How would you fuel yourself for 100 miles on £2.00 a day?

mamba80

I cycled around Europe once, camping and lived on Sardines, bread, nectarines and water with lemon or lime juice did anything up to 120miles per day, I had no money and the camping cost more than I spent on food, if your young, you can get away with anything.

rodgers73

True, it will be extremely hard if not impossible. But an interesting challenge. If I take a credit card along for when the budget runs out

chris_bass

take things you can sell on route.

I'd recommend drugs, a good weight to price ratio which will be useful as it shouldn't slow you down too much.

diy

As others have said porridge is cheap. and flapjacks are just porridge, butter, brown sugar and syrup. my own experience of endurance cycling is that you will go out of your mind eating flapjacks. the pasta idea is also good. But you do need some fruit, veg and protein. Mince beef is cheap and on a 100 miles a day you don't have to worry too much about the saturated fat content.

Peanut butter - is a good source of carbs, protein and fat in the right percentages.

homers_double

ravey1981 wrote:

Im going to assume he is camping on this trip given the meagre budget

Two pages and only one person has noticed this?

A single guy camping (or other) on his own taking on a challenge will be ablw to cope with ric or pasta for a week. I know I could.

Pasta, tinned tomato's with herbs and/or chilli/garlic and some mixed beans will do the trick and can be saved for the following days lunch.

Porridge split into 12 x 50g plastic bags will work for breakfast with water and cost 75p from Aldi if bought before you travel.

term1te

Porridge, soak it over night if you are camping without campingaz. Cottage cheese is cheap and full of protien, pasta and bananas. Take some ground black peper, almost anything savoury can be made edible with enough black pepper. With a diet like that, take a pot of cheap multi-vitamins to ward off scurvy.

Depending on where, and when, you are planning to take your trip, road kill and hedgerow fruit could suppliment an otherwise monochrome white diet.

Unless you already have a body fat percentage of less than 8%, you'll have some spare calories with you, so you won't necessarily need 6000 per day from food.

Anonymous

Can of red bull. Try it for a week and let me know how you get on.

markhewitt1978

KonkyWonky wrote:

Tesco do an own brand jar (340g) of peanut butter for 62p. Ideal for a sandwich, mixed into oats or eat it on it's own. There is around 2300 calories in the jar.

I was going to suggest butter and sugar, but that would work too.

bianchimoon

if money's that tight, what's your contingency plan for emergencies?

LegendLust

jibberjim wrote:

LegendLust wrote:

rodgers73 wrote:

Brown loaf at £1.00 gives me around 1600 calories

So that only leaves you £1 for protein and vegetables for nutrients?

You know bread is an okay source of protein, it's why it's one of the staple foods. "nutrients" are also pretty irrelevant it's a very short term trip, he's not going to get rickets or scurvy from a 12 day ride eating nothing but bread.

An 800g loaf of wholegrain bread will give maybe 2000 calories and maybe 80g of protein, that's more than enough of protein, add a block of butter and there'll be enough calories and essential nutrients to comfortably make the trip, even have enough money left over for a carton of OJ to keep that scurvy at bay.

Potatoes would ne another option rather than grains, as you wouldn't need that OJ to ward of the scurvy, but much less practical than bread although the protein is complete. Mix in some butter again...

The European peasant diet was pretty much just bread, porridge and ale - all of it from grains - until the potato arrived when that took over everywhere it grew well as it was more productive.

If I was doing 100 miles a day for 12 days, I'd want plenty of protein and nutrients to repair my body each day and not leave myself in a state where I either got sick or fatigued to the point where I couldn't finish the challenge. Eating for cycling isn't all about carbs carbs carbs

rodgers73

Yes, I'm alive to the need for protein, but this isn't going to be 100 miles a day done at 18-20mph.

It will be a slow plod on a hybrid/MTB with wild camping all the way, meaning that I'll have little else to do other than ride, sleep and cook (occasionally a wash!) and the exertions I'm recovering from shouldn't be too severe.

Should be quite easy to ensure I have enough energy and that the way I'm consuming it is palatable enough. Some good ideas on dishes in this discussion though.

apreading

You might want to consider some kind of psychological 'treat' at the midway point - to give youself something to look forward to and to break up the monotony of the basic food and existence you seem to be planning. Mental nourishment can be as important as physical on something like this.

MartinB2444

You need fat! Twice the calories per g of carbs and protein. If you are plodding you will be burning fat as much as glycogen anyway. Sure you need some balance so cheap carbs of choice. Cheese, great for fat and protein. Milk, but not semi-skimmed! Peanut butter was a great suggestion. Cheap biscuits and chocolate. Senna

rodgers73

MartinB2444 - Yes, someone mentioned butter which would be a great way of making a loaf of bread a day more palatable.

Apreading - yes, good thinking. Probably some treat foods like you say would help a lot.

dave in swansea

Couple of thoughts.
Not seen any notes on accommodation. Wild camping is obviously the cheapest, and could possibly liberate additional funds for food. Although I suspect you are setting this budget more as a challenge than necessity.
I vaguely remember (a couple of years ago) reading in a magazine about someone who was cycling le jog only on what he could forage along the way. He included road kill as foraging. He had quite a modest daily mileage as he needed time to pick berries etc, and stew squirrels!!
Also by cycling slowly he spent longer in his own fat burning zone.
A quick google did not find any reference.

crikey

I'd ride quicker, 200 miles a day at £4:00 a day, then I'd ride 100 miles from my mums house and back again so she could cook me some tea and perhaps put me some sandwiches up.

