So, you’ve been riding for hours and hours and you still have a few hours more in the saddle until you’re done with your ride. You’re already out of food and you’re starving so you stop at the closest corner store to refuel. So, what should you by?
First of all, let’s define “refuelling”. It means to supply a vehicle (or in this case a starving triathlete) with fuel. However, you are not a car that can drive until it’s out of gas and then refuel. You need to constantly consume food during your ride and when you do stop to buy some food, you should think about nourishing your body instead of refuelling your body. There’s a small difference between nourishing and refuelling but this small difference is really important. Nourishing means to “provide with the food or other substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition”. The difference is that instead of only thinking about the amount of calories a food product contains, you should think about the nutrients it contains and what it would bring to you for the rest of the ride but also for you health in general.
Generally, when you enter a corner store during a long ride you all looking for something that is salty and that also has fat and carbohydrates and you are also often looking for some caffeine. Of course a snicker and a Coke provide all of this. However, this food products only fuel your body, they definitely don’t nourish it. Indeed, the Coke will give you a huge boost due to the caffeine and the simple sugars but unless your are finishing your ride in less than one hour it is not ideal because after the “boost” is over you will start to be tired again and you will have no more energy.
A snicker provides you with 250 calories, 12 grams of fat, 5 mg of cholesterol, 12 mg of sodium, 33 g of carbohydrates, including 27 grams of sugars and 4 g of proteins. It is actually a good combination of carbohydrates, fat and proteins. If your were doing a small ride with intensity it would not be ideal due to the presence of fat and proteins but for a long ride you need to consume some fat and proteins. However, when you look at the list of ingredients you realize that it is definitely not the best option. Indeed, it contains milk fat, palm oil and partially hydrogenated soybean oil, so it contains a lot of saturated fat. In fact, it contains 4.5 grams of saturated fat. Also, it contains corn syrup and sugar, which have a high glycemic index so you will have a peak of energy and then you will fell tired. The GI index indicates the food’s effect on a person’s blood glucose (blood sugar) level compared to the effect of pure glucose. Therefore, a Coke has a high GI index and nuts and peanuts have a smaller GI index. At the end of a ride you want to replenish your muscle glycogen so it is ok to consume something with a high GI index, such as a banana and some dates but during a long and easy ride you should consume food with a low GI index so that you can have energy for a long period of time. Also, if you are doing a short and fast ride it is ok to consume food with a high GI index.
Of course, it is really difficult to find good nutritious food in a corner store. You could even consider a corner store as a “food desert”, which is defined as: “an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food”. However, in most corner stores you can find bananas, nuts, unsweetened apple juice, coconut water. The glycemic index of an unsweetened apple juice is much lower than the GI index of a Coke: 44 vs 63. The GI index of an unsweetened orange juice is 50, which is still lower than a coke. Tomato juice is also a good option because it contains sodium, it is a source of carbohydrate and it has a low GI index: 38.
If you are looking for a salty food because you have been eating energy bars all day, pretzels are a good option. Indeed, it contains a little bit of fat but much less than chips and especially a lot less saturated fat. It’s a good source of sodium, carbohydrates and pretzels contain more protein than chips. Of course, you can find granola bars in most corner stores but they are often really sweet, have almost no proteins and often contain saturated and trans fats.
Finally, it’s often better to bring enough energy bars or rice cakes so that you don’t have to buy food during your ride and to bring single-pack electrolyte/energy powder so that you only need to buy water. But if you need to buy food, take the time to look at the ingredients and buy something with a little bit of fat and proteins and not too sugary so that it gives you energy for the rest of the ride.
If you want ideas of what to eat during a long ride, you should check out what some of the best athletes eat during long trainings at: http://nutritionforperformance.com