116. What It Really Took to Ride Peaks Challenge in Under Eight Hours. Matilda Raynolds
In this episode of Fuelled, I sit down with Matilda Raynolds to talk about one of the biggest endurance cycling goals in Australia: completing Peaks Challenge Falls Creek in under eight hours. Matilda recently became the first female sub-eight-hour ride leader for the event, and this conversation goes far beyond the headline result. We unpack what it actually took to get there, from training and mindset to race-day fuelling, body composition, and the long-term evolution of her relationship with food and performance.
Matilda shares how ambitious the goal really was, especially because she does not see herself as a natural climber. She explains that her background is much more suited to sprinting and classics-style racing, which made the idea of targeting one of the hardest gran fondos in the world feel both exciting and audacious. We also talk about how different her journey has been compared to the women who have previously gone under eight hours, and why that matters when it comes to representation, performance, and body diversity in cycling.
A major theme in this episode is endurance fuelling and how much the culture has changed over the last decade. We reflect on the advice many female athletes were given years ago — low carb, under-fuelling, trying to stay as light as possible, and pushing through long sessions on next to nothing. Matilda speaks candidly about how sad she feels for that younger version of herself, who was training incredibly hard while under-fuelling, compromising both performance and wellbeing in the process. I also share examples from the data I collected with her years ago, and how dramatically different her race fuelling looks now compared to 2019.
We talk through exactly how Matilda fuelled for her sub-eight-hour Peaks Challenge ride, including how she approached carbo-loading, breakfast, race-day gels, bottles, caffeine, and fluid strategy. She explains why she kept things deliberately simple, why she practised not stopping in training, and why learning to fuel consistently every 30 minutes made such a difference. We also cover how training the gut, trialling products in training rather than only on race day, and learning what works for your own body is a huge part of performing well in long endurance events.
Another key conversation in this episode is the complex relationship between body composition and performance in cycling, especially for women. We discuss why weight does matter in some events, but why the conversation becomes harmful when it is oversimplified or turned into the only thing people focus on. We reflect on how quickly women’s performances get reduced to weight loss, while men’s performances are far more often discussed in terms of power, tactics and physiology. We also speak honestly about how different body types can still perform exceptionally in endurance cycling, and why comparing yourself to another athlete’s build, fuelling strategy or physiology rarely leads anywhere helpful.
We also explore how periodisation, fuelling around the event in front of you, protein intake, menstrual cycle changes, and meal satisfaction all play into performance. This is a practical and honest conversation about what endurance performance really looks like when you zoom out from the numbers and look at the whole athlete.
If you’re training for Peaks Challenge, a gran fondo, a long cycling event, or you simply want to understand how to fuel endurance rides better, this episode will help you think differently about carbohydrates, recovery, body composition, and what sustainable high performance actually looks like.
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