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Do You Really Need 120g Of Carbs An Hour?

90 grams of carbs an hour was never a physiological limit; it was a practical target. In this episode of Fuelin Sessions, Scott Tindal is joined by sports dietitian Alan McCubbin to unpack the narrative review questioning ultra-high carbohydrate intake in endurance athletes. They discuss where that number actually came from, why glucose oxidation tops out around 60–70g while fructose has no clear ceiling, what unpublished testing on the UTMB winners suggested about their real oxidation ceiling, why gut training improves tolerance but maybe not absorption, and why a rider under 150 watts needs 30–50g an hour, not 90.

Effects of 120 g/h of Carbohydrates Intake during a Mountain Marathon on Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage in Elite Runners

Carbohydrate improves exercise capacity but does not affect subcellular lipid droplet morphology, AMPK and p53 signalling in human skeletal muscle

C-glucose-fructose labeling reveals comparable exogenous CHO oxidation during exercise when consuming 120 g/h in fluid, gel, jelly chew, or coingestion

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