Eat right, train right, race right. What you put into your body during an event can make a big difference and contribute to the success (or failure) of your challenge. Having a nutrition plan that works for you is key so we have devised a plan based around the acronym EAT.

E is for Eat

If you ride at 140 watts for 1 hour you burn around 500 calories, over the course of an average ultra endurance day if we assume 16 hours of riding this is 8000 calories you need on top of your usual calorie intake (base metabolic rate). That's a lot of food so eating frequently is really important. Having a plan to eat a certain number of calories per hour can be a good strategy.

During your long rides and practice events you need to practise eating a variety of foods so that you can create a list of foods you can eat that don't cause problems (like gastric distress, nausea). 

You also need to practise eating the food that will be available to you on your event as you won't be able to carry all the food you are going to eat with you. This requires researching shops that will be available (and open when you pass) and the foods you can reliably get in them. Lidl and Spar are good shops to try as they seem to be in most countries, but check your route to make sure they are available.

Trying generic foods to find out if they work for you is also a good idea (e.g. nuts, crisps, chocolate, bread, etc).

By the time you get to your event under your E list you should have a list of foods that you can eat, enjoy and buy readily en route.

A is for Avoid

Some foods do not work for us; it's important to know what those foods are so we can avoid them during the event. Anything you eat that causes unwanted affects, is hard to chew or just plain disgusting to you stick on your avoid list.

Avoids can be subtle (e.g. you may like citrus flavoured things, but not if it's orange).

T is for Tolerate

Meals

Stopping for a full meal might seem like a lot of time, but if you can it's a good way to keep your calories topped up. This might form part of a longer rest stop just before you have a sleep, or you might find you can eat a big meal and go straight on riding. Either way, avoiding the calorie deficit on multi-day events can pay dividends in the long run.

It's worth having meals as a subheading under your Eat, Avoid, Tolerate lists so that you know what meals in general work for you (e.g. spicy meals might be ones to avoid, carbohydrate with wholemeal like brown rice can also cause some gastric issues).

You can find out about  meals by trying different things before and/or during training rides. If you stop for a meal during rides you can also experiment with your own cooking and/or buying meals at restaurants etc. All night garages are a good option as they often have high calorie 'meals' that are quick and easy to access and eat.

Once again if you are going to be abroad for your challenge and want to buy meals it's worth doing some research about eating out, what is available en route will help you save time and stress during your challenge.

Keep it dense

Given the number of calories you are going to need it's a good idea to go for 'dense' food, that is food which even in small amounts has a lot of calories. Very sweet and/or very fatty foods usually fit into these categories: nuts, cakes, biscuits. For meals, pasta, pizza and rice based meals carry more calories than potato based meals (although fries and chips are always a good standby!)