mulvamj

Hello all... There's a wealth of information here, so i thought i'd ask about what i should be eating for a century 6 days away. It's my first formal century, and i've not rode 100 miles since 2002. I've been training, but i hate eating crap all day long on my long rides. Crap = snickers bars, honey buns, baby ruths, occasional muffin from a gas station, etc. What should i be eating for optimal performance during this century? After my last 66 mile ride, i came back, had a big chicken dinner and threw up. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

CastIron

Same as always. Stay hydrated. Day before you can have the customary pasta feast (no cream sauces, please). Radical diet changes do not help performance (short term).

Machka 

Just eat normal food ... whatever you would normally eat during a week. Try not to experiement with anything unusual, or extra spicy, or whatever because those things could have a negative effect on your digestive system, but otherwise, just keep it normal!

During the century, just make sure you consume approx. 250 calories per hour. Again, don't eat anything too unusual, but some suggestions might be:

bananas (80 calories each)
packets of almonds
muffins
pastries
cookies
energy bars
cereal bars
dried fruit (especially apricots)
other fruits
potato chips
pretzels
chicken sandwiches

Also, don't forget to drink. The general recommendation is one 750 ml bottle of water and/or sports drink every hour to hour and a half.

ericgu

Shoot for 250-350 calories per hour. Exceeding that - especially all at once - is a common mistake people make.

I did a hard 70 last Sunday (5480' of vertical on gradients of up to 20%). It took me a little over 5 hours. During that ride, I ate

* Two large water bottles of accelerade
* About 70 oz of water (hot here)
* One whole-wheat bagel
* 1/2 package clif bloks
* 6 fig newtons
* 1/2 bag of chips
* 1 oz beef jerky (500 mg of sodium right there)

Which puts me in the right ballpark. Right after the race - and I mean within 5 minutes of getting off the bike - I had a large water bottle of endurox for recovery.

Generally, look for easily-digested carbs (easily digested for you - people have different needs). I used to eat purely solid foods on long rides but since I switched to accelerade I'd never go back. The bagel worked really well - I ate it in quarters - and was a nice counterpoint to the sweet stuff. Water is an obvious, though it is possible to drink too much. Keep the fat very low as your stomach isn't able to digest it.

Finally, don't mess with what you've been doing at training unless it isn't working at all. Long rides are not the time to find out that you don't tolerate a food well.

linux_author

- tks for the listing... good advice as always!

- but how do you keep the chicken sandwiches safely cooled?

Machka 

I don't. I buy the chicken sandwich from Subway, KFC, or Wendy's around the half-way point of a century or short brevet, or about every couple hundred kms on a longer brevet, and I eat it right away.

branman1986

after reading a bunch of ericqu's posts, I pretty much started following what he did as much as possible.

I try to get most of my carbs from cytomax, and supplement with gels and maybe a powerbar. I definitely used to eat way too much on centuries and I'd get a sour stomach towards the end plus a huge drop in energy.

my last two centuries were like 3 or 4 bottles of cytomax(two bottles cytomax and refilled with gatorade or powerade), three or four gels, a powerbar(eaten first, about 1/3 at a time) and a flat sprite.

I drank an Ensure right off the bike.

brons2

I just eat pasta the night before and a power bar an hour. Seems to work fine