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Food for long distance Walk.
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On the 4 July 09 I will be participating in the Comeragh Crossing for the first time, 30 km with over 1000m of accent. I know there’s a few climbers on here from time to time and I’m sure there’s a couple of hill walkers lurking around also. So my question is this, what sort of food would you recommend or normally would eat on a long walk.
Dave.
There could be any number of answers to something like this.
I’m assuming you are doing some training for this event? What kind of things are you eating in training?There are any amount of sports bars, drinks and gels on the market, there can be quite a bit of difference in them.
If you are planning to use them, I’d really recommend that you try them in training first. They just don’t agree with some people
and can possibly cause stomach cramps etc.Of the brands on the market at the moment, I like Clif, PowerBar and High5.
I’d also recomend, NUUN hydration tablets.Things like Mars bars and sweets with lots of sugar are probably best avoided, they will cause glucose levels to spike, then crash,
nothing worse than having a complete sugar crash in the middle of something like this (with the acceptation of having to look after
someone suffering a sugar crash)The big thing is, don’t eat, or drink things you haven’t tried before.
I’m assuming you’ll be carry sandwiches?Thanks for the info, I normally carry sandwiches and a few bars but I was thinking to myself today that maybe I could leave the sandwiches at home and replace them with something better. A number of people have suggested fruit cake instead of the sandwiches and maybe some chocolate raisins to replace the bars. I plan on going for a stroll during next weekend so I might try to a get a few energy bars for then. Another thing I can’t decide is to drink water or one of those energy drinks like lucozade sports, depending on the day I think drinking enough liquids might be my biggest problem, I normally drink maybe a litre of water and maybe a litre of lucozade sport.
Dave.
Your welcome.
I would still carry sandwiches, the sugar content in the fruit cake would be higher, the same with chocolate raisins… So that goes back to the spike and crash of glucose levels.
If you do end up carrying something like that, try and keep it to the later part of the event, when you are closer to the finish line.Definitely take some water. I do think there are better isotonic drinks than Lucozade, but it’s not bad, and if thats what you are used to, then I’d see no reason to change.
Get yourself some kind of bottle that is easy to carry in your hand, or can easily be reached from you rucksack, by that I mean, without having to take it off your back,
you’ll be more inclined to drink that way.I wouldn’t leave out the sandwiches…
Sinead
A mix of nuts and raisens would be better than cake or chocy raisens, you can get
a mix in health food shops, called trail mix which will keep the energy levels constant
rather than the highs that sugary foods will give, and you cant beat a banana or apple,
a big bottle of water in your rucksack with a length of tube threaded through the lid and
sealed with a bit of duck tape makes an instant and easy way of sipping on the go!
Best of luck with it.Just bring about ten Mars bars and five cans of Coke and a jumbo bag of Tayto Cheese n’Onion. You’ll be grand.
…or listen to Sinead, she seems to know what she’s talking about.
randomway wrote:
Salt, water and dry bread.
Hey, I was serious about the bananas – although BBB’s advice would work too! :wink:
Thanks Ken, maybe I will carry a few, I think the last line of BBB’s post is the best advice I’ve got so far. Maybe we should meet up for coffee in Midleton some Saturday morning, of course that will be after my walk.
Dave.
Seaview wrote:
Thanks Ken, maybe I will carry a few, I think the last line of BBB’s post is the best advice I’ve got so far. Maybe we should meet up for coffee in Midleton some Saturday morning, of course that will be after my walk.
Dave.
Sure thing Dave, I’ll pm you, and good luck with the walk/climb!
Was involved in mountaineering and long distance back packing in the mountains of Ireland and the rest of Europe for years… have done allot of the long distance walks in Ireland, eg lug walk, maumturks, Comeragh bog trot, joey glover etc etc
Bars of chocolate, white bread etc are all rubbish
Most important thing is that you eat correctly the day before and the morning of the walk. day before I always used to eat pasta, big portions of it… A few bananas through out the day before also
Morning before the walk eat porridge with bananas cut up into it, again a big portion around 1.5 hours before the walk
Just before starting the walk eat two bananas and take loads of water
During the walk keep snacking on raisins/nuts and fig role biscuits (dont wait for lunch stops, keep them in your pocket). For lunch stops/breaks eat fruit cake/ malt loafs, the more fruit in the cake the better…… Keep drinking water, buy a Platypus hydration system. If you very tired and going up hill snack on a few jelly babies/jafa cakes for a quick sugar rush, but only a few …
Thats what I used to do and worked well
MMartin wrote:
. . . . Most important thing is that you eat correctly the day before and the morning of the walk. day before I always used to eat pasta, big portions of it… A few bananas through out the day before also
Morning before the walk eat porridge with bananas cut up into it, again a big portion around 1.5 hours before the walk
Just before starting the walk eat two bananas and take loads of water
During the walk keep snacking on raisins/nuts and fig role biscuits (dont wait for lunch stops, keep them in your pocket). For lunch stops/breaks eat fruit cake/ malt loafs, the more fruit in the cake the better…… Keep drinking water, buy a Platypus hydration system. If you very tired and going up hill snack on a few jelly babies/jafa cakes for a quick sugar rush, but only a few …
. . . . . a large roll of toilet paper and a good eye out for strategic bushes. :D
thedarkroom wrote:
. . . . . a large roll of toilet paper and a good eye out for strategic bushes. :D
You could be right :-)
You would be surprised though, when doing long distance treks in the mountains you can burn so much food/fuel that you don’t have anything left for a crap sometimes :-). Your walking from anywhere between 5 to 14 hours sometimes. I know one guy that was with me once in the Alps and didn’t crap for a whole week, he wasn’t constipated or anything, at the end of each day’s treck he just had nothing left for a crap…
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