Trev, you're clearly addressing me much more than OP here.
It's an interesting study. The IV carb solution was kind of weird, but that doesn't seem to be part of what you're trying to present here.
Some things that negate this study's relation to OP's situation.
1) 70% of VO2 max is not very high at all. Not many would considere it "strenuous" as the title suggests. You are throwing your money away if you sign up for an event that requires your best (or near best) effort for 2 hours and only go 70% of your VO2 max during the events. 70% would be associated with long slow distance were you are training to use more fat as a fuel. Of course they went much longer before exhaustion, they weren't working that hard.
2) "Trained" cyclists (which they used according to the methods) have a longer time to fatigue. Possibly more so in the sport they are trained in.
3) Research papers have to show "significant" statistical differences for anybody in the sciencey world to take them seriously. There are rarely "significant" statistical differences between top finishers in a race. We had two local sprint tris this year that essentially serve as pride races for our tri club. I came in second by 21 seconds and second by 5 seconds at them. In a race where the average finish was ~90 minutes, I can promise there are no statistically significant differences between the top two finish times. This is Slowtwitch where we argue about the eyeball aeroness of different basebars. Every second matters.
4) Why did they wait 135 minutes before letting them ingest anything?? That has no crossover to any race I have heard of.
Read these direct quotes from the discussion section of your source:
"These findings indicate that people should not wait until they are fatigued before they ingest carbohydrate, because it is likely that the rate of entry of glucose into the blood is too slow to match the rate of removal. "
As discussed previously, a person should not wait until he or she is fatigued before ingesting carbohydrate."
"We expect that the effectiveness of carbohydrate feeding in delaying fatigue, when first provided at a time less than 30 min prior to anticipated fatigue, varies among individuals."
"Large differences in individual response were observed when individuals were fed at fatigue, as previously discussed."
"We therefore recommend that carbohydrate feeding should begin, at the latest, 30 min prior to the anticipated fatigue."
"In separate studies we have shown that fatigue can be delayed 30-60 min both when feedings are taken throughout exercise (Coyle et al., 1983, 1986)."