[Kerry Irons]

Shopping around

[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?

 

[Kerry Irons]

Calorie consumption

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.