It seems like a pointless exercise in misery to me...

meanredspider

MartinB2444 wrote:

You need fat! Twice the calories per g of carbs and protein. If you are plodding you will be burning fat as much as glycogen anyway. Sure you need some balance so cheap carbs of choice. Cheese, great for fat and protein. Milk, but not semi-skimmed! Peanut butter was a great suggestion. Cheap biscuits and chocolate. Senna

Fat looks relatively expensive (per kcal) though and, unless you're very skinny, most of us would have plenty of fat to fuel the needs of 12 days to support the carbs. A bit of butter will keep things interesting though. I still feel like there should be some sort of pan-cooked flap-jack type thing (I used to love the pre-mix for flap-jack before it was baked when I was a kid) just by cooking the mixture long enough to caramelise the sugar.

jibberjim

LegendLust wrote:

If I was doing 100 miles a day for 12 days, I'd want plenty of protein and nutrients to repair my body each day and not leave myself in a state where I either got sick or fatigued to the point where I couldn't finish the challenge. Eating for cycling isn't all about carbs carbs carbs

And bread is over 10% protein, a whole loaf of bread contains more than double the amount protein than the UK RNI for me in less than the total calories. Grains have been the staple diet for loads of humans in history because they are a good source of protein.

What other "nutrients" do you think you need?

meanredspider

Peanuts or peanut butter would be enough of a source of protein and some oils.

rodgers73

dave in swansea wrote:

Not seen any notes on accommodation. Wild camping is obviously the cheapest, and could possibly liberate additional funds for food. Although I suspect you are setting this budget more as a challenge than necessity.

Yes, wild camping as much as possible. Hopefully for the whole trip.

Yes, the budget is purely for the challenge. I have a decent job and could stay in a hotel most nights or at least a normal campsite, but I fancy doing it the hard way.

rodgers73

crikey wrote:

It seems like a pointless exercise in misery to me...

A lot of people would say that about cycling as a whole

LegendLust

jibberjim wrote:

LegendLust wrote:

If I was doing 100 miles a day for 12 days, I'd want plenty of protein and nutrients to repair my body each day and not leave myself in a state where I either got sick or fatigued to the point where I couldn't finish the challenge. Eating for cycling isn't all about carbs carbs carbs

And bread is over 10% protein, a whole loaf of bread contains more than double the amount protein than the UK RNI for me in less than the total calories. Grains have been the staple diet for loads of humans in history because they are a good source of protein.

What other "nutrients" do you think you need?

Do you work for Warburtons?

crikey

I disagree, having raced across Europe and ridden a fair number of miles as well. I don't really see the point in an artificial restriction based on a pre-arranged price per day; it seems like creating a difficulty for effect.

I do appreciate the challenge aspect, but it could be done better; do it like a polar expedition or a big mountain.

Take supplies for a few days and store them a distance away from your start point. Take more supplies and extend the range of your stores. Take supplies from Camp 1 to Camp 2. Stock Camp 3 and 4. Stock up a Camp for the final assault, do it, then get yourself home safely using only the supplies you have taken out yourself.

Greenbeetle

rodgers73 wrote:

crikey wrote:

It seems like a pointless exercise in misery to me...

A lot of people would say that about cycling as a whole

Provided you're doing it right.

bigjim

You know there is plenty of good edible food growing at the side of the road. We just don't recognise it anymore. Riding through France in September we were gorging on wild figs, blackberries, raspberries, grapes, pears. Growing wild. Probably seeds released from cultivated stock.

andy_wrx

Morrisons (so presumably other supermarkets) do their own-brand-budget-range baked beans at about 34p a can and rice pudding at 17p a can

I saw someone on an audax where you had to get a receipt from a shop as a control, buy a pot of Muller Rice and eat it cold with a plastic spoon he'd brought along.

Carbs, protein, bit of fat...
£2 a day would buy you 12 tins !

marcusjb

(real audaxers use tyre levers for spoons)

Rice pudding is good stuff - easy to digest, some fast and some slower energy in there.

Very common in distance cycling - quite a few support teams on the 24 will hand up rice pudding in ice cream cones for their rider!

rodgers73

bigjim wrote:

You know there is plenty of good edible food growing at the side of the road. We just don't recognise it anymore. Riding through France in September we were gorging on wild figs, blackberries, raspberries, grapes, pears. Growing wild. Probably seeds released from cultivated stock.

Yes, I thought France would be good for scavenging with it being such a rural farming society. Orchards etc will be very tempting!

Manc33

Give peas a chance. One of the few vegetables with protein in.

I think with any cheap diet that's what's going to be hard to keep up, the protein.

It would be hard if you weren't biking it!

£2 a day including drinks as well? Drinks come to more than that.

rodgers73

I'd be drinking water pretty much all the time, with the occasional instant coffee at night or with breakfast. I've found its very easy to scrounge that from anyone with a tap