Fueling with Maurten - Intro To High-Carb Endurance Fueling

Fuel Smarter, Ride Stronger: Lessons Learned with Maurten

It’s all the pros are talking about: high-carb fueling. How many carbs can you do per hour? High-carb training is making the pros faster, and it’s dropping records left and right. Over the last decade, carb intake per hour has gone from as little as 25g to as high as 150g, with rumors of Cam Wurf hitting 200g per hour during his record-breaking Ironman bike leg. That’s great for the pros, but why does it matter for the rest of us?

Maurten Sports Fuels are at the forefront of High Carb Fueling, where science meets nature, performance meets purity. Whether you’re a goal-oriented racer or just an enthusiast stacking up big rides, being properly fueled doesn’t just make you faster—it makes the whole experience better. You’ll notice it halfway through a ride, at the finish line, and even hours later when recovery is smoother. And let’s be real, even if your goal is just to smash your friends on the weekend, the right fueling strategy is key to having a good time.

The Big Bonk and My Wake-Up Call

I consider myself a solid rider. I’ve been racing on and off since 2012, road, mountain, the usual, and in recent years I’ve kept a pretty consistent schedule of long rides and 5-10 races per year. Like most riders, I knew the basics: eat on the bike, drink on the bike, solid breakfast before big days. You’ve probably heard the saying: if you’re hungry or thirsty, it’s already too late.

So why did I blow up so badly at BWR California in 2022? I’m talking full-on bonk: legs locked, gut issues, crawling along 65 miles into a 135-mile day. I couldn’t get anything down except soda and had a miserable time dragging myself to the finish. Sure, I got caught up in fast groups and forgot to eat a little bit, but I’d done worse before and survived. This time, it crushed me.

That day pushed me to dig deeper into fueling. Suddenly, all the talk I’d been hearing about high-carb drink mixes and targeting carbs per hour made sense. Back in the day, we counted calories—maybe 100 per hour. Now people are saying 90-100g of carbs per hour? What does this look like?

Discovering Maurten

My deep dive led me to a handful of brands, but Maurten quickly stood out as the innovator with the strongest science behind it. I ordered Maurten along with a few others, Science in Sport, Skratch (a longtime go-to for me), and tested them all.

The difference was immediate. Maurten’s hydrogel technology, used in both the Drink Mix and Gel, meant I had zero stomach issues. The consistency across products made it easy to digest, and that was huge for me. In 2021 I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, which only added to GI struggles with carb-dense products. Maurten just worked. For over a year I bought it myself, ride after ride, before finally reaching out to become a dealer with Worldwide Cyclery.

Training and Learning With Maurten

Once I was committed to Maurten, I started pushing my carb intake higher. You can’t just go from snacking here and there to hammering down 80-100g per hour overnight, your body will reject it. You have to train your gut.

I started at ~50g per hour, mixing Drink Mix 320 and Gel 100. In my opinion, these are the core of Maurten’s lineup. One bottle of Drink Mix 320 plus one Gel 100 = 105g of carbs. My usual routine was one bottle of water, one bottle of Drink Mix 320, and a Gel 100 about every two hours. A great introduction to higher-carb fueling and a solid starting point for most riders.

Eventually, I worked up to 80–90g per hour on harder training days or big group rides. I’m not one to set up structured intervals, my “intervals” are just hanging on and pulling at group rides, but the fueling still translated.

The result? I felt better than ever on those 4-6 hour days. My power and energy stayed steady, and I felt nearly the same at hour five as I did at hour two. That was a game-changer.

For really big days, I mix things up: Solid 160 bars for real food, Drink Mix 320 in bottles, Gel 100s to top up. Lately, I’ve been loving the Gel 160 - 40g of carbs in one shot, perfect for technical trails where you can’t grab multiple gels. I save Gel 100 Caffeine for the final hour or so of a ride or race. I drink coffee in the morning but save the caffeine kick for the home stretch, it feels more effective that way, placebo or not.

I’ve also been experimenting with Maurten’s Bi-Carb System. It’s a serious tool for back-to-back big rides, training blocks, or racing. While we dont sell, its a super cool product Maurten offers and something I keep in the back pocket for my training. 

Racing With Maurten

Two years after that brutal bonk, I lined up for BWR California again—this time fully stacked with Maurten.

Here’s what I fueled with:

• 4x Drink Mix 320
  
  
• 6x Gel 100
  
  
• 4x Gel 100 Caf
  
  
• Bi-Carb System 19 (45 min before start)
  
  

All in, I took in ~570g of carbs, averaging ~82g per hour for just under seven hours of racing. That was a complete turnaround from my 2022 experience, I felt strong through the finish. If it matters, I finished 28th in my age category and 68th overall, but the real win was having the energy to push the whole way through 7 hours and 10,000 feet of climbing.

Fueling the Downieville Classic

Fueling Downieville is a different beast. The profile is an hour of climbing straight from the start, then about an hour of descending with some traversing in between. The descents are technical, and it’s nearly impossible to eat.

So with a 2–2.5 hour race (I’m usually closer to 2.5), you have to frontload most of your carbs in the first 1.5 hours. The last hour, you’re hanging on for dear life down technical singletrack. Maurten makes this possible. Because the Drink Mix forms a hydrogel in your stomach, it’s easier to tolerate even when you’re hammering, and you can pack more in early.

Here’s my Downieville fueling strategy this year:

• 1x Gel 100 on the start line
  
  
• 1x Drink Mix 320 in my bottle
  
  
• 1x Gel 160 ~40 min in at the first saddle
  
  
• 1x Gel 100 Caf ~1h15 at the top before dropping into Pauley Creek
  
  
• 1x Gel 100 (emergency) ended up taking it on the climb to Third Divide
  
  
• Bi-Carb System 19 (45 min before start)

That totaled 195g of carbs, averaging 78g per hour, but most of it was taken in the first 90 minutes. I’m not sure that’d be possible with another brand without stomach distress.

This is also where the “Drink Mix first, Gels on top” strategy really shines. A $4.20 sachet of Drink Mix delivers 80g of hydrogel carbs, while a $4 Gel 100 has 25g. Establish your high-carb baseline with Drink Mix, then use gels as needed to top off. Its a bit cheaper to do that way, but you nee the water to mix in the drink mix, so depending on your race profile, aid stations and water, that strategy can change throughout the day. 

Liam’s Final Thoughts:

High carb fueling takes some time to figure out, but once you get it dialed, it completely changes how you feel on the bike. For me, Maurten has been the most reliable way to train my gut, push higher carb numbers, and still feel good deep into long rides and races. It’s not about chasing pro-level numbers, it’s about making sure you have steady energy, better recovery, and a more enjoyable ride no matter what the day throws at you. Whether it’s a 7 hour gravel epic or a 2.5 hour hammer fest like Downieville, having a fueling strategy you trust makes the experience so much better.