What to eat for endurance?

I'm racing a 6hr hare scramble (woods with MX) tomorrow. I run it every year but I'm never sure what to eat. I'll be making 1 or 2 gas stops where I'll have enough time to drink some water, but no time to eat so Breakfast will have to last about 8 hrs.

I'm not a runner/endurance guy.  "They say" carbo-loading the night before helps.  So, load up on pizza, etc, now.

I usually only need stuff on the bike if I am going much over 2 hours. Nuun tablets are always useful in the heat though even if its a shorter ride

I've always found stuff like clif bars to be helpful, you should be able to hammer one of those at a gas stop. 

Wait, bike bike or motorcycle?

Go down to your local bicycle shop and take a look at their selection of energy gels and bars. These are designed to be carried with cyclists on long rides, which is pretty close to your use case. 

Some of it has to do with intensity and how your body deals with eating while exercising. As long as I keep below a certain threshold I can eat birthday cake, ribs, whatever while working. My wife can't eat anything several hours prior to heavy exercise or she'll see it again. My issue is with heat/dehydration. When I get hot I can't eat without being sick. 

In general the usual stuff works, cliff bars, bananas, that sort of thing. If you can't eat you can still get considerable calories and a bunch of electrolytes with sports drinks. The concern being having to stop and pee depending on your tolerance for that sort of thing. 

Osterkraut said:

Wait, bike bike or motorcycle?

Well he did say MX and Gas...

The answer is loading up the day before as said above.

Thanks for the tips.  I may very well load up the day before. This time I actually ate very little the day before due to my work schedule, and coming off nights. I went with my standard Peanut butter on rye toast and lot's of coffee the morning of the race.

It's a motorcycle race on a course that's roughly 20 km of woods (tight rough single track),  approaximately half  a long, real motocross track, and it's 6 hours long. I pushed it this year and actually went 3:15 on one tank of fuel (11L), so I had only one stop, where I filled up, drank two bottles of water and got back on the track.   I did eat 4 plates of spaghetti ater the race though, so I was pretty happy with that

It's manual scoring and it's Thanksgiving here today, so I won't know how I did until probably tomorrow. If I had to guess, I'd say 4th or 5th. Not my best ride, I've finished 2nd the last 3 years, and thought I might be able to win it this year, but I didn't have it.

Little blue pills?  Oh wait.  Different topic. 

My absolute go-to before a long day that will be calorie intensive is a large burrito. Steak, black beans, rice, cheese, cilantro, a good sauce, and some lime juice for pizazz. Cafe Rio is a favorite, so are the taco trucks. 

I was also in the Marines for eight years and have the resultant cast-iron digestive tract, so YMMV...

I could easily eat that with lots of hot sauce for breakfast

8 hours? That's more bacon, eggs, and potatoes O'Bryan territory.

Seriously, this calls for something that takes a long time to digest. Carbs tend to give a burst of energy for just a few hours; protien and fat with some complex carbs are going to last longer. There's a reason the traditional country or English breakfast is loaded with meat and eggs (and beans, in the case of the English) - they're intended to be enough to supply a farmhand for a long day of manual labor.

A big meal the evening before, 2 Clif bars, a banana +  hand full of trail mix 10 minutes before the start pistol, and then Gu gels during ... got me thru running a marathon. That was 4k calories burned in four hours. The gels are nasty but I could see where you could shoot one while riding if you felt like you needed a burst of energy.

Clif bars are about 300 calories each of nothing bad for you and they are easy to eat quickly and wash down with gatoraide - probably perfect for fuel pit stops.   

I'd avoid a lot of fiber when loading unless you want to E36 M3 yourself during a hare scramble.

I have a bunch of friends that do ultraendurance mountain bike races - multi day haul all your gear events. Food is always a big topic, and something different works for each one of them. Some live on high tech liquid meal replacements, and some eat gas station roller food the whole trip.

My go-to for long rides is carb loading the night before with some protein. I try to keep it simple and shy away from grease and anything that's going to give the crap cramps the next morning. One of my faves is sushi, actually. The morning of the ride I fix what I call Captain Crunch Oatmeal - a good size bowl of real oatmeal with brown sugar, a big scoup of crunchy peanut butter, some cinnamon and some salt. The salt helps keep me from cramping because I sweat like a fire hose. The idea is a balance of complex carbs for slow burn, simple carbs for energy, and some fat and protein for the muscles. During the ride I eat a goo packet about once an hour, and grab trail mix, bananas, or things like that at any rest stops. I only drink straight water while I'm actually riding but sometimes I'll have a cup of sports drink at the stops. If you get into muscle cramps, dill pickles or yellow mustard will turn them off almost instantly for a lot of people. I carry a couple mustard packets with me.

