Originally Posted by Santaria
The fuel sources have to be vegetarian, low in sugar (can't stand the stuff frankly) or vegan. I've actually had friends suggest everything from cake to pizza (I'm not kidding). Now obviously I know how to feed myself and have gotten better at it the longer I've stuck with my lifestyle choice of eating vegan and working toward being a professional endurance rider/runner, but this is sorta beyond my normal "just suck it up and pedal/run" mentality.
You
can actually eat regular food and I prefer them on the longer rides vs. the energy-drinks. Sure, cake, pizza, bean-burritos take longer to digest than the energy-drinks, but they taste better and feel better in the stomach. Your 45-mile riding limit is due to running out of glycogen, so if you can reach 45miles, you can do 100miles+ easily
WITH nutrition. Start eating at 1.0 hours out, take in a constant 250-calories/hr along with 500-750ml of water with electrolytes and you'll have no problems with 100miles+ at an easy 15-18mph pace.
However, if you wanted to break some records for this ride, I'd take along the energy-drinks instead as riding hard with solid food kinda upsets my stomach and gives me cramps in my side.
BTW - if you sip that gel one small bite at a time, you won't get the sugar rush... not that it matters on a ride anyway, you'll
always be burning off calories faster than you can absorb, so no insulin spike/glucose-low will occur.