Thrive "on the road"

Hey guys,

a friend and me are doing a bike trip next week (5 days) and I just wanted to gather some ideas how I could still partly satisfy the thrive demands.

My main focus here is on breakfast, as many of you probably do, I eat no carbs in the morning and ride pretty good with this concept. Major advantage for me is, that I can do basically unlimited sports in the morning without feeling hungry or lacking energy. This is of course a nice thing to have for a bike tour.

Each day we probably do around 90-100km in 5-6 hours, which results in about 120-130 bpm, seems reasonable considering that we are riding on well loaded bikes (20-25kg additional weight) aren't real cyclists. So eating a little bit over the top compared to everyday seems like a solid thing to do.

But now the question is what to do for breakfast? We didn't want to take a camping stove with us but the more I write about it seems like a good idea...

If not, what are the non cooking options:

-beef jerky (don't have access to good at the momen one, won't buy "Jack links" and am a little bit short on time to do it on my own)

-casein shake + whatever fat I have (avocado or nuts for instance)?

-big piece of cheese, we ride through the netherlands after all ?

Appreciate all (not only breakfast) input from you side, Adrian

What do you normally eat for breakfast? Is it generally a cooked breakfast? How are you planning out the rest of your meals for the day?

Usally I eat 3 eggs and some fried veggies (mostly kale) with a little bit of smoked salmon on the side.

Lunch and/or dinner will probably consist on anything from the supermarket that doesn't need much preparation: prepacked salad, oats, bread (at least whole grain here).

I don't know how the situation in Americe is, but here in Europe you can really do quite healthy without a kitchen if you find at least a decent store and know what to look for.

Might also replace some of the meat portions in thrive with some whey as I simply assume that pre cooked chicken breast is not the healthiest way to get your protein in (and I can't eat only tuna for a complete week)

And then if it fits into our budget we'll have occasionally dinner at a restaurant.

Riding a bike for 5-6 hours a day buys you a lot of margin for error. Close is good enough on a trip like this. As much as it pains me to say this but the number 1 recovery nutrient is calories. Its better to eat enough calories of non grass fed beef than too little calories of grass fed beef. 

So here's the update how on my "thrive on the road" week.

Basically after Darins questions it dawned on me, that a stove might be a really good idea. As I looked through some trekking forums I decided for a gas system due to much higher heat output. The pot also has a heat exchanger at the bottom and everything can of course be stored really compact and is quite light. Doing about 600ml of coffee in the morning took not more than 2 minutes so it's really fast. (Beer on the pic was alkohol free )

.

In the morning it was for all 5 days scrambled eggs with whatever was left from the day before except the carbs and always some cheese.

Lunch was often selfmade oats, pre packed salad or rice from evening before and really important here, never miss on the avocado!

We only cooked dinner two times but in both cases it consisted of rice with spices and some vegetable inside in addition we heated something pre packed. This works really well, is cheap and you can fill up your stomach for under 7€ per person.

In addition to many meals I supplemented some whey whenever the meal had none to little meat in it. Overall I'm really happy with the result. Eating thrive in the morning really helped riding through noon without lacking energy or getting too hungry. We sometimes failed a little bit with our time management and wound up eating lunch as late as 15:30. Until then my mate was basically freaking out while I did quite well with some minor snacking on cheese.

Extra bonus was this when we arrived Brussel ( okay, and some chocolate and some really awesome beer....  ). Normally I don't eat "belgium" fries but these were too good not to be tasted.

I really enjoyed reading your post and how you went about eating while on the road. Emphasises the point that there are always solutions to difficult nutritional solutions. Great job! 

I have been staring at those fries for the last 10 minutes they look amazing.

Nice Adrian

pretty creative