Cycling Nutrition: Looking beyond carbs and protein

By 

Giles Elmore (BSc Hons) MRSPH

In modern cycling nutrition, carbohydrates and protein dominate the conversation. They are quantified, debated and marketed relentlessly. Riders know how many grams of carbohydrate they’re aiming for per hour, how much protein they should consume after training, and which products promise the fastest recovery. Carbs and protein are the Hollywood stars of endurance nutrition, they take up most of the screen time, deliver all the big lines, and receive the bulk of the attention. However, no film works with just two actors. Strip away the background cast and the entire production starts to unravel. Scenes lose depth, continuity disappears, and the story no longer flows. In cycling nutrition, micronutrients are those background extras. They rarely feature in headlines, they don’t sell gels or recovery shakes, and they’re almost never blamed when performance dips. Yet without them, the stars don’t function properly, and performance quietly begins to suffer. Micronutrients; vitamins and minerals, don’t provide energy in the way carbohydrates do, and they don’t rebuild muscle like protein. Instead, they make those processes possible. They sit behind the scenes, enabling energy production, oxygen delivery, muscle contraction, immune defence, and recovery. When intake is adequate, they go unnoticed. When it isn’t, things don’t collapse dramatically, they just stop working as smoothly as they should, and that subtlety is precisely why micronutrients are so often overlooked.

From a physiological perspective, energy metabolism is a useful place to start. Cyclists often focus on how much carbohydrate they consume, but fewer consider how that carbohydrate is actually converted into usable energy. Several B-vitamins, including thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and vitamin B6, are required for carbohydrate oxidation and ATP production. Magnesium is involved in hundreds of enzymatic reactions linked to energy transfer within muscle cells. Iron is essential for oxygen transport, allowing that energy production to occur aerobically rather than inefficiently. In simple terms, you can eat enough carbohydrate, but if the biochemical machinery that processes it isn’t functioning optimally, performance will still be compromised. The fuel is there, but the engine isn’t running as efficiently as it should. Iron is perhaps the clearest example of how a micronutrient can quietly limit endurance performance. It is essential for haemoglobin, the protein responsible for carrying oxygen in the blood, and low iron status reduces the amount of oxygen that can be delivered to working muscles. Crucially, this doesn’t require full-blown anaemia. Research has shown that iron deficiency without anaemia is associated with reduced VO₂max and impaired aerobic adaptation to training. Work by Brownlie and colleagues demonstrated that low iron status blunts improvements in aerobic capacity despite training, while more recent studies and metaanalyses reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine have linked iron deficiency to lower VO₂peak and shown that correcting iron status can improve markers of aerobic performance in endurance athletes. The result is often earlier fatigue and a ceiling on performance that training alone can’t overcome. Vitamin D provides another example of a micronutrient whose influence extends well beyond its traditional association with bone health. Vitamin D receptors are present in skeletal muscle and immune cells, and studies in athletic populations have linked low vitamin D status with poorer muscle function, reduced maximal aerobic power, and increased susceptibility to illness. Research using cycling and treadmill exercise tests has shown that athletes with insufficient vitamin D tend to display lower aerobic performance compared with those who are vitamin D sufficient. For cyclists, this rarely shows up as a single dramatic failure. Instead, it manifests as disrupted training consistency; missed sessions, slower recovery, and niggles that quietly erode progress over time. Magnesium plays a similarly understated role. It is involved in muscle contraction, nerve transmission, and energy metabolism, and research has shown that low magnesium intake can increase perceived effort and impair exercise performance, particularly during endurance exercise. Some intervention studies have reported improvements in exercise efficiency and fatigue resistance when magnesium status is corrected, while broader reviews highlight magnesium’s role in supporting normal muscle and neuromuscular function. Magnesium also plays a role in vitamin D metabolism, helping activate and transport the vitamin within the body, a reminder that micronutrients rarely act in isolation.

What’s striking about micronutrient issues is that they rarely announce themselves clearly. Unlike bonking or acute dehydration, there is no dramatic moment that signals something has gone wrong. Instead, athletes experience a gradual accumulation of small inefficiencies: training feels harder than it should, recovery takes longer, illness crops up more often, or progress stalls despite doing “everything right”. This matters not just for elite athletes, but perhaps even more so for the majority of cyclists who identify as weekend warriors. Recreational riders juggle training with work, family, limited sleep, and life stress. Their margins are already narrow. A small nutritional inefficiency that an elite athlete might absorb can have a disproportionate impact on someone training three or four times per week. Ironically, it’s often these athletes who focus most heavily on macronutrients while neglecting overall diet quality. Meals become repetitive. Convenience takes priority. Sports nutrition products replace real food more often than intended. Fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and dietary variety quietly disappear from the plate. Energy intake may just about match training demands, but micronutrient intake lags behind. The message here isn’t that cyclists need to obsess over individual vitamins and minerals or chase supplementation as a shortcut to performance. In fact, research consistently shows that micronutrient supplementation does not enhance performance in well-nourished athletes, and excessive intake can sometimes be counterproductive. Where deficiencies exist, targeted intervention is appropriate, but the foundation should always be food first. A varied, balanced diet remains the most reliable way to support micronutrient adequacy. Colour on the plate matters. Different fruits and vegetables provide different vitamins and minerals. Whole grains, dairy or fortified alternatives, lean proteins, nuts, seeds, and legumes all contribute to a more complete nutritional picture. This isn’t about eating perfectly; it’s about avoiding narrow, repetitive patterns that quietly erode nutritional resilience. Carbohydrates and protein will always deserve their starring roles in cycling nutrition. They fuel the work and rebuild the body afterwards. But they don’t act alone. Performance is a team effort, and the supporting cast matters far more than most riders realise. Micronutrients don’t steal the spotlight. They don’t demand attention. They simply make everything else work better. And for cyclists chasing smoother training blocks, more consistent energy, and fewer unexplained bad days, that quiet influence might be one of the most valuable performance tools of all.

Weekly Fun Fact: In 1988, there was a study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine that studied five 1988 Tour de France competitors. The researchers found that, on average, riders consumed around 5,900 kcal per day, drank 6.7 litres of liquid, and 61% of their diets consisted of carbs. They averaged 94g of carbs per hour while racing. These numbers are pretty close to what you would find in some riders today.

If you’re unsure whether you’re fuelling correctly on a daily bias or want expert help optimising your day-to-day nutrition, G2 Nutrition offers personalised diet analysis and practical guidance.

Get in touch at giles@g2nutrition.com, or ask in MDV next time you drop in.

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