I have written here about what to eat and drink on a day ride and most of it applies to a bike tour, but I thought that I would set out some additional tips for bike touring to help you get the most of it.
As I have noted in my other post, I also recommend Joanna Chmara’s article about eating and drinking on her wonderful website Wobbly Ride.
1. Go easy on your stomach the first few days
I speak from painful experience! You are on holiday. You are eating out in restaurants with wonderful gastronomic options. But your stomach is getting used both to the new food and to the test of riding long distances with a heavy load. Take it easy the first few days and stick to relatively bland and easily digestible food while your system adjusts. Ditto with the drink: the beer can wait a bit.
2. Try not to have too many fry ups
I absolutely love a fry up for breakfast when on holiday. Nothing says ‘holiday’ quite like sitting down to a plate of bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs and mushrooms. But a bike tour through South West England cured me of this. Every single hotel or bed & breakfast shovelled heavy plates of all of the above plus fried bread, tomatoes and of course baked beans. Wonderful as a treat but not conducive to an 80k ride up and down hills. By the end of the first week, I was desperate for muesli.
3. Keep hydrating even off the bike
Really, really hydrate when you can throughout the day and on your rest days. In restaurants, I often order a litre of water to rehydrate myself over my dinner. It doesn’t stop you having that nice bottle of red wine though… For purely medicinal purposes.
4. Balance and vary your diet
Variety is the spice of life. (I get sick of bananas after about three days). Mix it up so that you don’t get bored. And get your vitamins, proteins and carbs. When eating out in restaurants, I often order a side salad. In hotel breakfast buffets, I work in some fresh fruit.
5. Try things out and taste local specialities
If there are local markets, I often head out and see what is nice. I had some wonderful cheese in France, an super pastry in Switzerland and the most sweet and juicy tomato of my life in Lezhe, Albania. If you want inspiration, I recommend Felicity Cloake’s tour of France.
6. The Cheeky Secret Breakfast Sandwich
A further option and one that I often use is to make a cheeky secret breakfast sandwich from the hotel buffet selection and take it with me for my ride. Most hotels are rather relaxed about this – and some have even offered or insisted on making me one – but you will occasionally find a hotel that will visibly prohibit this. A slice of hard cheese, sliced tomato and cucumber and possibly some ham, all compressed between thick slices of bread can marinate wonderfully while you ride… I tend to have this sandwich at about the two-thirds point in the ride, a little bit of energy to get you through the final kilometres.
7. Joy of Cucumbers
I read that a trick of ultra-distance cyclists is to buy cucumbers. They are a great source of energy and vitamins but just as importantly, they last for absolutely ages and their firmness means that they are less likely to get crushed.
8. Freezer bags and a small container
I have written elsewhere about using freezer bags to pack your clothes. I also carry a few on my trip: great for nuts, biscuits, and of course, Haribo, the fuel of champions. For soft fruit and vegetables and anything else that might get crushed in your bike bags, I now take a small plastic container. It doubles up as a bowl for a salad.
9. Remember that you are on holiday
Remember my key rules. Once you have let your stomach adjust and your waistline with it, have fun, eat and drink what you like. And feel virtuous about it because of all the calories that you are burning off or not, but who cares? Go on.
Have some more Haribo. Have another glass of red wine for purely medicinal purposes. You deserve it, you total cycling hero.
10. And above all, remember that there is something crazily, stupidly pleasurable about a toasted cheese sandwich…
There just is. This is probably not very bike-tour related but I just thought that I would mention it.
Any thoughts?
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