Coffee Makes You Faster On The Bike: Here’s How

I love drinking coffee with my family at a lazy breakfast, on a cold day exploring San Francisco, or most of all at the end of a long winter ride.  Coffee tastes amazing and smells glorious; it can also make you faster on the bike.

How it Works

It’s no secret, the world loves coffee largely because it contains caffeine.  As the most widely used drug in the world [1], caffeine has a host of health benefits [2].  

When it comes to endurance performance, caffeine has a long history of making cyclists faster [3].  Exactly how caffeine improves cycling performance is up for debate [2, 4], but here’s a good place to start.  Caffeine:

• Impacts the Central Nervous System (CNS) by competing with adenosine receptors [2].
• Increases β-endorphin release [5].
• Reduces RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) [6].
• Improves reaction time and alertness [7].
• Decreases reliance on glycogen utilization [8].

Which method

Classic research suggests the biggest performance improvements come from anhydrous (pill or powder form) caffeine [9].  If you’re comfortable popping pills before a race, anhydrous caffeine might be your best bet.

Fortunately, recent research has shown coffee to be nearly as effective as straight caffeine [10, 11]. So how much should you drink before a ride or race?

How Much to Drink?

First, we need to understand how much caffeine it takes to boost your watts.  Research pegs this number between 3-6 mg/kg body weight [2].  In practical terms, a cyclist weighing 70kg (154lbs) should aim for at least 210mg of caffeine before a ride or race.

3 mg/kg is a great starting point for getting a performance jolt without negative side effects (anxiety, restlessness, and headaches) [4].  If you reference the chart above, 3 mg/kg is equivalent to about 1-2 cups of 12 ounces of strongly brewed coffee.  We’ve got the quantity down, what about timing?

When to drink?

Traditional caffeine research suggests the more frequently you drink coffee, the more desensitized you become to its performance benefits [12].  For years, sports nutritionists have recommended abstaining from caffeine for about 4 days before an important event in order to fully realize caffeine’s performance benefit.

If you’ve struggled with backing off your caffeine in the days before a race, you’ll be thrilled to learn of new research suggesting you might not need to [17,20].  A recent study compared low and high consumers of caffeine and found “habitual caffeine consumption” made no difference to the performance benefit of a caffeine blast before a 30 and 5k TT.

What does this mean in a practical sense?  There doesn’t seem to be a need to back off your coffee cup in the days before a race [17,20].  Hold off for 24hrs and you should be good to go [13].  What about caffeine timing on race day?

Responders and Non Responders

While caffeine seems to be effective for most cyclists, some don’t get a performance boost at all [15].  In short, there appears to be a gene that influences how quickly you metabolize caffeine [16].  

Fast metabolizers show greater performance gains from caffeine while slow metabolizers might actually get slower after consuming caffeine.

The takeaway?  Caffeine is probably going to make you faster, but there’s a chance it might actually hurt your performance.  As with every other training intervention or supplement, test it out and see for yourself.

Summary

• If you’re looking for a safe and legal supplement to help you get faster on the bike, caffeine is your surest bet.
• Coffee is about as good as caffeine pills at boosting cycling performance.
• It takes at least 3 mg/kg of caffeine to improve performance.  Lower doses don’t do much.
• 2 cups of strongly brewed coffee is a good reference point for the 3mg/kg caffeine threshold of a 70kg cyclist.
• Traditional research says to abstain from coffee for 4 days before an important event but new research suggests this isn’t necessary.  Hold off for 24hrs and you should be good.
• Drink your coffee 45-60 minutes before the start of your race.
• There’s a chance caffeine could make you slower.  Test it out before you settle on a regular race routine.

Edit History

• 7/12/16-Originally published post
• 9/29/17-Added new research on caffeine habituation [17]
• 9/29/17-Added published research on caffeine and DNA [16]
• 6/5/19-Added research on low dose caffeine later in exercise [18,19]
• 6/5/19-Added new graphic on caffeine timing
• 11/2/21-Added more research on habitual caffeine consumption [20]
• 111/2/21-Refreshed graphics and formatting to make more legible

References

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16. Pickering, C. and J. Kiely, Are the Current Guidelines on Caffeine Use in Sport Optimal for Everyone? Inter-individual Variation in Caffeine Ergogenicity, and a Move Towards Personalised Sports Nutrition. Sports Medicine, 2017.
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18. L. L. Spriet, “Exercise and Sport Performance with Low Doses of Caffeine,” Sports Med., vol. 44, no. Suppl 2, p. 175, Nov. 2014.
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20. Clarke, N.D. and D.L. Richardson, Habitual caffeine Consumption Does Not Affect the Ergogenicity of coffee Ingestion During a 5 km Cycling Time Trial. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab, 2020: p. 1-8.