runners eat up to 10,000 calories per day

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Three weeks of racing and 3,338 kilometers. To complete the Tour de France, it is better to have a good pedal stroke and a big fork. At each stage, the runners eat in quantity of tons of food. Regardless of the appetite, up to 10,000 calories, five times more than normal. Barely 30 minutes after arrival, the time is already after a snack. Not just any. A full plate, calculated to the nearest gram. The special large buckle diet is around 1,200 grams of carbohydrates per day. Slow sugars to compensate for efforts on the bicycle. As if you consume 40 pizzas, 24 burgers in a single day or two tablets of milk chocolate every hour. From alarm clock to bedtime, the runners almost never stop eating.

They are watched by a nutritionist like Lucie Meyer in the Arkea B&B Hotels team: “They start with breakfast. Then they have a forever snack that is consumed on the bus. Then, as soon as they arrive, they rehydrate with liquid and carbohydrate drinks. Then comes dinner time and they have a small snack again before bedtime.”

During the stage, there too, it is necessary to supply the calories runners. The teams carry out several supplies thanks to bags called musettes, with, each time inside, vitamin drinks, cereal bars or energizing gel. Every hour, the equivalent of an entire pasta dish to swallow. “Me, on the counter, I have an alert every 40 minutes to try to think about it”says Alexis Renard. “I have already asked the nutritionist, because I say:” There, we do all that, but do we have a step back on diabetes and things like that after? “. We have no hindsight on it, but it’s huge”quips Bryan Coquard.

A stomach put to the test. And on the hydration side, a champion flow. Between 15 and 20 cans per day, or 10 liters per cyclist. The Tour de France, this immense challenge which leaves no respite to the human body.