124Spider

Hi,

There are all sorts of sites out there discussing this, but I'm hoping someone can distill it to its simplest for us.

We're a tandem couple, 129 years old (evenly split). We've trained very hard, and are confident that our conditioning is adequate for the task.

But we're a bit up in the air about nutrition during such a long ride. We've gone as far as 80 miles in training, and were ok (but tired at the end). We're planning to go a bit slower on the real ride (190 miles over two days/108 and 82) than we normally go in training, to conserve our energy for both days. The ride is supported, with stops about every 35 miles. We can carry a fair amount of stuff with us, and we'll be going through a lot of towns on the way, so can easily restock.

We figure that the first day will involve no more than 9 hours of riding (we averaged 16mph on the 80-mile ride, and on most rides, but we'll be going slower), and a couple of hours of resting/eating/drinking.

In short, here are our questions:

How much should we eat, on what schedule? Should we plan on a real lunch, or just nibble every hour or so? What kind of things should we eat? We normally have a peanut butter sandwich, some GORP, and some M&Ms.

As a data point, we did 60+ miles both days last weekend, and I kind of ran out of gas at 45 miles both days, but was fine again by 50 miles after some M&Ms at 45 miles.

Thanks!

Mark