As the years roll past faster and faster, my eating habits have taken some dramatic changes.
These days I wake up, have a cup of decaf coffee and head to my substitute teaching gigs with a half cup of baby carrots and four Cuties in my backpack for brunch.
You see, subbing you never know when your food and potty breaks will come. I can’t handle first graders with a full bladder screaming at me. So I go minimalistic.
When we’re camping, I’ll ride or hike on just that cup of decaf and eat afterward.
So I was a bit surprised on my annual kickoff summer ride that at the midpoint — three hours in — I opted to stop at an old hamburger stand (30 years of serving the same burgers!), and have their quarter-pounder special with fries and a drink (Pepsi).
Surprised because I eat a hamburger maybe twice a month, french fries even less often, and a soda about 2 or 3 times a year.
When I started riding way back in my 20s, I’d refuel with a Gatorade and Hostess Twinkies.
After I started longer 4-hour plus rides, I’d snack on Nips hard candies and Fig Newtons and bring along a can of Coke.
About 15 years ago, when I started riding with my Black Lab, I transitioned to apples mid-ride and just water. Ridgely ate the cores.
Most recently, only if I really need it, I’ll chomp on a Kind bar and down a Gatorade.
The mere thought of gels makes me gag.
This week’s question: What’s your mid-ride and post-ride go-to food and drink?
Tortilla with peanut butter, pecan halves, and dried cherries. I think Robot covered the burrito in all its forms and this is one.
Midride: Gu Roctane
Post-ride: IPA
Gatorade and Clif Bloks during, a burger and something malty after.
In my declining years my velo-fuel has been plain water and either Clif Bloks or a Clif Shot. But Clif has “retired” most of my favorite flavors of everything, and the prices have become slightly appalling for a senile citizen on the dole, so I may go back to the old freelancer’s habit of making smallish sammiches of homemade whole-wheat bread, crunchy almond butter and strawberry jam.
Remember Exceed, from Ross Labs? I slammed that for a while in the Before-Time and it wasn’t much worse than drinking out of the toilet. All my hair fell out and I went blind, but that could’ve been the upshot of some other unsavory habit.
Sometimes a bunch of us running on fumes near the end of a long ride east of Bibleburg would hit a 7-Eleven for some desperation chow, like Fig Neutrons and Gatorade. The fat, fluid, sugar and salt would get us home, where the beer was. Your pee would smell like a wet cleanup at a Canon City Baskin-Robbins for a while, but it beat drying up and blowing away on the long slog up Marksheffel.
Postride I gobble whatever’s left over from last night’s dinner, unless The Boss requisitioned it for a work lunch, in which case it’s sammich time again or fight the cat for her kibble, which is almost always a real bad idea.
Mid ride is usually Cliff Bars if I remember to bring them. And lots of water. Post ride is something with a modicum of salt, as I tend to get salt depletion headaches that are almost as intense as taking a 357 Magnum to the brain. A bean and cheese burrito post ride feast works well, esp. with green chile. Gatorade if it is a really hot day.
I recall way back in ancient history when I pretended I could pin on a number. Back then it was Cytomax, which if it was too strong, caused one to lock up or get the trots. Thankfully, I don’t pin on numbers any more.
Mid ride, if I plan my route correctly, I’ll have a sandwich of some sort and a beer. Post ride, again, if I plan it right, is whatever is for dinner with my wife and more beer.