Endurance fuelling stopped being guesswork years ago. The working framework is carbohydrate grams per hour, and once you think in those units, every gel wrapper becomes arithmetic instead of marketing.
The framework
As general guidance for endurance efforts: under about 75 minutes, water and electrolytes usually cover it. From roughly 1 to 2.5 hours, most athletes work well between 30 and 60 g of carbs per hour. Beyond 2.5 hours, trained guts run up toward 90 g/hr, usually with products that blend glucose and fructose, because that pairing absorbs faster than either alone. These are population ranges, not prescriptions; body size, intensity and gut training move your number.
Turn the target into a pocket plan
This is why we like products that put the number in the name. A 30 g gel means a 60 g/hr plan is simply two an hour, on a timer. A 60 g chew bar covers an hour in one unit. A 90 g gel is a big hour in your pocket for racing light. Drink mix moves part of the load into your bottles, useful when your stomach tires of sweetness in gel form. Our nutrition pages list carbs per serve with a plain-English line under the number, plus a per-hour dosing row that does the 30/60/90 maths for you.
Train the gut like everything else
Race-day fuelling fails when it debuts on race day. Practise your exact products at your exact rate on long training days, building up over weeks. Sodium is a separate system (sweat rate and heat set it, not carb targets), and caffeine is a tool with a clock: time it deliberately rather than stacking it early.
One honest caveat: this is general sports-nutrition guidance, not individual advice. Big race, unusual gut, or medical considerations deserve a professional plan.
Compare carb loads, sodium and caffeine side by side in Gear Compare, or come talk through a race plan at the showroom: fuelling questions are half of what the counter hears all summer.
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