Nutrition for Long training rides

[scooteremu]

So I am just wondering what everyone uses or packs for long training rides? I have been going with what I can find in gas stations since I'll be racing at trans Iowa in April. Lately it has been the occasional caffeine gel to keep me going but mostly granola bars, clif bars, etc. I have had a problem with the granola bars as some are quite sticky and are hard to unpack. I guess in addition to what food, I would also like to know how you pack it. I have the revelate feed bag, gas can and a camelbak setup for Iowa.

Appreciate it.

[sherpaxc]

I try to eat as much normal foods as possible but a gel goes a long way sometimes. Homemade Lara Bars, fruit leather strips, nuts with the occasional peanut butter crackers or honey stinger waffle, those those get too expensive for my blood.

[SlowRide]

I use mostly "regular" food as opposed to energy bars. Cashews, Sunflower Kernels, Almonds, Peanuts, Peanut M&M's, good quality chocolate bars, some potato chips and I usually bring some fresh fruit as a treat, be it strawberries, grapes, or whatnot. Cashews are incredible, super dense, good fats, good protein. Potato chips give me a bit of salt replacement and some carbs, fresh fruit is quick high quality sugar and helps me re-hydrate at the same time. Chocolate bars are dense calorically and peanut M&M's well.. are just an addiction... and they don't melt before you can eat them. Personally I've found that when riding every day energy bars just get too expensive at around a buck each, most of the foods I mentioned(except perhaps the fresh fruits) are readily available at gas stations if you don't want to pack them from home. I will also occasionally use Honey Stinger gels, they seem to do well to get me back in the game quickly if I let myself get too close to bonking.

[cccniuk]

What ever goes down. I get alot of calories from liquids. Milk/ milk shakes a little, fizzy drinks,  fruit drinks. Tend to stay away from sports drinks. Do funny things to my mouth. Kind of make it tender.

 I actually keep well away from whole nut products.  peanut butter is ok. Whole nuts have less avaliable caloriesthan you think.  The way that scientist's determin a foods calorific content is to combust it and measure relative temperature of the combustion(kind of). But the body does not do this and the vast majority of whole nuts go in one end and come out the other. The process of making the nuts into a paste significantly increase the bioavailability of most of the nutrients. So if your doing a block of training over a week, by the end of the week if  you have been packing away seeds, nuts, kernals etc you could possibly have a calorie deficit, that would significantly affect your recovery, if your doing the td.....
My flat mate did his thesis on nut as a drug delivery device. But the proof is really when you wipe your ass.

Back to your question.
What I find is what works at the start of the day doesn't in the afternoon. And what worked yesterday makes me screw my face up today. And energy gels are horrible and if I do have them I am very pernickety about flavour, as usually at the end of the day citrus gels upset my tum. However I eat alot of sandwiches. Plain ones. I tend to pack some in food bags and the bags are good as a vapor barrier if it rains! And shops along the way tend to have them. I still recon I get most calories from liquids. But thats just me I like alot of fluids as im a big bloke. The other thing is gel wrappers occasionally cut my mouth, and can make things a bit sensitive.

One other thing. On the move eating also depends on what gloves I use. And temperature.  No point having loads of chocolate on a hot day. Or caramels when its cold.

I think alot about food. As do most cyclists!

[Briansong]

Well, whatever you eat, I learned this the hard way. I can ride, eat, mess with my music, look around and still maintain control of my bike without my hands on the bars, as long as there is nothing on the bars. Add a loaded sweet roll. The game plan needs to change. you go from being in control to being on your haircut in a nano second.

[Iowagriz]

Unless you pack all of your caloric needs for trans-Iowa you should do rides to near bonk and then stop at a gas station and eat from what you can find. Iowa has many Casey's and Kum-n-Go's. So think, granola bars, some small selection of nutrition bars, donuts, pizza, maybe some pre-package sandwiches.

You don't want to be used to unusual or hi-tech food and then not have it available.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

[sfuller]

My rule of thumb for last year was to bring some things that I considered "treats" or that I can't get at a convenience store and go from there. I carried cashews, plus a few gels and a sandwich bag full of shot blocks. The sandwich bag was a way of storing a bunch of them in a much smaller space. At the C-stores - chocolate milk, honeybuns, pizza, etc. At a certain point your body just needs calories and *JUST* about anything will do. I've had a Budweiser in the middle of a race before because it sounded good to me at the time.

Realize that over the course of a long race like TI, your body's preferences for what tastes good will change, like cccniuk said. At one point during last year's TI, a group of us was swapping food overnight like a bunch of elementary school students.

[scooteremu]

Yeah that is pretty funny about swapping food.

I actually got into town after a 3.5 hour ride and basically went right for the cookie aisle. Chips ahoy with reeses pieces was quite nice. Ill try not to eat too many cupcakes. You almost have to go into a C store and just scope it out and see what works best. I would like to get by with good for you food such as bananas but with only a couple ways of storing stuff, its kind of hard and basically it just comes down to going with the high calorie "treats"