Fuel Review ~ opinions?

[Nokomis]

I'm wondering if I got enough fuel on my ride yesterday - I thought so, but could use another opinion or 12. I want to learn

63mile ride

Breakfast: toaster biscuit w/ almond butter & jam, egg, 1/2c hash browns, 4oz juice, 1/2c yogurt w/ 1/2c berries, rice milk latte.

On Ride: 1 bottle w/ Emergen-C, majority of camelback
Stop 1: 1/2 lara bar, 1/2 banana, orange slice
On Road: 1/2 lara bar
Lunch Break: Whole Wheat sandwich w/ Almond Butter, 2 sweet pickles, 1/2 lara bar
On Road: 1 Gu
Near end of ride: 1/2 Gu

I felt cold the first half of the ride, and fatigued the second. Legs got crampy trying to push up the one "hill" at the end of the ride - took significant distance to recover to our traveling speed. I was never hungry en route, but rather felt the need to get fuel to keep my legs a'movin.

Does this seem about right? Far too much or too little? Thanks!!

[SadieKate]

Nokomis, did you ever feel that you rode your pace on this ride? Did you feel you had lots and lots of time to ride easy at the beginning, almost stupidly slow? Did you feel like you had to keep up with the two guys?

My overall impression is that your fatigue at the end wasn't due to lack of fuel, it was due to riding at someone else's pace. Maybe I'm wrong.

PS - that much food would have me feel like crap but others maybe able to tolerate that much.

[Nokomis]

Nokomis, did you ever feel that you rode your pace on this ride? Did you feel you had lots and lots of time to ride easy at the beginning, almost stupidly slow? Did you feel like you had to keep up with the two guys?

Good point! The only road training I do is with DH - I've never been on the road without him. I'd say most of the ride I was at the top end of my speed... if the wind changed or we got a gust, it'd push me off the back and I'd either have to hussle to keep up, or just dog along until they slowed down At the end, I did tell the guy pulling our line to slow down; his computer wasn't working and his legs were easily pulling 23mph - and wanting to do more even with a slight tail wind, I wasn't feeling that strong... 21 was as much as I could sustain.

[SadieKate]

Ah ha! I think we have the solution. Dump DH for the ride and ride your pace. Trust me, you have the legs but you must ride your pace. Lots of warm-up time and no more than a comfortable pace for the middle portion. You know the hills are at the end (wasn't that in Susan's post about the ride?) so save your energy for them.

Not that I don't have fun riding with my DH, but sometimes they are just a hindrance.

[SadieKate]

Just to give you a comparison for fuel intake. Sunday's ride was 60 miles, 2,500 ft of climbing, windy (strong enough to make the flags whip and snap straight out) and I'm 135 lbs.

Breakfast -
Medium size bowl of hot multi-grain cereal with butter and brown sugar
Iced latte during 20 min drive to start

On ride -
A bit more than 2 bottles Cytomax
About 1.5 bottle water (so close to 4 bottles of liquid total)
3 servings HammerGel - nanner flavor (thanks, MP, the flask worked great)

This is the absolute max effort I would do without some kind of solid food like a PayDay or a Mojo Bar. I would have eaten more on the ride but I rode to a restaurant at the end so I knew I didn't have to fuel up too much.

[snapdragen]

Just shows how different we are - I'd need something more solid than what you ate sadie. 'course, I'm not a gel fan, so I'd probably have a mojo bar, oh, and I like the cliff nectar bars too. (dark chocolate and walnuts)

And my brand new favorite after ride snack - 1/2 a Mission Turkey Sandwich I'll have to see if I can copy it on my own, I can't always get to Mission Coffee after a ride!

Turkey
Cranberry sauce
Walnuts
Lettuce
7 grain bread

Am I missing anything jo?

[Nanci]

Well, you probably burned 2900-3250 calories, depending on how much you had to fight the wind. You (anyone) could put through, at the most, 1200-1600.


Ride:1282

Emergen-C: 14x20= 280
Lara Bar: 1.5x240= 360
Gu: 1.5x100= 150
Banana: .5x112= 56
Orange Slice: 1x59= 59
Whole Wheat Bread: 2x65= 130
Almond Butter 1Tbsp: 1x88= 88
Sweet Pickle 1/2 cup 1x159= 159

So, if I guessed right on the Emergen-C, if you drank it all, you were right at the low end of what your stomach could process.

Plus the good breakfast that we didn't even count.

At the most, you could try adding in 100 more calories/hour- but any more than that is too much for your stomach to process.

http://tinyurl.com/jvcwc

This is a really good generalized nutritional article by Steve Born, just to give you some basics. Also on the website you can find all you need to know about electrolytes/hydration.

[maillotpois]

3 servings HammerGel - nanner flavor (thanks, MP, the flask worked great)

Glad it worked!!! Now you have my secret weapon!

