What do I eat? Distance endurance

General
1

I’m a horrible eater. Mostly because I don’t like a lot of stuff, so I eat the same things all the time - and usually not healthy stuff.

Two weeks ago when I went distance cokering, I felt great. I did about 16 miles. Last week I felt weak. I wasn’t tired or pain fatigued, I just didn’t have the pep or the energy. My goal was 20 miles and I did 14. I feel like this lack of energy was because I hadn’t eaten properly.

So, tomorrow when I go out and try to hit my 20 mile goal, I want to start out right. What are good things to eat? I heard people in Seattle last summer talking about big pancake mornings. Are there any surprises? Should I try not to eat too much or should I try to wait a little before riding.

I’ll also carry some Fig Newtons with me on the ride, which John Foss has told me are as good as Power Bars (and I hate power bars)

2

my tips

i like long-distance unicycling too the furthest i’ve done is 6 miles my next goal is ten coz i have an ultra comfy new kris holm velo seat (i highly recommned it) and on friday i’m getting a new chunky tyre too
tips: well

Fig Rolls are good and tasty and god source of energy

Bananna’s (tennis players eat lots of them!)

Honey Sandwhichs (lots of sugar and carbohydrates)

Flapjacks (yummy, high in energy and keep u going for ages)

mmm i’m hungry now! hpe theses helped
:stuck_out_tongue:

3

I usually eat an extra Large Pizza.

by myself.

4

Pasta’s good, the night before.

Just before? Sugary stuff: chocolate bars, jam sandwiches etc.
Don’t bother with the energy gunk, it tastes bad, is expensive, and isn’t that great imo.

5

Technique and practice will make 10-20 mile Coker rides easier, whatever you eat. When I first had my Coker, 10 miles was an epic journey. Now it’s an hour’s gentle cross country. It’s a case of reaching the stage where you feel at home on the Coker, and learning to pace yourself. These days, when I do rides of this length, I tend to have a couple of bananas before I start, then just ride until I’ve finished.

But an endurance ride is a ride which is long by the standards of the rider concerned. If 5 miles is your longest ever ride, then 6 miles would be an endurance ride. If your used to 50 mile trips, then it would need to be 60+ miles to count as ‘endurance’. And so on.

So if you’re doing an ‘endurance ride’, it’s a good idea to load up with slow release energy the night before. Pasta is the obvious choice. Anything from a fancy Italian meal down to Heinz spaghetti hoops on toast. Be careful with Alphabetti Spaghetti, because it can spell ‘disaster’.

Then shortly before the ride, a banana or two will give you energy which will be released steadily over the next hour or so.

Then on the ride, the simple answer is sugar. More nutritious stuff like protein, vitamins and minerals won’t be processed usefully during the ride. All you need is raw energy. So boiled sweets, chocolate bars, fruit, biscuits, that type of thing. If you take chocolate bars, freeze them. That way, they will be less of a soggy mess when you take them out of your rucksack on a hot day.

And plenty of water. You need water. It’s no good being full of energy, with your blood’s too thick and gloopy to carry it to your muscles.

Don’t fill up with heavy foods (proteins such as beans, burgers, steaks) during the ride, and don’t eat until you’re bursting. Little and often.

The other important thing for endurance rides is learning to pace yourself. If you stop too often, you will never get a rhythm going. If you ride too far before you rest, you will drain yourself. If I do a long ride (for me, that’s 30+ miles on the Coker) then I plan to stop for a breather and a stretch after about 40 minutes, then the intervals between stops decrease gradually to about 15 minutes. Always set a goal: to stop at the top of the hill, or at the cafe, or by the lake, or opposite the tennis courts at the nudist camp… Just riding until you drop will make the ride less enjoyable.

