Companies like Hammer Nutrition make some of the best sports nutrition products out there, and when convenience is paramount, there is no doubt that they work well when doing long-distance riding. Unfortunately, when I spend a really long ride “fueling” this way, I end up feeling like crap towards the end of the ride, and feel really strung out afterwords.

Just speculating, but I think when your body is used to eating real food all the time, and low to moderate carb at that, it’s a bit of a shock to the system to spend a day eating sugary sports products. I’m also not a big fan of sweet things, and 6-7 hours of nothing but sweet just gets disgusting.

People have been eating real food on bike rides for a lot longer than they’ve been sucking down sports products, of course, even if ideas about what kind of real food we should be eating have changed. I recall reading one racer’s report from an early 20th century stage of the the Tour de France where he set out with 12 pork chops in his saddlebag!

Still, many of the staples of real-food fueling (P&B sandwiches, tortillas, etc), don’t work so well if you are trying to avoid gluten. Luckily, Dr. Allen Lim of Team Garmin has a couple of recipes that avoid gluten, are not sickly sweet, and work really well:

Allen Lim’s Sushi Bars:

Potato and Parmesan cheese:

Yesterday I did a mixed-surface group ride, linking up 55 miles of dirt and pavement. About 5100 feet of climbing. I took in the same number of calories per hour as I usually do, about 250, but using the recipes above, my calories came from from rice, potato, egg, prosciutto, Parmesan cheese, and olive oil.

These recipes were hands down tastier and left me better feeling after the ride than any sports product or “endurance fuel” I have ever tried. They were a big hit with others on the ride who tried them as well. Granted, this wasn’t exactly a true endurance ride, but I see no reason that I could not have keep eating these to continue on for much longer mileage.

Making them takes a bit of time, of course. The other downside is that they are not as compact as an equivalent number of calories of sports product. Carrying enough for a long brevet or the like would get pretty bulky. Doing a long day in high heat would also make things challenging since they aren’t exactly shelf stable.

Still, with Camelbacks for mountain biking and handlebar bags for randonneuring, it’s possible to set out with quite a few real-food calories. Throw a few Larabars and other convenience foods into the mix, and you’ve got many hours of self-supported real-food fuel.