One carbs-per-hour number can’t cover a recovery spin and a VO2 session. StemNotes plans each ride block by block, from your power, your physiology and the food you carry.
Most fuelling advice hands you one number, usually 60 or 90 g of carbohydrate an hour, and you apply it to a recovery spin and a block of VO2 intervals alike. Carbohydrate use doesn’t work like that. The harder you ride relative to your threshold, the bigger the share of your energy that comes from glycogen rather than fat. StemNotes builds a plan for each session from that relationship.
It starts with your training plan
Connect TrainingPeaks or intervals.icu and StemNotes reads the workouts you have planned. Each session is split into blocks that match your feed interval of 20, 30 or 60 minutes. The carbohydrate in each block comes from the normalised power you’ll hold relative to your critical power (CP), adjusted for your training status and biological sex. At the same relative intensity, women tend to burn proportionally more fat and less carbohydrate than men, so their plans differ.
Your max carbs per hour caps every block. Absorption is the hard limit: your gut can only move so much carbohydrate into the blood each hour, and riders who train the gut and use glucose–fructose mixes can take on more than those who don’t. Set it anywhere from 30 to 210 g/h and raise it as your gut training progresses.
In the food you carry
Star the gels, chews, bars and drink mixes you ride with in the store cupboard, or add your own. Plans are built from those items, so each feed names the gel or bar and its grams. Bottles are planned whole, split into first and second half where a block needs it, and every plan ends with a pack list for your jersey pockets and bottle cages.
On the bike
Pair a Hammerhead Karoo or a Garmin Edge from the app and the day’s plan goes to your head unit. It alerts you at each feed, and a data field counts down to the next one, so you eat on schedule halfway through an interval set rather than when you remember.
After the ride
Log what you ate. StemNotes then recalculates what you should have eaten from the power you actually rode, using ride data from TrainingPeaks Premium or intervals.icu. If a Z2 ride turned into a chase on the group ride, you’ll see the shortfall and can cover it in your recovery meal. Your profile tracks a running carb balance across the week or month.
Where the method comes from
Andy Turner, a coach since 2017 with a first-class degree in Sports and Exercise Science, built the formula after riders he coached kept getting fuelling advice that didn’t match their sessions. He explains the method in Why one carbs-per-hour number can’t fuel every session.
StemNotes is in beta on iPhone and Android. Join the beta to try it on your own training.
