Nutrition - pre-ride, on the move, and post-ride

Nutrition is such a personal subject that I am not going anywhere near recommending what I ate and drank during the course of LEJOG as anything other than what worked for me. So here goes.

Pre-ride food
In 2 words, "cooked breakfast". I had field tested this on a couple of weekend training rides, and knew that if I had a decent cooked breakfast I could ride 80 or 90 miles without having to eat anything other that a few sweets. This theory worked until Day 5 when the fat overload gave me acute indigestion which almost stopped me in my tracks. For some reason I put this down to eating too much toast, and repeated the breakfast on Day 6, only to again be crippled with indigestion. I discussed the problem with my soigneur, who identified the cause as being too much fat in my diet rather than toast, and suggested that I try scrambled eggs with toast the next day. Success, no more indigestion! I then had either eggs in one form or another or smoked haddock, plus toast, and both combinations kept me going all day with some topping up, as described below.

Food on the move
My approach to keeping the fires stoked during the day was a very simple one, and one which I knew worked from my longer training rides; a banana after 25 or 30 miles, a few Percy Pigs over the next 30 miles, then a 2nd banana and a liquorice bar with around 25 miles to go, then a few more Percys. All washed down with around 2 to 2.5 litres of plain water. Why plain water and not some exotic energy drink? Three reasons: firstly, energy drinks have a catastrophic effect on my gut, secondly, water is usually available in most roadside shops, thirdly, water is good for pouring over yourself when the temperature soars, energy drinks not so much.
I found that breaking each day up into roughly thirds helped with both pacing and eating. Stopping as described above, even just for 10 minutes or so to have a drink and a snack really helped make the day manageable, and gave weary limbs a chance to recover.

Post-ride food

One of the huge benefits of doing this ride was that for 10 days I was able to follow the "see food" diet; see food, eat it, at least in the evening. I also established a good routine of drinking a protein shake and eating a banana immediately post-ride, showering and washing kit, then getting down for dinner as as was humanly possible e.g. for 1830 or 1900 hrs.

Dinner: Day 1 - steak, Day 2 - steak, Day 3 - steak then ice cream, Day 4 - duck pancakes then mixed grill, Day 5 - Thai curry, Day 6 - chicken fajitas then ice cream, Day 7 - mussels then beef, Day 8 - lasagne, sticky toffee pudding and ice cream, Day 9 - poached haddock then blancmange

As I said at the start of this section, this is what I had and it worked for me; it was a very rich and meat-heavy diet, and I paid for that on days 5 and 6 with indigestion, but adjusting breakfast to exclude meat sorted that out.