Ok my 2 cents worth. From the sounds of it, you're probably at the same type of level that I am (recently started taking cycling seriously, aspirations to do a respectable Argus, but certainly not win it...) I've done a little research into the topic and have also chatted to my dad, who is a medical doctor. Firstly the most important thing in improving your cycling is TITS (as mentioned above) and generally leading a healthy lifestyle with a balanced diet. That means cutting out smoking, heavy drinking, fat (speak fast food and most restaurant food) and making sure you have enough carbs and vegetables in your diet. For your normal training level, which is well short of a professional cyclist's, this will mean that usually your muscles have sufficient fuel to relatively heavy exercise. Even Lance eats a lot of meat and fat free pastas and enjoys a Nutella sandwich before training. Secondly the two things you want to during long training and racing is giving your muscles fuel and keeping your body hydrated. Having regular healthy meals and a good breakfast will mean that your body ("glycogen stores") should have enough energy for at least an hours worth of heavy training, but if you don't train every day, usually +- 2 hours. What this means is that for your twice weakly sessions of 1.5 hours you shouldn't be using any energy drinks (btw this is probably a bit light if you want to achieve 3h30 in the Argus). As far as hydration is concerned, the pro's might be able to last 4 hours on two water bottles, but you should probably be replacing about 750ml/hour of water. For longer rides and races you will have to use some form of easily digestible carb to feed your muscles and I agree that you should train and race with the same stuff to see how your body reacts. Thirdly all the suplement stuff is largely mumbo jumbo. There are some basic truths though. There is some scientific evidence that the body can digest a combination of sugars more efficiently than a sigle sugar. but most cheap energy drinks have cottoned on to this and also use a combination of sucrose and fructose. You also want to add back some salt lost in training, but this can be done quite easily. Apparently Eddie Merckx used to train on apple juice diluted 50% with water and a table spoon of salt - achieving the desired effect of sugars, salt and hydration. As far as recovery drinks are concerned, all you want to do is prevent your body from going into a catabolic state (where your body breaks down muscle mass) after heavy exercise (probably 3 hours plus at your pace). Which means you need to eat carbs and protein in ratio of approximately 4:1. If you like the taste of the recovery shakes go for it, but chocolate milk works just as well, and I prefer an egg sandwich. Most of this is based on my own amateur experience, so don't take it as scientific fact, but I hope it helps.
