Will ride for food

They say that during the Tour de France those guys eat something like 7,000 calories a day.  (each!)  That’s one thing cyclists can do is eat.  My first exposure to a serious recreational cyclist was a guy I used to work with.  Now, often people will bring their lunch to work.  And sometimes they’ll also bring a snack or two.  But it wasn’t unusual to see this guy eating a plate of spaghetti at about 10:00 in the morning.  “Eating your lunch early today, huh?”  “Lunch?  This is just a snack.  My lunch is over there,” he’d say, pointing to a bag with 3 more generous servings of something or other in it.  And it’s not just after the ride—check out the rest stops on a century ride sometime and you’ll see some guys going through peanut butter & jelly sandwiches by the stack. 

And make no mistake about it, sports nutrition companies are very well aware of this.  There are on-line retail stores just full of different kinds of energy bars, gels, gummies, and drinks.  There are products specifically designed for pre-ride nutrition and other products for post-ride recovery.  There are products to use during long rides and other products for short rides, products designed to be used during training, and others to be used during racing.  And flavors?  It’s not just chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry anymore.  No, now there’s everything from Latte Explosion to Banana Peanut Caramel Macadamia Mango Fusion.

But not all cyclists buy into the high tech sports nutrition products.  We were on a ride recently where at a rest stop a guy pulled out something wrapped up in aluminum foil.  He opened it up and took a bite out of some lump of something in there; I couldn’t help but ask him what it was…  “It’s a beet.”  “A beet,” I asked, thinking that something so unusual deserved more than a 2-word response.  “A beet,” he repeated matter-of-factly, as if to say, “What, haven’t you ever seen a guy pull a beet out of his pocket before?”  Ok, so who am I to question a nice boiled beet on a bike ride? 

On another ride Brenda saw a girl eating something that was about the size of a golf ball, had a dark outside, and an intense purple inside.  She figured it was a chocolate-covered blueberry something, but when she asked about it the girl said, “It’s a potato… a blue potato.  Want one?”  (It tasted just like an ordinary white potato.)

Everybody’s got their favorite things.  Potatoes, beets, bananas, energy bars, trail mix, electrolytes, carbs, protein, hi tech, old school… you name it, sooner or later some cyclist will be eating it.  That's one thing we can all do.