What are your Carbohydrate Requirements?

In brief:

• Keep your total carbohydrate consumption above 14g per hour as an absolute lower limit if you are doing endurance sports
• Aim for between 30g and 60g carbohydrates per hour
• Keep your fructose consumption below 30g per hour
• Keep your glucose consumption below 60g per hour
• If you are an elite athlete and really pushing things, the upper limit is around 90g per hour of carbs. This is from 60g glucose and 30g fructose.
• 2:1 ratio of glucose to fructose, or thereabouts, is a sensible ratio for most people.

Some research has been done to find the bottom limit to what is useful for endurance athletes. 14g per hour of carbohydrate seemed to be where the marker lay.

Most guidance calls for between 30g and 60g per hour and this is a sensible starting point for most endurance athletes.

Your body won’t be able to process more than 30g fructose or 60g of glucose so don’t try, it won’t end well. Aim for this as an upper limit.

Once again, this is a really complicated topic. Glucose and fructose are similar, but not the same and they are absorbed and used by completely different pathways. Also, some people don’t process fructose well, so if they aim for 30g per hour, they’re going to end up with a sore belly. For these people, we recommend mixing a little Reload Gel with their R-Line Electrolyte Drink to reduce the glucose to fructose ratio while still getting a decent amount of electrolytes.