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How Tadej Pogačar Prepares His Race Week Nutrition (Carbs, Protein, Lipids)

What Tadej Pogačar’s Race Week Before Paris-Roubaix Teaches You About Carb Loading

The numbers have been all over social media: 1,505 g of carbohydrates on race day at Paris-Roubaix for Tadej Pogačar. 250 g at breakfast alone. Totals that seem almost surreal. But here’s what we often forget: those numbers don’t appear out of thin air. They’re the outcome of an entire week of precisely structured preparation — a progressive build, meticulously designed by UAE Team Emirates-XRG nutritionists. Here’s how it works, and why it changes everything about your own race preparation.

That’s exactly what Ograal does: it builds a personalized nutrition plan week by week, adjusting your carb, protein, and fat targets based on your race goal, target effort duration, and athletic profile. What Pogačar achieves with a team of specialists, you can do with one app.

Days 7–5 Before Race Day: Maintaining Reserves and Prioritizing Protein

At the start of race week, the goal isn’t yet to load glycogen — it’s to protect muscle mass and recover from the final intense training sessions. Carbohydrate intake stays in the upper range of normal training levels — around 6 to 7 g/kg/day — while protein is kept high, between 1.8 and 2.2 g/kg, to support muscle protein synthesis and limit catabolism. Fat intake remains at standard training levels with no particular restrictions.

This phase maps onto the “train high” principle of nutritional periodization described by Jeukendrup (2017): key sessions are completed with high carbohydrate availability, optimizing training performance and priming the body to store maximum glycogen in the days that follow. It’s also the time to ramp up gut training if you’re targeting 90 g/h during the race — a critical point covered in our 6-week gut training plan.

Days 4–2 Before Race Day: Starting the Carb Load

This is where the real machinery kicks in. Between days 4 and 2 out, carbohydrates climb progressively to represent 70–80% of total caloric intake — typically 8 to 10 g/kg/day for an athlete of Pogačar’s caliber. At the same time, fat is reduced (often below 1 g/kg/day) to free up caloric space for carbs without blowing out total energy intake. Fiber is also dialed back to minimize gastrointestinal risk on race day.

This strategy is grounded in landmark research by Burke et al. (2011), which demonstrated that a carb load of 10–12 g/kg/day over 36–48 hours enables muscle glycogen supercompensation — a peak that can significantly improve performance in events lasting more than 90 minutes. For a 70 kg cyclist, that’s 700–840 g of carbohydrates per day. For Pogačar, whose race weight is around 66 kg, the math leads to those staggering numbers. If you want to go from 60 to 90 g/h on race day without GI issues, check our guide on going from 60 to 90g carbs per hour.

The Day Before: Full Carb Load

The day before the race, everything is oriented toward maximizing hepatic and muscle glycogen stores. Meals consist almost entirely of easily digestible carbohydrates: white rice, al dente pasta, white bread, bananas, fruit compotes. Fat and fiber are kept to a minimum; protein is maintained around 1.5 g/kg to prevent muscle loss without burdening digestion. Hydration is also increased, because each gram of stored glycogen binds 2.7 to 4 g of water — an often-overlooked fact that explains the slight weight gain athletes notice the day before a race.

For triathletes targeting shorter formats, the logic is the same. You’ll find the practical details in our article on carb loading for triathlon 70.3. The key: simple, easily digestible carbohydrates, spread across the day, without concentrating a heavy meal in the evening.

Race Morning: The 250 g Carbohydrate Breakfast

Pogačar’s famous breakfast — 250 g of carbs, 40 g of protein, 30 g of fat — is no longer surprising in context. It’s the logical endpoint of a week of progressive loading. His glycogen tanks are already topped up from the day before; this final meal locks them in at their maximum level and provides the energy substrates needed for the first hours of effort.

The golden rule: this meal must be eaten at least 3 hours before the start to allow full gastric emptying. For Paris-Roubaix, with a mid-morning start from Compiègne, Pogačar is up very early. Honeyed rice, banana porridge, white bread with jam, and energy bars are the standard menu. An isotonic drink completes pre-race hydration — for this type of effort, a Decathlon ISO+ neutral drink (650 g) is a practical and cost-effective choice for preparing your race bottles.

Race Day Macros in the Context of the Full Week

To get the full picture of Pogačar’s race day nutrition at Paris-Roubaix, read our detailed race-day nutrition breakdown: breakfast (C 250 g / P 40 g / F 30 g), pre-race (C 60 g / P 5 g / F 3 g), during (C 130 g/h / P 4 g / F 4 g over 5h30), post-race (C 480 g / P 120 g / F 45 g). Race day total: 1,505 g carbohydrates, 169 g protein, 82 g fat. These numbers only make sense when placed in the context of the full preparation week.

Ograal: Race Week Preparation, Automated for You

Pogačar has a team of nutritionists adjusting his macros daily, analyzing his power data, and fine-tuning every gram of carbohydrate against his training sessions. For amateur and semi-professional athletes, that’s simply not realistic — unless you have a tool built for exactly that purpose.

Ograal automatically calculates and adjusts your carb, protein, and fat targets week by week, taking into account your profile (weight, training level, dietary habits), your target effort duration, and the type of race you’re preparing for. The app builds your carb-loading phase, guides you on reducing fat and fiber, and tells you exactly what to eat on days 4, 2, 1, and the morning of the race. You don’t need a team of nine nutritionists — you need a plan built for you.

The Science Behind Pogačar’s Extraordinary Numbers

The 1,505 g of carbohydrates on a Paris-Roubaix race day don’t appear from nowhere. They’re the result of a week of rigorous nutritional work: high protein early in the week to protect muscle mass, a progressive carbohydrate build from day 4 out, reduction of fat and fiber to optimize digestibility, a full load the day before, and a solid breakfast on race morning. Every step follows a well-established scientific rationale — and every step can be reproduced at your level, as long as you have the right benchmarks.

That’s the message: elite nutrition isn’t reserved for world champions. The principles are universal — only the numbers change. Ograal builds that plan for you, calibrated to your next race.

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