CYCLING PERFORMANCE SNACKS I don’t own a bike. I’ve never cycled on the road. I never passed my cycling proficiency. I never took it. I have owned a bike. It was a Raleigh Lizard, I think. Used to ride it on the pavement and off-road (AKA the park). I’m your archetypal foot soldier these days, that and public transport. You might see me on the train; you might see me on the bus.
Am I an artificial energy guy? By all means! I used to frequent energy drinks in times of need i.e. staying up late doing work / getting up early and doing work. I knocked that on the head a few years back when I worked a Christmas temp data entry job for Royal Mail. I had to enter postcodes from written envelopes on a screen. You’d press enter and another one would come up instantly. There was an hourly target. If you fell below a desired amount of hourly postcode entries you’d get laid off. I rocked this job for four weeks. I started early, like 6am. You’d have your lunch at about 9.30am - home sourced leftover curry or coq au vin from the canteen. The saving grace/nail in coffin were the hourly “eye breaks” – a ten-minute break from looking at your postcode screen. A portion of the 200-some temp workforce would bundle downstairs (via the lift) and gather within the smoking shelter confines. As I’d always be exhausted, I tended to nail a coffee or energy drink most hourly breaks and then return pepped up to pep in some postcodes. I’m a fast typer. I wanted to smash the shit out of whatever the record was. Not that there was a reward, asides keeping the shit job. I just wanted to melt faces. Anyway, one or maybe two days I chased the artificial energy dragon too hard and ended up a jittery garden-gnome-in-swivel-chair mess. Like legit freaking out; shakes, brightness of the screen lasering into my forehead, fevered brow, just general panic. It was horrible. I kicked NRG supplements after that and haven’t really had any since. UNTIL NOW…
My pal Steve kindly gave me some cycling proficiencies to have a go on. Like I said, I don’t cycle but I do snack. First up was a MANGO TANGO Mango & Cashew bar brought to you by the good people at Mule Bar. Did it taste like mango? Yes. Did it taste like Tango? Not so much. It was dense. You’ve seen its sort before. Compressed, mildly sweating, indiscriminate brown smoothed dense matter. Shaping like a “healthy raw” bar. I’d opened it a week prior to have a nibble in a time of no edible home-based solids. I feared exposure to the air would have moulded it. To its credit, it hadn’t. It was a borderline chore eating it because it took so many chews. There was a tangible frustration from not being able to choke it down faster. Not that it tasted bad, not at all. I didn’t get any buzz but I kind of wasn’t doing anything at the time, if that even matters? It didn’t make me get up.
My preconception with these cycling snacks is that the rider is supposed to consume while hurtling along at vast speeds. Like squeeze whatever if it is into their mouth and discard the packet over their shoulder. As in, there’s no time to stop and consume normal foods so you opt for convenience. Steve says he just has a banana and doesn’t partake in the cycle-specific snack market. There’s a bit of an astronaut powdered ice cream vibe to the genre. I was juiced because Steve gave me a Torq Energy Performance Energy Drink and it took the form of a powdered sachet. I assumed you’d empty the powder into your mouth and it’d turn into a drink. Wow, I thought. I’m most looking forward to this one. Turns out I was wrong. That isn’t what you do. You add the water to a 500ml bottle of water and shake it. Fork in the road. I don’t own a 500ml bottle for shaking purposes and I wasn’t too inclined to get one. Mostly because the flavour of this energy drink is pink grapefruit and I don’t like pink grapefruit. Imma eat some of the powder now just to see what happens. Whoa, it kinda tasted like grapefruit sherbet at first. Gritty. But then the granules seemed to mesh in mouth as a link and started taking on a multi-string form. I was happy to see the back of it once I swallowed. Seemed strong. I’ll keep the rest of the powder and maybe return to it.
There was a Torq brand sundried banana bar. I feel like I only know the word “torq” from films such as Fast and the Furious. I thought that was spelled torque. I guess it is because spellcheck didn’t alert the latter. Torq is a cool play on that word though and it does make one feel juiced to look at. The packaging reads “moist and chewy”. I can attest to that. There was a distinct ungodly sheen on peeling back the wrapper. Like it’d been glazed in sucrose with a pastry brush. Again, the bar is brown and lifeless but true to raw energy bar form. Me like banana. I consumed this on the same day with the next item and chose to commit possible artificial gains towards a tangible exercise. Namely, I don’t own a moving bike but I do own an exercise bike.
I’m kind of feeling a buzz from a quart of that energy drink powder I just chonged. Either that or an unprecedented energy boost from the half of Quattro Fromaggi Co-Op frozen pizza I’m eating simultaneously. This would be some cocktail for forensics if I was to die in my hotel (bedroom) tonight. Three empty cans of Kronenbourg 1664, a cold remaining half of £1.74 Co-Op pizza and an open sachet of Torq Energy Drink Powder.
I took the last Torq branded cycle snack to my exercise bike. It was a Rhubarb and Custard flavoured gel sachet. I had to wash the sachet because I’d had it in my kitchen cupboard for a while and it bore a sticky dust. Is that too real? I was cycling in front of my TV to an episode of The Jinx, HBO’s real life murder doc series about New York weirdo Robert Durst. It’s very good, you should watch it. You should get some of this rhubarb and custard gel too because ooooooohhhh momma like!!! Honestly, it’s like a pure sickly strain concentrate of sugary suck suck and it’s oh so good. I’d like it going in at all times, on a drip but a drip going into my mouth so I could taste it. I’d like a cupboard full of it to wake up to every morning. It tastes like the best kind of gel-based food I’ve ever experienced. Made me feel like one of those high performance Evian babies (rollerblading, disco dancing or what have you). It’s so satisfying and calming. I’m sure it amped my exercise bike performance. I went over the odds. Usually I clock out on the hour. On this ride I checked out after 67 minutes having done 20km, mostly on a high resistance setting. I could have done more, I wasn’t bothered. I don’t know if that’s good stats because mostly I don’t know what kilometres are, let alone what are good timings to gobble them. I feel like I was somewhat on fire as a, broadly speaking, low-energy person.
Speaking as a non-cyclist, these cycle-based snacks seem moot unless you’re a hype freak and need to tap all the extensions of the sport/lifestyle necessary. In which case, you should prolly start on the rhubarb and custard gel and end there ~ fountain of youth, eternal baby, suckling on the sachet. Better than food 100% Originally published in The Coefficient of Drag ~ a zine about riding bikes