Nutrition - how much to eat?

Hi

I was wondering if anyone had a rough guide to how many Calories one should generally try and take in per hour.

I've read somewhere that it should be in the region of 300-400 / hour but just trying to get a better idea.

My 4h15 spin yesterday used 2743kJ (650Cal) ccording to my PT and I may not have eaten enough.

While I know that it also has to do with training, the feeling of energy draining away in the last hour suggests not enough food going in.

Any thoughts welcome.

Your Calorie (kcal?) estimation is incorrect:

http://www.midweekclub.ca/powerFAQ.htm#Q21

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I remember reading about the 1/4 efficiency and that basicall speaking 1kJ = 1 kcal. So in essence I needed to ingest around 2700kcal ?

for my conversion I used this - http://www.richardjackson.org/calorie.html which now that I look at it obviously divides the kJ by the 4.184 conversion.....

ok...lastly

would one just plan for the probable kJ usage in the ride or also take one's BMR in to account ?

You might have a hard time doing that in the space of 4.25 hours and also ride your bike well.
I would not plan on replacing all the calories - you probably can not and you won't need to completely replace them anyway. You aren't going to die if you don't replace all the calories. Your body will find a way to get what it needs. Don't worry about the BMR either.

How much you eat/burn 1-3 days prior to a long/hard ride is of more importance. You will mostly be burning fuel stored in your muscle cells, not what you just put in your stomach. Having said that it's important not to bonk, so drink a carbo drink and eat a bar after about 2 hrs, but beyond that I think eating a decent meal when you get home should be adequate. IIRC, there's a window of about 1 hr max after the ride that's crucial to successful replenishment of your glycogen stores. So eat a good carbhydrate rich meal shortly after your hard ride.

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I believe that since the body is only 20-25% efficient, you need to multiply what the PowerTap says by 4 or 5 to get your kj replacement needs. I think that's what science gurus are saying. Most of the energy is wasted in heat.

Food here in Australia is assessed in kj, not calories or kcals, so that's the conversion I use.

How much did you eat? FWIW, for a similar effort, I would normally go through 1 or 2 cliff bars and one bottle of gatorade.

Yes, that's right. In Europe, labels are in kJ as well.

hmm then maybe it's just a training adaptation issue.

Previous day was a day off and the Friday I did 2 x 20min intervals @ 95%

I had porridge for breakfast. Then on the road 2 bananas and 1 x energy bar.

Had 2 bottles with me (1 x 500ml and 1 x 750) with a glucose mixture in both.

The reason I am asking is that a bout 4 weeks ago I rode to a race, did the race and rode back and even at the end of that I felt fine. The duration of the spin was just as long as Sunday's and the NP was higher.

The onyl difference benig that I had been off the bike for 1 month and that was around 2-3 week back on the bike so I may have been pretty fresh.