# Trail mix on longer rides



## tomdecel (Feb 2, 2010)

I can do my clubs 40 to 50 milers with nothing more than a couple large bottles of Cyclomax. I am currently training to do my annual century so I have increased the rides to 70~80 milers on most Sundays.

Some of the guys I ride with take everything in the book from bananas, to jells, Powerbars, Etc. Etc. 

I picked up some trail mix my wife left on the counter a few weeks ago, put in a plastic bag and in my front pack and find it very easy to eat the stuff a bit at a time. After 4 weeks of doing so I went to Costco and bought some dry fruit, assorted nuts and even raided a bit of my kids M/Ms stash and made my own. 

I am ignorant however as to what is recommended to eat on a long ride as far as number of calories and how much of it is in the stuff I am making. I know it is on the heavy side, but so much easier than opening up a Cliff bar.

So far either my conditioning is getting better or the stuff is working very well as the 80 milers are becoming easier and easier.


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## pretender (Sep 18, 2007)




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## Kerry Irons (Feb 25, 2002)

*Shopping around*



tomdecel said:


> [I am ignorant however as to what is recommended to eat on a long ride as far as number of calories and how much of it is in the stuff I am making. I know it is on the heavy side, but so much easier than opening up a Cliff bar.


You can come pretty close to your calorie content by going to a convenience store and reading the labels of similar mixes. It will be close enough. You can eat whatever works for you on long rides. The only thing to be careful about with trail mix is that you get enough fruit (carbs) and not too heavy on nuts.

And please, no more of that font?


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## tomdecel (Feb 2, 2010)

Kerry Irons said:


> You can come pretty close to your calorie content by going to a convenience store and reading the labels of similar mixes. It will be close enough.


Thanks..... Actually I did just that. The problem is that most of the concoctions in stores are in the candy isle and primarily nuts with added salt, sugar, and preservatives. Mine is primarily dried fruit with a few almonds, peanuts and cashews for crunch. 

The more important questions is how much of it should be consumed while riding. I have seen ranges from 200 to 400 cals per hour. Realizing that speed, weight and climate affect different people in different ways, I guess I am looking for personal experience from people who do the same. 

The other day I ate maybe 800 to 900 calories in my guesstimate during an 80 miler (plus the Citomax) but I don't know if that is too much or too little. I felt great during the ride.


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## Kerry Irons (Feb 25, 2002)

*Calorie consumption*



tomdecel said:


> The more important questions is how much of it should be consumed while riding. I have seen ranges from 200 to 400 cals per hour. Realizing that speed, weight and climate affect different people in different ways, I guess I am looking for personal experience from people who do the same.


The normal recommendation is 300 calories per hour as the upper limit of what your body can absorb, though some studies have shown that a mix of sugar types (approaching real food!) can push it closer to 400. On an 80 mile ride, you might burn around 2800 calories, and if it took you 5 hours, you would get 1,000 calories from fat metabolism. You might have 1000 calories readily accessible in stored glycogen, so you might need another 800. That points to around 200 calories per hour intake. All that said, there are a lot of person to person variabilities. For rides of 110 miles (a little over 6 hours for me), I typically start shortly after breakfast and take in around 1,500 calories during the ride.


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## MaddSkillz (Mar 13, 2007)

Kerry Irons said:


> You can come pretty close to your calorie content by going to a convenience store and reading the labels of similar mixes. It will be close enough. You can eat whatever works for you on long rides. The only thing to be careful about with trail mix is that you get enough fruit (carbs) *and not too heavy on nuts.*
> 
> And please, no more of that font?



Why is that? 

I'm also working on upping my mileage as I'm gearing up for HHH coming up. 100 mile road race on saturday and then the crit on Sunday. So I'm just trying to figure out what to eat... ugh.


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## pretender (Sep 18, 2007)

Nuts have too much fat and fiber for eating on the bike. I used to bring peanut butter sandwiches on the bike and it finally dawned on me why I was getting stomach upset. You want, basically, easily digested carbohydrate with a minimum of fiber.


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## MaddSkillz (Mar 13, 2007)

pretender said:


> Nuts have too much fat and fiber for eating on the bike. I used to bring peanut butter sandwiches on the bike and it finally dawned on me why I was getting stomach upset. You want, basically, easily digested carbohydrate with a minimum of fiber.



Okay, that makes sense.


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## tomdecel (Feb 2, 2010)

Thanks, 

Following up, I went to my local health food store this morning where they have half a dozen different combination of trail mix and they range from 130 to 160 calories for a 1/4 cup serving. All the combination were loaded with various nuts at the expense of dried fruit, so I walked over to the dried food section and found that almost all the packages had combinations of sugar, salt, sulfur or other additive except for dried mangoes and California dates. 

So I bought a package of each which I will add to my mix. My riding partner told me that this morning that our ride this Sunday should be about 95 miles (self contained) so I am trying to carry and consume the most energy efficient calories.


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