victorian border with New South Wales, I wanted to talk about nutrition in bike racing. Fuelling in cycling - more specifically, how much carbohydrate riders can consume every hour - has transformed in the last few years. Back in my day, we’d have a gel here, a bar there, and sip on a couple of bottles throughout a stage - don’t want to eat too much, right? Might get fat… Nowadays, pro cyclists are getting through 120g of carbohydrates an hour - or even more. It’s totally changed the game. Riders have more energy, so they can push harder day after day after day. Who would have thought having more energy would make you go better on the bike? I caught up with an old mate of mine - Kevin Poulton. Kevin is my old coach, and now plies his trade at UAE Emirates XRG with some of the best riders in the world. Kev’s been in the sport for over a decade, and has a really good head on how fuelling has evolved at the top level, and some of the misunderstandings about the golden 120g/h number that we hear so much about these days. At the end of the day, it’s all about training. Just like how you train your legs, you need to train your gut as well. There’s some gems in this ep, and hopefully you learn a thing or two - as well as enjoy hearing Sveino and I spin a yarn and swap stories from our time in the bunch. Guys, as you know, these episodes are exclusive to you Pelo members. As always, I want to give you all a massive ‘Chapeau’ for pulling this bunch along and supporting me and the Life In The Peloton team. If you like what we do tell your mates and get them across to join this paceline. Until next month! Cheers Mitch

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, Swaino, we've got our act together this month and we are recording on time.
0:17.7	We've had a really good chat over the month.
0:19.5	It's been great and it's classic season. So I'm starting to get the itch. I'm starting to feel ready. The good racing's around the corner. Always good to see you, mate. How I are. Absolutely. Yeah. And I understand you're making the trip over. Hey, are you heading over to those crazy races or what? I am. I am just in a couple of days. I can't believe it. Honestly, I know it's going to be awesome when I get there, but I've got that pre-trip sort of mad rush happening where you're trying to do a million things, juggle a million balls and trying to be present around home because you're not going to see the family for a couple weeks. A couple weeks, eh? Yeah, I know. It's going to go, I went through, I did a little schedule. I've filled every gap without meaning to it. It's like, go to land on Friday, watch the race, go to my mate's place. Then the next day we're off to get in wave of them and it just keeps rolling from there. Yeah, got to get through Dubai first am i right well yeah this i was
1:12.9	actually booked on emmeritz and um trying to get my my gold just cash in on my gold bloody
1:18.5	whatever you call it um lounge pass and uh i was hanging on to it to grim death but i had to change
1:24.4	flights couldn't go through there yeah wow not looking not looking great I didn't want to be caught in Europe as well, even if we could potentially get through. I didn't want to be caught in Europe without hanging over my head going, am I going going to be able to get home? Oh, you just have to come out Canada away, stop in to Nelson for a quick visit and then boogie on over to Oz that way kind of around
1:45.0	the world that's right you do a stop over there don't you in the airport Nelson Nelson airport
1:49.3	yeah yeah so Mitch also I saw you did this big ride just recently tell me a bit about that what
1:57.2	what was that are you are you prepping for when i get over there for our big big
2:02.3	tour together hit that 54 ring on the front and just fucking start giving her blow out a few
2:08.1	derailer pulleys and i needed the 54 on so i got this full i got this big rig going here um got the
2:15.3	two point two's on and i put a dropper on the now you're on the two point two everyone put a drop-er on. Now you're on the 2.2.
2:19.4	Everyone's on the 2.2s now. They're so cool. Are they fast rolling? Did you check it out
2:25.2	on Bicycle Rolling Resistance.com or what? I didn't even know about that, but I should
2:30.4	have because I was claiming they rolled fast and they did honestly they did but I was
2:34.9	still probably pushing I don't know let's say it was 34 watts yeah a little a few more watts I didn't
2:40.7	I don't have a power meter on but I was with a group that was going really fast look the whole idea
2:45.3	is map to a bit of a celebration for the equinox twice year. So the time when you've got equal light,
2:52.6	you know, 12 hours of sunlight and night. And the idea is to ride for the 12 hours of sunlight.
2:58.0	Well, that was the original idea, but now it's just a bit more community base. Just get out and
3:01.5	ride for as long as you can. So I'm always trying to think up something new to do each year.
3:05.8	And each year, this ride, there's another bike brand in Melbourne called Curve.
	...

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