Originally Posted by
YosemiteGirl
ImChris that would be great. The last ride I did I ate so many bananas I couldn't look at one for a month...because it was that or peanut butter pretzels. It was not a cheap ride, either!
The best rest stops had the simplest foods...fruits, nuts (when I do events, I do almonds instead of peanuts, I'm not a total allergy-person hater, I just want them to carry epi-pens because it worries me!), water, and maybe something creative. I was at a camp where I was greeted with a gluten-free chocolate cake after leading an afternoon hike and I almost died I was so excited.
Something creative or themed is always a hit!
Almonds would be great ... but they do tend to be a bit expensive if you've got a lot of people to feed.
In my case, I'm not going to keel over and die if I eat a peanut, they just make me feel incredibly uncomfortable. But I think there does need to be an awareness on the part of ride organisers that many, many people these days have foods they avoid for various reasons. It wouldn't bother me at all if a ride organiser decided it was too much hassle to try to cater to everyone's needs and provided a less expensive no-food-provided option for the ride. I'm perfectly capable of bringing or buying my own food on a long ride ... the number of solo and unsupported centuries and randonnees I've done numbers in the hundreds ... OK, probably something like 130.
I mentioned earlier that one of the best century rides I've done brought Subway on board. That was excellent. If riders opted to have a Subway meal at the halfway point, they were given a choice of about half a dozen subs or wraps (which they selected when they filled out the registration form), and there was a choice of flavours of cookies, and a choice of flavours of chips, and a large selection of fruit. The rest stops all had fruit and something salty, and one had a French-style meat pie which was really good, and trays of homemade fudge! Mmmmm!!
On the Golden Triangle, the first thing the organisers gave us when we checked in was a decent sized ziplock bag of GORP with M&Ms. I left the peanuts, of course, but the raisins and M&Ms were good.