ITI Nutrition

I get a fair number of questions on ITI nutrition.  In general, I figure on about 2.5 pounds of food per day--high calorie stuff like nuts, dried fruit, crushed potato chips, chocolate, cheese, etc. That's a little too much at the start and a little light at the end, but it's always worked out okay for me. Plus a lot of the bikers don't even open their drop bags so there is usually plenty extra food at Finger Lake and Rohn.

The math is that dragging a sled on snow takes about 150 calories per mile, so about 6k calories a day for a 40 mile day on foot or skis.  I'll often go farther on a bike but the overall effort and calories burnt are similar.  Plus I'll burn another 2k for my elevated baseline. Total I need is about 8k.

It'd be great if I could eat that much, but most people's digestive systems can only handle about 6k a day and I am no exception. The 2.5 pounds gets me about 5k plus another 1-2k at the checkpoint. That gets to close to the max that my digestive system can handle, but not quite enough to fully maintain my weight. So I lose about 0.5 to 1.0 pounds per day. But, as long as I have some body fat at the start (some years more than others) that should be manageable.

I don't bring dehydrated backpacking meals. They are too different from what I normally eat for my stomach to handle them. The high calorie foods I mentioned above seem to do a better job keeping my system working. That said, one can prepare the backpacking meals with water from your hydration pack and put them in a pocket next to your skin with some hand warmers to warm them up.