Amanda discovers that engineers don’t necessarily make great meal planners.
Words & doodles Amanda
When you think of bikepacking, you may imagine adventurous riders following their noses, taking the turn that suits them in the moment, and following a vague plan to ultimately arrive at the destination. It’s cold and there’s an uphill option that’ll warm you up, so you choose that direction. There’s a chippy to the left, a café to the right… which do you fancy?
In many cases that could be accurate, but I am dating an engineer with a keen interest in ride data, so upon agreeing that our holiday would be to ride from Barcelona to Malaga (a journey of over 1300km, almost the length of Spain), he meticulously plotted the route for each day, opened Microsoft Excel and got to work crunching the numbers.
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The spreadsheet he created covered distance, ascent, average gradient, estimated riding time, estimated average speed and, finally, the energy required for each of us. I requested he convert the calories into pizza requirements per day, which promptly became a cause for concern among some friends, as they misunderstood it to be encouraging food as a reward, when in fact it was giving me a visual of the bare minimum calories needed each day just to get through the ride, as I am notoriously bad at under-fuelling bike rides. Armed with a well-researched route, snack pouches on our bikes and our best bib shorts, we flew to Barcelona and put the plan into action.
Every cyclist knows that Haribo is a great fuel, so we made sure to stock up on those each day. I found Oreos to be my go-to snack when I needed something that felt more like food, and I became quite partial to Spanish tortillas. At lunch stops, we would choose carb-heavy meals and in the evenings try to eat as much as our stomachs could process to tackle the calorie deficit that would be rolling over each day. I took to creating foods I’d normally run from in fear of bloating… potato tortilla sandwiches, aioli and stir-fried rice sandwiches, or on the less creative days simply just gnawing at a dry baguette and washing it down with a Red Bull. And that’s another thing I’d usually avoid like the plague – Red Bull. I can’t stand the taste, but it really does give you a boost when you need it, though in my case it gives me hyperactive giddyness and uncontrollable giggles for the 20 minutes following consumption. Then there’s the insulin spike from the Haribo and the caffeine hit from double espressos and Red Bull to regulate.
Prior to this trip I had expected to be worrying about where to sleep, how to carry all my kit, whether or not the route was achievable, potential ride-ending saddle sores, but the thoughts that consumed my mind at every waking moment were those about food. Getting enough in, making sure I was filling the space with the right foods, and being sure not to run out when we were in the middle of nowhere for up to 100kms. What is often an afterthought for me was now my only thought, as it was the difference between making it to the end or sleeping in a dry river bed at the mercy of killer caterpillars and wild dogs. I quickly learnt that if a certain food or drink popped into mind, I needed to consume it immediately. If I thought ‘hmm, do I want my Red Bull?’ it meant I definitely needed it. Responding to cravings became a survival tactic, even when I got my monthly liquorice craving just before Aunt Flo arrived.
Rhys’ spreadsheet proved to be alarmingly accurate. He had guesstimated the average speed per day and got it bang on. He had calculated that my average power per day would be 140watts, and it was. But the pizza tally was wildly inaccurate. I’m sure on paper 5 pizzas per person, per day, has the right calories to fuel the ride, but you can’t engineer for taste buds (or the lack of pizza places). Spreadsheets aren’t enough; I think he needs to work on an algorithm that combines pizza with doughnuts, hormonal cravings, irresistible menu choices and Golden Oreos. I’m all for fuelling the work, but I want to enjoy every bite.
