Why masters cyclists need to eat differently — and creatine isn't just for bodybuilders

There's a version of masters cycling nutrition advice that sounds like this: eat less, lose some weight, drink more water. It's well-meaning and almost entirely useless.

The reality is that as you get older, some of your nutritional requirements actually go up, not down. Getting this wrong doesn't just affect your performance — it affects how well you recover, how much training you can absorb, and how you feel doing it. The good news is that the fixes are relatively simple, cheap, and well-supported by evidence.

Protein: you need more of it than you think

The standard recommendation for protein intake in healthy adults is around 0.8g per kilogram of body mass per day. That number is designed to prevent deficiency in sedentary people. For masters cyclists — people training regularly, putting mechanical stress through their muscles, and asking their bodies to adapt and recover — it's too low.

The research on older athletes consistently points toward higher protein requirements, for a simple reason: anabolic resistance. As you age, your muscles become less efficient at using dietary protein to trigger repair and growth. You need more protein to get the same adaptive response that a younger athlete would get from less. Most of the evidence for masters athletes points to something in the range of 1.6 to 2.2g per kilogram of body mass per day, with the higher end being appropriate for those training harder or trying to maintain muscle mass through a calorie deficit.

In practice, the majority of masters cyclists I work with are significantly under this. They eat reasonably well by general standards but they're not hitting the protein targets that their training demands. The consequence is slower recovery, greater muscle soreness, and a training stimulus that doesn't get converted into adaptation as efficiently as it should.

The practical fix is straightforward: prioritise protein at every meal, spread it evenly through the day rather than loading it all at dinner, and pay particular attention to post-ride nutrition. A recovery meal or shake with at least 30-40g of protein within a couple of hours of finishing a harder session makes a meaningful difference.

This doesn't have to come from meat — skyr, eggs, dairy, legumes, and plant-based protein powders all count. Vegetarians/vegans can absolutely hit these targets, it just requires a bit more planning.

Recovery nutrition: the cost of getting it wrong goes up

Everything I said in the last section about protein applies to recovery nutrition more broadly. The older you get, the higher the recovery cost of a hard session, and the more important it becomes to support that recovery actively rather than passively.

This means fuelling properly during longer and harder rides — not just for performance, but because depleting glycogen stores significantly increases the recovery demand of that session. An athlete who completes a four-hour ride in a heavily depleted state has done the same training but made it considerably harder to absorb. The session cost more than it needed to.

It also means taking the post-ride window seriously. Carbohydrate and protein in the two hours after a hard session, consistently, isn't an optional extra for masters athletes — it's part of the training. Skipping it regularly is one of the less obvious reasons people plateau.

Creatine: not what you think it is

Creatine has an image problem. To most cyclists it sounds like something powerlifters take to get bigger, which is not something most endurance athletes are interested in. The reality is considerably more nuanced and, for masters athletes in particular, considerably more interesting.

Creatine monohydrate is one of the most extensively studied supplements in existence. The evidence for it improving short, high-intensity performance is robust and well-established. For cyclists this matters more than it might seem — sprint power, short climbs, and repeated hard efforts all draw on the phosphocreatine system that creatine supports.

But the more interesting story for masters athletes is what the research says about creatine and ageing beyond just muscle performance. There is a growing body of evidence — including randomised controlled trials — suggesting that creatine supplementation in older adults supports cognitive function, particularly in areas like memory and processing speed. The proposed mechanism involves creatine's role in brain energy metabolism, where its effects appear to be more pronounced in populations where dietary creatine intake is lower, such as vegetarians, or where cognitive demand is higher due to fatigue or sleep disruption.

This is not fringe science. A 2022 meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials found meaningful positive effects of creatine supplementation on memory performance in adults over 60. Several studies have also found benefits in younger adults under conditions of sleep deprivation — a state that many masters cyclists, balancing training with work and family, are familiar with.

The dose is modest and the cost is low. Around 3-5g per day of creatine monohydrate — the cheap, unflavoured powder variety, not any proprietary blend — is sufficient for most people. There is no need for a loading phase. It takes a few weeks to saturate muscle stores and the effect builds gradually. Side effects are rare and generally limited to mild gastrointestinal discomfort if taken in large amounts without food.

For masters cyclists specifically — who are dealing with the cognitive demands of daily life alongside training, who may not be sleeping as well as they'd like, and who want every reasonable advantage they can get from their nutrition — creatine is one of the more evidence-based and underused tools available.

Putting it together

None of this requires a radical overhaul of how you eat. The changes that make the biggest difference for most masters cyclists are relatively targeted: more protein, spread more evenly through the day; better fuelling on harder and longer rides; proper recovery nutrition afterwards; and, if you're not already taking it, 3-5g of creatine monohydrate daily.

These things don't make bad training good. But they do make good training more absorbable — which, as I've written about elsewhere, is often the real limiting factor for masters athletes rather than the training itself.

If you want to get a clearer picture of where your nutrition currently stands, the Cycling Nutrition Calculator on this site estimates your daily calorie and macro targets based on your training load, body mass, and goals — including a gut-support score based on fibre, plant diversity, and fermented food habits.

And if you want to understand whether your current training setup is actually recoverable — including whether your fatigue context, sleep, and stress are quietly raising the cost of every session — the Masters Recovery Resilience Calculator gives you a structured way to look at that.

Both are free. Both take a few minutes. And both will tell you something useful about where the real gains are hiding.

Nutrition Calculator: cyclecoach.com/nutrition-calculator

Masters Recovery Resilience Calculator: cyclecoach.com/masters-recovery-resilience-calculator