Real food on the bike

chakattack

My stomach is in bits after doing the Wicklow 200 yesterday. 7:20 rolling with at least 100km solo meant that I burnt nearly 6000 (polar) calories.

I had no appetite last night and breakfast was a struggle this morning.

Copious amounts of maximuscle and Hi-5 gels and bars, Hi-5 drink, crappy ham sambos, sugary coffee, tesco "finest" cereal bars (cardboard) and a pack of dried mango.

Would of loved some bananas and pasta at the feedstops.

What are the alternatives for fast release, easy to eat energy that is exactly as nature intended and stomach friendly?

I'm usually fine on solo rides with Hi-5 drink/lucozade sport and jellies or cereal bars.

Morgan

Spuds!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwt-DUpKPYA

Rice Cakes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UiuqIWGe_s

Panninis!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGZUohUwDdI

ROK ON

For a really long spin I like bagels. Either plain or with a filling. (strawberry jam ftw).
The don't get messy in your jersey pocket. Also I find that the chewiness helps to remind you that you are eating real food.

Maybe bagel with peanut butter would be nice. Nuts are good.

ednwireland

i always have cheese sandwiches in foil in the back pocket makes a change from gels etc

chakattack

ROK ON wrote: »

For a really long spin I like bagels. Either plain or with a filling. (strawberry jam ftw).
The don't get messy in your jersey pocket. Also I find that the chewiness helps to remind you that you are eating real food.

Maybe bagel with peanut butter would be nice. Nuts are good.

Thanks Rok On

I'm a bagel fan off the bike but are they not too slow and tricky to eat while tearing along in a fast bunch?

thebouldwhacker

tbh the most important food is the food you eat before getting on the bike. Before a long hard cycle fill up on whole foods and water the day before/2 days before, have a good breakfast the morning of the cycle leaving time to digest and then the food you consume on the bike is just topping that up. I bring bananas, fig rolls and Turkish delight with me, I rarely arrive home without some food left. If in doubt have €20 in your pocket and stop up at a shop.
The list of energy food you posted up turned my stomach so I can only imagine how you are feeling today.
My 2cents, those energy bars really are designed to escape bonking rather than as a substitute for food.... yuck.
Bit of plink plink fizz and pro-biotic yogurt for you me thinks....

NickDrake

thebouldwhacker wrote: »

tbh the most important food is the food you eat before getting on the bike. Before a long hard cycle fill up on whole foods and water the day before/2 days before, have a good breakfast the morning of the cycle leaving time to digest and then the food you consume on the bike is just topping that up. I bring bananas, fig rolls and Turkish delight with me, I rarely arrive home without some food left. If in doubt have €20 in your pocket and stop up at a shop.
The list of energy food you posted up turned my stomach so I can only imagine how you are feeling today.
My 2cents, those energy bars really are designed to escape bonking rather than as a substitute for food.... yuck.
Bit of plink plink fizz and pro-biotic yogurt for you me thinks....

Totally disagree. Energy bars and Gels are the way to go. All the pros use them. I know they probably had a transfusion the night before but they still have to eat on the bike.

souter

I may not know much about cycling, but I know what I like to eat...
Oats / seeds / honey, the basic recipe is simple (Rachel Allen has a good one), then you can tweak it to suit yourself. Did the 200 with on about 500g of it in addition to the sambos and a couple of bananas, stomach fine.
Used those gels for the first time (because they were free) and nearly projectile vomitted.

ROK ON

chakattack wrote: »

Thanks Rok On

I'm a bagel fan off the bike but are they not too slow and tricky to eat while tearing along in a fast bunch?

That could be case. But one could preslice it into bitesize chunks.
I don't usually like gels but I am a big fan of Clif ShotBloks.

Used gels and stuff given out free last year and my stomach was in bits halfway through, avoided them this year and brought my own fruit and even some additional sandwiches, happy days.

thebouldwhacker

NickDrake wrote: »

Totally disagree. Energy bars and Gels are the way to go. All the pros use them. I know they probably had a transfusion the night before but they still have to eat on the bike.