[Dianyla]

Heh, Nanci beat me to it. I was plugging all your food into Calorie King and came up with a total of 1250 calories consumed. I personally think you didn't eat enough, but do keep in mind that my opinion is based on what I've found works best for me which may not work best for you. I weigh 155 lbs - which also factors into how many cells I need to fuel on a ride. A lighter weight person does not need as many calories to keep moving - case in point SadieKate.

My Polar HRM estimated yesterday's calorie expenditure at 3027 (I weight 155). The night before I ate a large carbolicious 850 calorie dinner right before bed, a 400 calorie breakfast, 1300 calories while I was on the bike and at rest stops during the ride. Right after the ride I chowed down 400 cals. Then another high-carb 700 calorie dinner, and I was still slightly behind on my daily count.

At rest stops, I always go straight for the bagels and cookies. Bananas and fruit just aren't high-calorie enough.

[SadieKate]

I'll admit my intake was on the low side but I don't take in as much food per hour on a metric course as I would on a full century. It will catch up with me before the end of the ride but I also can't eat tons while riding. Between the heat and the hills, I'll urp. I also knew I was riding directly to a restaurant (crepe with swiss, spinach, shrooms and tomatoes, country fries and fresh fruit ).

I need to go check out the HammerGel recipes on their site. See what flavors they mix with banana.

[Nokomis]

My Polar HRM estimated yesterday's calorie expenditure at 3027 (I weight 155)

Dianyla ~ is your HRM combined w/ your computer, or are you running two to get cadence, distance, and HR?

I'm going to have to dig thru Nanci's links some more ~ and start using my CalKing account again. I really don't know how much I am eating, or need to sustain activity.

A lighter weight person does not need as many calories to keep moving...

Yeah - I'm working on becoming that person I've got ya topped by 10lbs. Oh - and every time I saw long braids I wanted to ask if it was you!

General Qu: Are you usually hungry after a ride? It takes me a long time to feel hungry after ~ we got off the road at 1:30, and I made dinner & ate after 6pm but wouldn't have if DH wasn't complaining about needing food.

[Nanci]

"As far as calorie replenishment is concerned, the body has a limit to what it can accept from carbohydrate donation for return to the energy cycle. Researchers such as Coleman, Noakes and others (in carbohydrate oxidative research) agree that up to 1.0-1.1 grams of carbohydrate per minute can be utilized from exogenous (outside) carbohydrate donation. A 1.0 g/carb per minute donation is 240 carbohydrate calories per hour. A 1.1 g/carb per minute donation is 264 carbohydrate calories per hour. Taking into account that some of those calories- approzimately 6-23%- are burned/lost during the digestive process, this suggests that for the average athlete the minimum intake is 254.4 calories to obtain 240 calories per hour (1.0 per minute with 6% lost in route) while the absolute upper maximum is 324.72 carbohydrate calories required in order to regenerate 264 carbohydrate calories (1.1 per minute with 23% lost in route).

We take a slightly more conservative side and suggest a slightly lower overall dose after finding that these higher amounts only induced gastric stress disorders and reduced performance in many athletes. This is why our common recommendation is approximately 60-70 grams of carbohydrates (240-280 calories). That will, in most situations, and for most athletes, provide enough carbohydrates for energy production (the limit of what the body can metabolize) while taking into account a percentage of those calories being lost/burned during the digestive/metabolic processes."

Quoted from Hammer Gel's website.

[DirtDiva]

Yes. Not too bothered right away, but within 20/30mins I'll be feeling pretty peckish. Like, not starving hungry, but I definitely need a snack to tide me over until it's convenient to organise real food (the bike has to be washed straight away, else it won't get done for days and the mud will have dried into something impossible to get off).

[Dianyla]

Dianyla ~ is your HRM combined w/ your computer, or are you running two to get cadence, distance, and HR?

I'm using the Polar s720i, which does all of my computing needs. I love this little device, but it wasn't cheap. I was able to save some money on it by buying it on eBay.

Oh - and every time I saw long braids I wanted to ask if it was you!

Actually, you wouldn't have seen the hair anyway. I put a pair of pantyhose on my head and stick the braid down one leg, wrapping the spare leg around the base of the braid. They're black opaque hose, so they don't necessarily look like pantyhose.

Nanci, that's really interesting about the limit on ability to consume carbs. So my question now is... how does the body do it? If you only eat 2000kcal but you burn 3000, where does that come from after the glycogen is gone? (Please tell me it comes right from my thighs... please)

[SadieKate]

I have this article from the Univ of Tenn, published by the American College of Sports Medicine. It disputes the accuracy of Polar calorie measurement for women. If someone (Nanci? ) would like to read it and give us the English language Cliff Notes version, it would be nice. The current versions of Polar use the same methodology (I know there is a better word but I've gone blank).

I just need an email address.