## 1 Introduction  
In recent years, there has been a general increase in the practice of endurance sports [1], classified as sports involving continuous exercise for 30 min or more [2, 3]. Specifically, cycling is one of the most practiced endurance sports [4], with competitive tests usually lasting several days and involving stages lasting 3 to 5 h each. More continuous trials, such as the _Tour de France_, _Giro d'Italia_, or _Vuelta a Espana_, in which professional cyclists from all over the world participate, are among the toughest because they last for more than three weeks [5].  
At the metabolic level, a peculiarity of these tests is the use of mixed energy metabolism, where both the aerobic and anaerobic lactic systems are used, depending on the intensities reached at any given moment in the trial [6, 7]. In these competitions, the availability of carbohydrates (CHs)--the main source of energy--can reduce as the intensity of the exercise progresses [7]. Therefore, the performance of athletes is limited in high-intensity and prolonged (more than 90 min) submaximal or intermittent exercises, thereby compromising muscle performance and the central nervous system [8, 9]. In this sense, nutritional planning and adequate intake of CHs by consuming ergogenic foods play a fundamental role in reducing the time to fatigue [4; 10; 11] and improving the performance of these athletes [12; 13; 14; 15].  
The ingestion of 90 g/h of CHs is currently recommended during exercise lasting more than 3 h [16; 17]. Furthermore, more specific recommendations of intakes of 8-12 g/kg of body mass/day have been suggested for trials involving 4-5 h of moderate-to-high intensity exercise per day [14; 16]. In cycling, sports energy bars are usually one of the solid foods most used to supplement CHs given that, as the result of the position of the athlete on the bike, they tend to cause fewer gastrointestinal (GI) problems [18; 19]. In addition, this is also the preferred food form by athletes participating in long-term competitions [20; 21; 22]. Thus, good oral processing of the foods that will be eaten during races can improve their subsequent digestion, reduce the appearance of GI discomfort, and benefit sports performance [23; 24]. Hence, reducing the duration of the chewing process could generate favourable conditions for athletes [23; 25].  
Among other factors, chewing time is related to the kinematics of chewing described as the number of chews, chewing speed, or chewing pattern (opening and closing of the jaw) [26]. In turn, it is possible that athletes' perceptions of the texture and taste of food could also influence how they chew [27; 28; 29]. Specifically, the study by [PERSON] et al. [30] showed how the number of chewing cycles and muscle activity can differ between similar products with small differences in texture. Nonetheless, research in this field applied to sports practice is currently very limited [31; 32].  
Thus, the aim of this current study was to analyse how the consumption of two energy bars with different textures influenced the variables of oral processing, pedalling intensity, and perception of satisfaction among cyclists. In this sense, considering that the kinematic response to the oral processing of food is a novel factor that could generate favourable race conditions, we hypothesised that the difference in texture would alter oral processing and therefore influence the intensity of cyclists.