Point taken, however I'm not a pro, I cycle coz i enjoy it and part of that enjoyment is how I feel. Energy gels etc will get you around in super quick time but they taste like muck and every time I use one I feel like it will give me diabetes!
However If my income depended on it I would eat them morning noon and night but sites like the one Morgan posted shows that pros do eat more than sugar gel on the bike. Products like this smack more of marketing than of healthy energy hits.

Nietzschean

roll in hippy cafe yesterday in laragh, mm tasty

Caroline_ie

I have taken the bagel sambo option a few times, just cut it 4 and wrap the pieces individually.

chakattack

Yeah natural food is the way to go from now on but I'll make an exception for Hi-5 4:1 drink, it's rocket fuel.

My cereal bar plan didn't work out because they were far too hard to eat so energy bars and gels were a last and desperate resort.

I like the sound of Clif bars....they seem pretty wholesome for what they are. Anywhere selling them in Dublin? I don't want to buy a box of twenty online to find that they are muck.

unionman

Gels taste like the imaginary ejaculate of a pink flourescent whale. Hate them.

This year I'm trying to avoid too much sugary stuff on the bike. Yesterday I fared well with three bananas, a pack of organic liquorice sticks, a flapjack and 4 sachets of high5. Plus the 'one sandwich per person' ration at Donard and Rathdrum.

Energy levels stayed consistent, hunger kept at bay. Last night my appetite was for protein. Had a t-bone steak and a bottle of Bishop's Finger real ale (y'know, for the carbs:p). Delicious.

Ravenous again this morning, dispatched two boiled eggs instead of the usual porridge.

kevvhayes

i remember balisto bars being good when i cycled seriously years ago. not sure if they are still on the market though!!!

Nietzschean

thebouldwhacker wrote: »

Point taken, however I'm not a pro, I cycle coz i enjoy it and part of that enjoyment is how I feel. Energy gels etc will get you around in super quick time but they taste like muck and every time I use one I feel like it will give me diabetes!

Gel's have a massive range in taste and texture.

However If my income depended on it I would eat them morning noon and night but sites like the one Morgan posted shows that pros do eat more than sugar gel on the bike. Products like this smack more of marketing than of healthy energy hits.

Most of the advantage of a gel is just convenience of consumption and transportation on the bike over pretty much anything else. Though given they are just sugar you would need ~3 servings per hour with some of them for a long day in the saddle fueled by them. Not overly sustainable... But they can taste nice, i've ones which taste like jam

cdaly_

Anywhere to get rice paper to wrap all these goodies in? Gotta be easier than unwrapping and trying to stow wrappers and all...

thebouldwhacker

If I'm carrying food that can get damaged I use small containers like such, stops the food from getting warm and squashed
Maybe not that colour though....

crashoveroid

Well for me it would be eat normal food as much as i can in a long spin and twords the second part start to eat energy food i like mule bars alot easy to eat and dont taste like chalk as for enery gels i can take anything but i like enervit Cola flavour. But always prepare before drink a pint of water and eat a good sized breakfast i normally have beans on wholmeal bread with scrambled egg and few bits of fruit and lots of Coffee I sipp water until the start and depending on where im going i may eat a sandwhich or plenty rice cakes.

lets not forget after your event be prepared as well i have a protien shake can of Coke and some rolls and fruit in the Car.

jwshooter

a gud chunk of fruit cake also aldi do a breakfast bar that's nice and lite ,6 for E1.60

gels and energy bar and its hard to beat a banana .

goldencleric

Marmalade sandwiches ala Grame Obree

skidpatches

let me start by saying i'm no expert, and I did the 200 in 11 hours (10 hours rolling).

My plan for the 200 was to consume approx 400 calories per hour, most of it from real food, and to have most of the food i needed with me from the start, so i didn't need to rely on shops for much.

I made up a load of ziploc bags of food, and aimed to eat each bag in 2 hours.

