What to do in the 60 minutes before a long ride

The 60 minutes before a long ride is the most under-used window in cycling. It is not about a last-minute fitness gain; that ship sailed weeks ago. It is about arriving at the start with your fuel, your nervous system, and your cells primed to hold output for hours instead of fading early. Here is how to use that hour properly.

Why does the hour before a ride matter so much?

A long ride is a sustained demand on your aerobic system. Your muscles spend energy in the form of ATP with every pedal stroke, and your cells do not store ATP in bulk. They produce it, spend it, and produce it again, continuously, for as long as you ride. The limiting factor is production speed, not the size of any single fuel tank.

That means the pre-ride window is not really about topping up a tank. It is about setting the conditions: stable blood sugar, a primed nervous system, and cells ready to produce energy efficiently from the first climb. Get the hour right and the early kilometres cost you less, which leaves more in reserve when the ride gets honest. To understand the cellular machinery this depends on, the guide to what mitochondria do for endurance athletes is worth reading first.

What should you eat before a long bike ride?

For a ride over two hours, eat a carbohydrate-focused meal two to three hours before you roll. Think oats, toast, rice, or a bagel: easy to digest, low in fat and fibre, enough to settle your blood sugar without sitting heavy in your gut.

Then, in the final 30 to 60 minutes, a small top-up keeps your blood sugar from dipping while you faff with bottles and tyre pressure. A banana or a slice of toast with honey is plenty. The mistake here is overeating in the last hour, which sends blood to your gut at the exact moment your legs want it. Carb loading is not a licence to eat a second breakfast at the trailhead. Sorry.

Caffeine, if you use it, lands well in this window. A coffee 45 to 60 minutes out gives you the lift without the jitters. None of this is exotic. The point is to do it deliberately rather than by accident.

How do you prime your body, not just fuel it?

Fuel is only half the hour. The other half is priming, and most cyclists skip it entirely.

Warm up the system, gently. Ten to fifteen easy minutes, on the bike or off, opens up blood flow and lets your aerobic engines spin up before you ask them for real work. Starting cold means your first hard effort lands before your body is ready, which is a quiet way to overspend early.

Settle the nervous system. A long ride is partly a mental event. Arousal that is too high burns nervous energy before you start; too low and you are flat off the line. A few minutes of calm, deliberate breathing pulls your arousal into a useful range. There is a whole protocol for this in the guide on how to prime your nervous system before a race.

Hydrate early, not at the line. Sip in the hour before so you start topped up, rather than chasing a deficit from kilometre 20 onward.

 

What happens in your cells over a five-hour ride?

Here is the part the pre-ride window is really about. Sustained riding raises your mitochondrial oxygen consumption, and that process generates reactive oxygen species inside working muscle. In moderate amounts they help signal adaptation. Across hours of riding, they accumulate, and reviews of exercise-induced oxidative stress describe how that load can begin to impair muscle force production as the effort drags on.

This is part of why the back half of a long ride feels disproportionately harder than the front. It is not only glycogen running low. It is your cells working under a rising oxidative burden, producing energy less efficiently the longer you go. The athletes who fade least are the ones whose cellular environment is best prepared to handle that load before they even clip in.

That is where the hour before connects to the hours ahead. You cannot build mitochondrial capacity in 60 minutes. But you can start the ride with your cells primed and your oxidative defences supported, rather than starting from a deficit and paying for it at kilometre 120.

How the Pre-Activity Shot fits your pre-ride routine

This is the gap the Pre-Activity Shot is built for. Taken about one hour before you ride, it is designed to activate cellular energy production for the hours ahead, supporting sustained performance rather than delivering a short spike that fades by the first feed stop.

It draws on oleuropein, the olive-leaf polyphenol studied for its effect on mitochondrial function. Research on oleuropein-based olive leaf extract has shown it can enhance the muscle mitochondrial bioenergetic response to moderate-intensity exercise in humans, which is the register most of a long ride lives in. Slot it into the routine alongside your warm-up and your pre-ride top-up: real food two to three hours out, a small carbohydrate top-up and the Pre-Activity Shot in the final hour, then roll out primed instead of hopeful.

 

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Sources

1. Lanfranchi, C., et al. (2026). Oleuropein-based olive leaf extract enhances muscle mitochondrial bioenergetics response to moderate but not maximal intensity exercise in humans. Journal of Physiology. 

2. Powers, S.K., Radak, Z., Ji, L.L. (2016). Exercise-induced oxidative stress: past, present and future. Journal of Physiology, 594(18), 5081-5092.

3. Enoka, R.M., Duchateau, J. (2016). Translating fatigue to human performance. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 48(11), 2228-2238. 

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