The pro peloton talk is everywhere now — riders on grand-tour broadcasts fuelling at 120, even 140 g/h, numbers that would have caused a gut-rot warning a decade ago. You've read the same threads. Your current plan sits at a comfortable 80-90 g/h, a glucose-fructose blend you gut-trained into over a season, and it works. But the chatter makes it sound like you're leaving something on the table — like the next best thing is simply more.

So you buy the extra gels. You push your next long day to 110, then 120 g/h. Your stomach holds up fine — better than you expected, honestly. What you don't get, when you check the numbers afterward, is a faster ride. That's not a fluke, and it's not your gut failing to adapt. It's the actual evidence catching up to the marketing.

Section 01What the data actually shows

Start with what's well established: a single sugar source tops out near 60 g/h because it's limited to one intestinal transporter, and blending in fructose opens a second one, lifting the practical ceiling to roughly 90 g/h — the mechanism THRIVE has covered before, and the reason every serious fuelling plan already uses a glucose-fructose mix past the two-hour mark. Ninety g/h, not sixty, is the well-evidenced range most riders should be working from.

Ninety isn't a hard wall, though, and the question worth asking is what happens if you push past it. Podlogar and colleagues put that directly to the test in highly trained cyclists, comparing 120 g/h against 90 g/h of combined fructose-maltodextrin during three hours of steady riding (Podlogar et al., 2022). The 120 g/h condition produced a higher exogenous carbohydrate oxidation rate — 1.51 g/min versus 1.29 g/min at 90 g/h (P = 0.026) — meaning riders were absorbing and burning more of what they'd actually just drunk. Endogenous carbohydrate oxidation, the rate your body burns its own stored glycogen, didn't move: 2.15 g/min at 120 g/h versus 2.20 g/min at 90 g/h, no meaningful difference (P = 0.786) (Podlogar et al., 2022).

That's the honest read of the mechanism data: the extra carbohydrate isn't wasted, sitting undigested in your gut the way pushing a single sugar source past 60 g/h would waste it. It's genuinely absorbed and oxidised. What it isn't, in this trial, is a demonstrated performance lever — the study measured oxidation and gut tolerance, not a time trial or finishing time, and its own authors said as much: whether the extra oxidation buys you anything on the clock "requires clarification" (Podlogar et al., 2022).

Section 02The one trial that actually raced it

Mechanism data can't answer a performance question, so look for a trial that raced it instead. Urdampilleta and colleagues ran exactly that experiment, live, during an actual 42 km mountain marathon with roughly 4,000 m of climbing — 26 elite trail runners randomly assigned to fuel at 60, 90, or 120 g/h for the entire race (Urdampilleta et al., 2020).

Race finishing times: 278.2 ± 43.6 min at 60 g/h, 284.1 ± 40.0 min at 90 g/h, and 271.7 ± 41.7 min at 120 g/h — the 120 g/h group was numerically fastest of the three, but the difference didn't clear conventional statistical significance (P = 0.063) (Urdampilleta et al., 2020). That's the honest headline: in the one real race trial built to answer this exact question, more carbohydrate past 90 g/h did not produce a proven finishing-time advantage.

What it did produce was a clear recovery advantage. Twenty-four hours after the race, the 120 g/h group showed almost no drop in high-intensity running capacity (+1.28%), against declines of 14.09% (60 g/h) and 14.87% (90 g/h) — a statistically significant difference (P = 0.018) (Urdampilleta et al., 2020). Jump height, jump time, and half-squat strength all told the same story: less next-day fatigue at 120 g/h (Urdampilleta et al., 2020).

Worth being straight about what this trial can and can't tell a cyclist. It's a running race, not a cycling one — 26 elite trail runners split roughly nine per group across a mountain marathon, not a road peloton (Urdampilleta et al., 2020). The physiology of carbohydrate absorption transfers reasonably well between the two sports, but running and cycling load muscle and gut differently across several hours, and a small single-race trial in one sport is evidence, not proof, for the other. It's also the closest thing to a real answer this specific question has, because the cycling-only data we have (Podlogar et al., 2022) never tested finishing performance at all — only oxidation and tolerance. Treat the numbers as a strong, honest signal, not a settled verdict.

Section 03Why "more absorbed" doesn't automatically mean "faster"

The instinct is to assume more fuel in always means more power out, but that only holds if fuel delivery was the thing actually limiting you at 90 g/h in the first place. For most riders, on most rides, it isn't — pacing, muscular fatigue, heat, and pure aerobic capacity are doing far more of the limiting than carbohydrate delivery once you're already in the well-evidenced 60-90 g/h range. Pushing carbohydrate higher removes a ceiling that, for most efforts, you weren't actually running into.

Where the extra headroom shows up instead, on the evidence we have, is in what's left over the next day. Burning more of what you drink instead of leaning as hard on your own glycogen and muscle-protein stores looks like it costs you less overnight — which is a real, useful thing for anyone racing or training hard on consecutive days. It's just a different prize than a faster finish today.

Section 04What this means for your fuelling plan

1. Keep 60–90 g/h as your default

   It's the range with the clearest performance evidence behind it — a glucose-fructose blend, built up gradually through gut training.
2. Reserve 120 g/h for a specific reason, not a default upgrade

   The evidence for pushing higher supports next-day recovery, not a faster finish today. Multi-day blocks, stage races, and back-to-back hard efforts are where that trade actually pays off.
3. Gut-train the higher dose before you race it

   A jump from 90 to 120 g/h is a real step up in what your gut has to process — trial it on training rides well before it matters.
4. Track recovery, not just the clock

   If you do experiment with higher intakes, the number worth watching is how you feel and perform the next day, not whether today's ride was faster — that's where this evidence actually points.
5. Don't let "the pros do it" set your number

   Elite riders with huge energy demands and years of gut training are a different case than a serious amateur riding a Sunday fondo. Their ceiling isn't automatically yours.

Section 05Where riders get this wrong

Section 06Applying it with THRIVE

THRIVE's fuel plan already periodises your carbohydrate target off your real training load, not a flat number pulled from a chart — rest days get less, your longest weekend session gets more. That target sits in the well-evidenced range this article is built around. If you want to experiment with pushing higher on a specific stage-race or back-to-back-day block, the app's ride and recovery notes give you a way to actually check the trade this data describes — logging how the next day felt and rode, not just how today's effort went — instead of guessing at a benefit the finish-line clock alone won't show you.

Section 07Bottom line

Ninety grams an hour, from a glucose-fructose blend, remains the range with real performance evidence behind it. Push to 120 g/h and your gut will very likely handle it — Podlogar et al. (2022) found the extra carbohydrate gets absorbed and burned, not wasted — but the one race trial built to test whether that translates into a faster finish found no statistically significant advantage (Urdampilleta et al., 2020). What it did find was a real recovery benefit the next day. If today's result is what you're chasing, more carbohydrate past 90 g/h isn't the lever. If tomorrow's session is what you're protecting, it might be worth testing.