<table> </table> M ove your plate over, Michael Phelps.</p><p>You aren&#8217;t the only athlete gobbling up attention with your huge helpings of food during international competition.</p><p>The cyclists who are in Missouri to compete in the seven-day Tour of Missouri this week also are on a feeding binge.</p><p>OK, maybe not quite like Phelps, who consumed 12,000 calories a day during his Olympic journey to eight gold medals in swimming.</p><p>But close.</p><p>Take a look at Christian Vande Velde, one of the top cyclists in the world, who competes for the Garmin-Chipotle team.</p><p>For breakfast, he&#8217;ll eat a big bowl of oatmeal, a four-egg omelet and a huge portion of rice. During the race, he&#8217;ll bring new meaning to the term &#8220;lunch on the go.&#8221; He&#8217;ll ingest at least 400 calories an hour, eating everything from small sandwiches to rice cakes and energy drinks.</p><p>Immediately after the race, he will have rice and eggs, a 400-calorie protein shake and an energy drink. Then for supper, he will eat a massive pile of rice and/or pasta, fish, chicken or beef, and a big salad.</p><p>Burp.</p><p>All of this for a guy who stands 5 feet 11 and weighs 150 pounds.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t get a chance to gain much weight,&#8221; said Vande Velde, who finished fifth in this year&#8217;s Tour de France. &#8220;We&#8217;re burning the calories just as fast as we put them in our body.</p><p>&#8220;Cyclists won&#8217;t eat as much as Michael Phelps did during the Olympics because we&#8217;re not as big as he is. But we still eat a lot.</p><p>&#8220;Sometimes it feels like we&#8217;re eating constantly.&#8221;</p><p>How important is that nutrition? In the world of professional cycling, it is everything, said Allen Lim, Garmin&#8217;s team physiologist.</p><p>An average man in his 20s needs to ingest about 2,000 calories a day. But cyclists will ingest 5,000 to 8,000 calories a day just before and during a long race.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the fuel they&#8217;re putting in their engines,&#8221; Lim said. &#8220;Without proper nutrition, they run out of fuel. And it definitely affects performance.</p><p>&#8220;During some of the longest stages in this race, the cyclists will burn 4,500 calories when they&#8217;re out on the course and another 3,000 from the rest of their metabolism during the day.</p><p>&#8220;If they don&#8217;t make sure that they have the proper nutrition, they&#8217;ll bonk.&#8221;</p><p>Vande Velde can attest to that. He remembers a time when he ran out of energy during tough races and fell out of competition, simply because he was burning up more calories than he was taking in.</p><p>&#8220;It happens to all of us at one time or another,&#8221; Vande Velde said.</p><p>But as in many sports, teams are developing sophisticated ways with dealing with those problems. Garmin is at the forefront, hiring a full-time physiologist to deal with nutrition.</p><p>And cyclists now use power meters when they are on the course, which relay how much energy they are putting out.</p><p>&#8220;We pay attention to that and adjust our intake accordingly,&#8221; said Brad Huff of the Jelly Belly team.</p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s important during a race.&#8221;</p><p>Halfway through each race, the cyclists come to a feed zone in which their support staff gives them a bag containing food and energy drinks.</p><p>The food is stored in pouches at the back of the jersey, to be eaten at intervals during the race.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not like we&#8217;re going to pull out a footlong sub during the race,&#8221; Huff said. &#8220;We eat hand-sized paninis and might have six to 12 of them in a four-hour race.&#8221;</p><p>Huff knows better than most cyclists how to use nutrition to his advantage. He majored in dietetics in college and understands the edge food and drink can give a racer.</p><p>&#8220;A lot of it is knowing what to eat and what not to eat,&#8221; he said.</p><p>So that means never touching fast food, right? Well&#8194;&#8230;</p><p>&#8220;I stay away from most fast food,&#8221; Huff said. &#8220;But In-N-Out Burgers, a chain out West, is my weakness.</p><p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t stay away from their food.&#8221;</p><p><hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">TOUR OF MISSOURI | STAGE THREE </span></strong><br /> Garmin-Chipotle&#8217;s Christian Vande Velde won Wednesday&#8217;s time trial in Branson and claimed the leader&#8217;s yellow jersey from Mark Cavendish. <strong>| D2</strong></p><p></div>