Onigiri, or rice balls, have got to be about the ultimate biking food. Compact, cheap and readily available with a variety of fillings, onigiri provide upwards of 170 calories in a prepared meal that you can eat one-handed in a couple of minutes.

The first thing to note about rice balls is they’re … um … triangular.

One variety lets the white rice stick above the nori seaweed paper: a Fujisan rice ball.

Rice balls typically come wrapped in a special cellophane envelope which keeps the nori crisp until it’s time to eat. Unwrap by following the numbers: 1, 2, 3.

It’s true that when I’ve been riding frequently, I can get onigiri’d out. But considering I burn a rice ball’s worth of calories per hour (or thereabouts) when riding, onigiri are hard to beat.

When I took up riding again more than six years ago after a hiatus of a couple of decades, I would ride five or six hours without eating anything. When I finished I’d eat like a pig, but it was obvious I was abusing myself. I’d get throbbing migraine headaches. Once I took up the habit of tanking up on the go, the problem went away.

And so now I wonder: what will we eat on the road from London to Paris?