Each bag contained 2 fig rolls, 2 jaffa cakes and a nutri grain elevenses raisin bar.

every 2 hours i would make sure my pockets were empty and tip contents of the next ziploc bag into them.

the additional calories would come from lucozade sport and one banana per hour. I brought 4 bananas in my bag, and planned to buy the rest in shops along the way.

i also brought 4 lucozade sport gels as emergency backup.

What actually happened:
the 2 hour bags kept me focused on keeping fuelled along the way, and gave me targets so I kept eating before I got hungry, and reminded me when i was behind schedule on my plan.

I only had 4 bananas, and I didn't pass any convenient shops until rathdrum... but the hang sangers in donard and rathdrum, and the power bars on slieve maan (?) made up for it.

i refilled my bottles with water in donard, so between donard and rathdrum i was drinking water, not lucozade sport.

i bought a can of coke in rathdrum, put it in my second bottle, and kept it for a caffiene and sugar boost for the last 20 km.

i also used 2 lucozade sport gels in the last 30 km.

lessons learnt:
having a plan is good.

having all or most of what u need from the beginning is good.

there's nothing worse than needing a shop, and not finding one.

real food takes up a lot of space.

real food tastes good.

a bit of variety is good, so you don't get sick of eating the same thing.

it's hard to keep eating to a schedule, especially when you're thinking about keeping the cranks going, but it pays off.

once you get tired, it's easy to forget about or fall behind on the plan, so it should be easy to follow and easy to keep track of.

it's really hard to eat going up a big hill, so eat at summits, before descending, ahead of schedule if necessary.

try the plan out in training so you see how it works for you.

today my legs don't feel great, but my stomach feels fine

abcdggs

several packets of

FTW

DualFrontDiscs

unionman wrote: »

Gels taste like the imaginary ejaculate of a pink flourescent whale.

I assume you mean "the ejaculate of an imaginary pink fluorescent whale".

Otherwise, that's disgusting

DFD.

Bequick

Nietzschean wrote: »

roll in hippy cafe yesterday in laragh, mm tasty

Can somebody tell me where the Hippy Cafe is in Laragh. Is it the organic shop/cafe on the right as you come into Laragh from Roundwood direction.

niceonetom

Bequick wrote: »

Is it the organic shop/cafe on the right as you come into Laragh from Roundwood direction.

Yes.

Bequick

Thanks Niceonetom.
That place sells the nicest coffee I have ever tasted. :)I have always been amazed at the number of cyclists that stop there.

niceonetom

Yep. Their cake ain't bad too. Daniel Day-Lewis was sitting at the table next to us on Sunday. Pity they don't serve milk shakes...

biomed32

right, i didnt do the wicklow yesterday but on long spins, its fig roll bars all the way with orange and pineapple squash, water and near the end i would purchace lucozade or powerade, nuts and raisins in a zip lock or a nut and dried fruit mix is also good

cdaley, you can get rice paper in any of the aisian shops in town, i believe there is one at a luas stop somewhere along the way, my only suggestion is that if it is rainy or the paper gets wet in any sort of way it will disintigrate in seconds

crispsandwiches

porridge with banana and raisins 1st thing in morn, works for me.

Bikerbhoy

thebouldwhacker wrote: »

tbh the most important food is the food you eat before getting on the bike. Before a long hard cycle fill up on whole foods and water the day before/2 days before, have a good breakfast the morning of the cycle leaving time to digest and then the food you consume on the bike is just topping that up. I bring bananas, fig rolls and Turkish delight with me, I rarely arrive home without some food left. If in doubt have €20 in your pocket and stop up at a shop.
The list of energy food you posted up turned my stomach so I can only imagine how you are feeling today.
My 2cents, those energy bars really are designed to escape bonking rather than as a substitute for food.... yuck.
Bit of plink plink fizz and pro-biotic yogurt for you me thinks....

Its as simple as stated above.... and if you fine tune it you may find that after time you can actually do an event similar to w200 without requiring any of the gels or bars OP mentioned.
Alot of people just are not informed enough about REAL FOOD as adequate sustenance provided its consumed correctly and of course its alot cheaper too.