6

Re: What do I eat? Distance endurance

In article <nbrazzi.p9w9c@timelimit.unicyclist.com>,
nbrazzi <nbrazzi.p9w9c@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote:
)
)So, tomorrow when I go out and try to hit my 20 mile goal, I want to
)start out right. What are good things to eat? I heard people in
)Seattle last summer talking about big pancake mornings. Are there any
)surprises? Should I try not to eat too much or should I try to wait a
)little before riding.
)
)I’ll also carry some Fig Newtons with me on the ride, which John Foss
)has told me are as good as Power Bars (and I hate power bars)

There are plenty of energy bars which are reasonably tasty–the
PowerBar Harvest line and most of the Clif bars, for example. I
personally don’t think Fig Newtons give as much energy or taste
significantly better as energy bars–I’ve felt the difference. At 24
Hours of Adrenaline I even sucked down some of that Clif Shot stuff,
and while it wasn’t particularly tasty, it definitely helped my energy
level. And Clif Bars are easier to carry than Fig Newtons; you need
4 Fig Newtons to get you as many carbs as one Clif Bar, so it’s a lot
easier to stuff two Clif Bars into a pack than 8 Fig Newtons–especially
since the Clif Bars are resistant to crushing while the Fig Newtons aren’t.

Not that Fig Newtons are bad, but there’s a reason you don’t see Lance
Armstrong eating them in the Tour de France.
-Tom

7

Re: Re: What do I eat? Distance endurance

Yep there’s a reason, anything Lance Armstrong eats in the Tour de France is almost certainly something he is being paid to eat.

Several of the better riders in the Polaris challenge (2 day mountain bike orienteering event) over here have used malt loaf or big bags of jelly babies or similar. The fastest 24 hour racer at Red Bull last year was eating mostly bananas and sandwiches.

Energy bars / shots just happen to be an easy way to get good energy without having to find a good normal food for energy. You can make home made “Clif bars”, don’t have the recipe here, but it isn’t all that complicated. As far as I’m concerned energy bars aren’t worth the money. Energy drink powder is pretty cheap in bulk, so I don’t mind using that, its as cheap as anything else I’d buy to put in my drink.

I do exercise early in the morning and I find the most important factor is what I ate the night before. If I have an absolutely massive pasta the night before then I wake up ready to ride / swim fast, whereas if I just snack, or drink alcohol the night before I’m nowhere near as energetic.

Joe

8

Re: What do I eat? Distance endurance

In article <joemarshall.pa6g1@timelimit.unicyclist.com>,
joemarshall <joemarshall.pa6g1@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote:
)
)Tom Holub wrote:
)> *Not that Fig Newtons are bad, but there’s a reason you don’t see
)> Lance
)> Armstrong eating them in the Tour de France.
)> *
)
)
)Yep there’s a reason, anything Lance Armstrong eats in the Tour de
)France is almost certainly something he is being paid to eat.

I am sure, if he wanted to eat Fig Newtons, he could get Nabisco to
sponsor him. Lance is fanatical about science and his body and would
not settle for less than the optimum energy food.

But we’re talking about minor differences, and convenience. Fig Newtons
are fine, they just get mushed in your pack and you have to carry more
to get the same amount of carbs. And yes, there’s nothing magical about
packaged bars, you could make a Clif bar equivalent at home. (In fact,
the Clif bar was created by a guy who said “man, these PowerBars are
disgusting, I could make something better than that”).

A box of Fig Newtons has 30 cookies and costs $4, so a serving equivalent
to a Clif bar in carbs costs about 50 cents. That’s less expensive, but
not outrageously so.

)Energy bars / shots just happen to be an easy way to get good energy
)without having to find a good normal food for energy.

