Cycling can be exhausting. It’s important to eat before the ride, also stay hydrated and be prepared with snacks during the ride. The longer you ride and the more hills you power up, the more you depend on snacks to keep your energy up. So, keep snacks on board for any bike ride over an hour. You don’t want to let a starving stomach get in the way of your fun day out, do you?

When to snacking?

According to MTB Coach, Chris Kilmurray, unless the start of your ride is very intense or you’ve not eaten in a long time, you don’t need to eat in the first hour of riding. After an hour to 90 minutes of riding is the best time to get the benefit from snacking!

Killmurray said that consume a variety of foods that easily digested and comes in small portions with water every 15 to 30 minutes.

Pic cr: avogel.co.uk

Choice of snacks

Fruits like banana, apple, and watermelon are a great choice! They are an excellent source of vitamins, natural sugar, magnesium, and other nutrients which also helps with hydration, muscle-building, and muscle-repairing. Fruits are easy to carry and their natural ‘packaging’ won’t make any waste-problem!

Craving for some carbs and protein? a mixture of dried fruits and nuts is a tasty way to boost them. You can mix your own by using raisins, dried apricots, any nuts, and any seeds. Another good choice is a sandwich. You can make it at home – a peanut butter jelly sandwich or meat sandwich it’s all up to you, as long as it doesn’t contain too much sugar and salt.

Pro tip: a good riding snack is more than just nutritious, it needs to be portable, hard to melt, and eaten on good timing.

Pic cr: smartertravel.com

Ride snacking with Infinity Mountain Biking

If you don’t have time to buy or make your own snack before a ride, it’s alright!

On our tour, we always provide various nutritious snacks for our guests – Indonesian traditional delicacies like lemper, dadar gulung, naga sari, and refreshing fruit like sliced watermelon, and also beverages like isotonic drink and mineral water.

Most of our guests loved the snack! However, if you have any personal preference for foods (vegan, no gluten, etc), you can kindly let us know.

You may ask our guide to take a rest for a while if you feel exhausted and started to starve, so you can gobble up those snacks!

Pic cr: infinitymountainbiking.com

References

Best Nutritional Snacks for Mountain Bike Travel | Sacred Rides. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sacredrides.com/blog/nutritional-mountain-bike-travel-snacks/2016/11

Kilmurray, C. (2018). 4 tips for mid-MTB ride snacking - BikeRadar. Retrieved from https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/nutrition/4-tips-for-mid-mtb-ride-snacking/

Pic cr: infinitymountainbiking.com