Originally Posted by
DrIsotope
I don't understand the seemingly arbitrary restrictions most folks on here put on themselves with regards to eating when on the bike. "No food under three hours, no food under 50 miles, etc." Sometimes I eat on a 20 mile ride. Sometimes I don't eat on a Metric. I never leave the house and think, "oh, only doing 45 miles this morning, no snacks!" If I'm hungry I eat, If I'm not I don't. So the same philosophy transfers over to the 250kcal/hr thing-- I have never planned out how much I'm going to intake per hour in advance. Hungry, eat, not hungry, don't. Sometimes, chocolate milk.
I live by my user title.
Some people (like myself) are training for situations on the bike where a better ability to metabolize fat will be helpful- in my instance, a long timed event (114 miles/12000 ft climbing) in which I will be trying to beat my time from last year. Because I will be riding intensely, it will be harder for me to digest food, so have well-trained ability to mobilize fat could give me a competitive advantage over the other women in the field (unless they train the same as I do, which they likely do). Also, in long events ridden at a race pace, your ability to digest food diminishes over time. So again, a well-trained ability to burn fat is helpful.
Some people (like myself) are also trying to manage weight. There are a great many times throughout the day where I may feel some sense of hunger, whether on the bike or off the bike. If its a mild niggling thing that can be ignored, I often do so. I'm not too likely to ignore it if I have 4 more hours of riding. But if I'm an hour from stopping for coffee with my friends anyway, I'm not too likely to worry about eating on the bike.
As far as having a plan for eating on the bike, it really depends on what you're doing. It sounds like you are just casually riding around and your casual approach to nutrition and hydration is fine for you, Way different for someone who is racing ultra events. I go into those with a very specific nutrition and hydration plan. I know exactly how many calories I have on the bike and when I will eat them. I have periods were my hydration is just calories (honey and water) and other periods where it's calories plus electrolytes (Skratch) and I know how many particles of digestible stuff I want hitting my GI tract per unit time. It's just a way different thing and I can pretty much guarantee your casual approach would not work too well in an ultra race.
So you may not understand what other cyclists are doing, it may seem "arbitrary" to you. Lol, that does not mean it actually *is* arbitrary however. There's lots of sound reasons behind these decisions.