Isn’t that the whole point?
-Tom

9

Re: What do I eat? Distance endurance

In article <nbrazzi.p9w9e@timelimit.unicyclist.com>,
nbrazzi.p9w9e@timelimit.unicyclist.com (nbrazzi) wrote:

> So, tomorrow when I go out and try to hit my 20 mile goal, I want to
> start out right. What are good things to eat? I heard people in
> Seattle last summer talking about big pancake mornings. Are there any
> surprises? Should I try not to eat too much or should I try to wait a
> little before riding.
>
> I’ll also carry some Fig Newtons with me on the ride, which John Foss
> has told me are as good as Power Bars (and I hate power bars)
>
>
> –
> nbrazzi
>
> any God with sense is going to want to promote unicycling
>
> -onewheeldave on religion

For a long ride, I’d recommend slow-release energy foods, rather than
explosive energy boosts, like stuff that’s high in glucose. Fruits are
good, bananas in particular. As others have said, grain foods, like
breads, savoury biscuits and things like that are good for their carbos.

Sugar boosts are fine for races and short rides, but for a long ride,
you may find that sugary foods will give you a big boost early in the day,
then you’ll feel drained later on.

Liam

==========================================================


*Get paid to review nearly anything!
*Get paid £1 - £5 to take part in each survey (2 - 3 surveys per month).
*Win cash prizes for your reviews.

Sign up below:
http://www.uk.ciao.com/reg.php?FriendId=5327057

10

Re: Re: What do I eat? Distance endurance

That’s good advice, except in one case, which is if you are riding a long ride as fast as possible, in which case you might be better off with a constant supply of fast release sugar just to keep you up there on your sugar high all day. You’ll have a bit of a sugar comedown after the ride and fall asleep straight away, but you’ll definately be able to ride like a whooshy thing.

Joe

11

The water can’t be overstated either. Drink before you are thirsty, and drink often. If you wait until you’re thirsty, you’ve already gone past a place where you can catch up during the ride.

The Fig Newton information I read several years ago was in a Bicycling Magazine article comparing various food bars. The term “food bars” must be used carefully, because a lot of the ones on the market these days are more like snacks and not all are designed as workout fuel. Make sure you’re getting the right stuff. At the time of the article (which may have been in Consumer Reports, come to think of it), they compared numerous bars from various categories, and used the Fig Newtons as an exmaple of an “everyday” food to compare. They tend to be cheaper, and averaged out to equal in nutrition to the median of the bars tested.

Most bars taste a lot better than the original Power Bars. I like Clif bars, because they taste pretty good and because Clif always donates to trailwork groups, such as my local FATRAC, who build and maintain the trails.

I was amazed at an ariticle in Bicycling a few years ago, where they detailed a “typical” day’s eating for a Tour de France racer. The total was over 10,000 calories and the amount of food was pretty amazing. Think about it, how many calories would you need to ride 130 miles at something like 30 mph. I can’t even make my bike go the average speed these guys race at. And then they climb mountains… :slight_smile:

12

I think the single best accessory for a Coker is a Camelback pack or some other source of “on demand” water. Way better to keep drinking than go half an hour, stop, chug, re-mount.

If I know I’m going to be riding a lot during the day, I’ll start with an oatmeal breakfast with lots of my home recipe trail mix stirred in (raisins, almonds, cranberries, coconut shave, sunflower seeds, apricots, figs, dates). It’s a bit of a belly bomb at first, but an hour later when you’re well into digestion, it will supplement you the full day. Really good mix of complex carb and protein.

I agree with John…Clif bars are the best Bar. I’ve basically lived on these for days in the canyons of Grand Staircase/Escalante, power-wandering with a heavy load on my back. They deliver on the nutrition and energy front, and many of them are pretty good tasting also. I prefer the peanut-butter varieties.

I also like Luna Bars a lot. They’re made by Clif, but are billed as “energy for women”. That’s why I only eat them when I’m wearing my dress. :sunglasses:

13

I think your water advice is good, but that’s something I’ve got covered. I’m a camelbak devotee. Wouldn’t go anywhere without it.

I like the oatmeal advice. I think I’ll try that. It sounds like that will work as a food plan. Pasta the night before, big ol’ oatmeal breakfast.

thanks