Whatever you think you want to use, try eating some before the ride. The last thing you want to do is eat some energy goop for the first time on a long ride and have your stomach rebel. Some brands work great for me, some don't. If there isn't a cycling/running store near you, check places like Academy Sports, Dick's Sporting Goods, or even the diet section of the WalMart Pharmacy for options.

EDIT: if you really want to get into preplanning and eating real food, check out a cook book called The Feed Zone: Portables. It's got some amazing stuff that you can cook ahead and make into little packets to eat with one hand while riding. The chef developed it while training pro cycling teams.

In reply to Zomby Woof :

I'd do what you usually do honestly maybe eat little bit more. I've read a number of articles in both Runners World and other periodicals which warn against carb loading if you do not do it on a regular basis becuase it can cause you to bloat or force your system to do something out of the ordinary and actually make you tired. They also generally warn about eating all sorts of out of the ordinary stuff just to fit in the extra carbs since it does the same thing.

Water, some sort of electrolyte mixture, and Cliff bars or something else during the race. I don't do peanut butter during long duration hikes, runs, or bike rides. It seems to linger like it got stuck in my tonsils and is distracting.

PBJ. 

Pringles. 

Clif bar.  

Honey Stinger brand gels (mostly organic, easy on the stomach)

a sweet potato per day for about a week prior if you like them.  Carb loading starts a week before the event, not the night before.

I've never eaten bars of any kind except the protein bars I made at home once. They were good but I went back to the shakes because they were lower in calories. Some of my friends eat protein and energy bars, but looking at the numbers, they don't look so good to me. Some off the cliff bars have some ingredients I don't like. The English breakfast sounds good though

Think I'll try a few things mentioned, default to the penut butter and protein shakes if need be and see what works for some of the short 2hr races. I was awfully hungry about 4hrs in.

Results just in, too. Finished 3rd behind this years and last years #1 pros. No complaints with that.

In reply to nutherjrfan :

They're only good for up to four hours

ultraclyde said:

EDIT: if you really want to get into preplanning and eating real food, check out a cook book called The Feed Zone: Portables. It's got some amazing stuff that you can cook ahead and make into little packets to eat with one hand while riding. The chef developed it while training pro cycling teams.

I own this book and forgot all about it. Thank you for the reminder.

ultraclyde said:

 

EDIT: if you really want to get into preplanning and eating real food, check out a cook book called The Feed Zone: Portables. It's got some amazing stuff that you can cook ahead and make into little packets to eat with one hand while riding. The chef developed it while training pro cycling teams.

I can assure you, that's not going to happen during one of these events. Will check out the other info, though

I'd guess the type of strain during an offroad motorcycle race is a bit different from an MTB race. On a bike, you eat small amounts while riding, usually high carb stuff with long lasting sugars that supply needed energy to muscles. Eating too much greasy food prior to the workout can sometimes slow you down as it "clogs the system" taking forever to digest when what your body really needs is "right now" energy. On the bicycle I'd rather have a hungry stomach but a clear mind and energetic muscles. I can always eat after the ride.

On a bicycle, as you get more tired, you're speed decreases, unless your riding downhill, which I'd compare more similarly to moto. This means you ability to mentally and physically "keep up" with the speed stays more in line with your endurance.

On a moto, you can still be doing 50mph through very high consequence areas at the end of the day, when your body is physically shot. 

For this reason, I'd probably go high protein right before the ride, (cold boneless chicken breast?) and supplement it with sugar and caffeine later in the day. You won't need the sugar and caffeine early because the adrenaline will be working pretty good.  In fact, I'd probably try my hardest to avoid sugars and caffiene prior the race. You dont wanna be jittery with an adrenaline rush. High protein (though not steak) the night before, too, maybe with some dense stuff like sweet potatoes. 

I'd avoid rice, beans, dairy or anything might potentially speed up your digestion until later in the day. Likewise, I'd avoid pasta and anything that could make you bloaty. 

I hate to say it, but bowel movements make a big difference in how you feel while working hard. If I can hit the can before a ride I'll feel so much better than when I'm "feeling it" during. 

I think Hunter S Thompson's diet for the Mint 400 kept him going, but I don't think that I would recommend it. Quoted from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Raoul Duke: We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.

I did suggest the night before that I consume some edibles just before the start of the race. It would surely help my concentration, and I would definitely get into a groove, though I might get waved off for going too slow. But at least could go for a pizza then

you can get the sports gels and dissolvable drink tabs (nuun) that come with caffeine in them.  I find that for exercise, or when you'll need extra mental focus, they can help a lot.  That's especially so if you're addicted to coffee, but can't have your regular consumption in a situation like this.