It’s the night before your race. You’re worried about all sorts of things: making sure you didn’t forget anything in your transition bag, being prepared for a flat on the bike course, having your nutrition and hydration packed. You’ve also heard about carbo-loading. So, you naturally decide to head out for pasta the night before your race. Is this a good plan? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll circle round to this question again later.
First, let’s talk about the things you should consider when choosing your meals the day before your race.
- It’s not just about what you eat the 24 hours before you race. Yep, I just said that. You should think of your body as a high-performance sports car and give it premium, high octane fuel everyday. You are not a Pinto (sorry, Ford) and you shouldn’t fuel your body with low octane fuel. The goal of what I teach is that nutrition for your body is your fuel. Eat to train, do not train to eat. You wouldn’t go out and expect a fabulous race after poorly executing your training plan for 14 out of 16 weeks, would you? Well, the same can be said for your nutrition. Eating poorly for 14 out of 16 weeks of your training cycle and trying to “fix it” in the last 24 hours is not going to yield good results. It’s what you eat on a daily basis during your training cycle and even during your recovery cycles that will give you the most bang for the buck on race day.
- Don’t try anything different than what you’ve been doing during training! All of the weeks or months of training leading up to your race is when you should be experimenting with different pre-workout/race meals, foods and fluids. Before race day, you should choose familiar foods, foods that have historically shown themselves to be well-tolerated by your GI system. Don’t forget to make the foods and fluids palatable. What works for you may not work for your buddy.
- Have a balanced meal with the following macro-nutrients making an appearance on your plate:
- Eat some lean protein.
- Eat some veggies and fruit for your carbohydrate. You can add whole grains if you need more calories.
- Include some healthy fats.
- Keep yourself hydrated. You should always aim to be hydrated as dehydration can decrease your ability to perform. Be sure to drink plenty of water the day before your race. You don’t have to go overboard here, but a little extra water will help. We dehydrate overnight, so start your night of sleep topped off. Your urine should be a clear, pale color.
You’ve finally reached the morning of the race. Now what do you eat, and when?
- Remember what I just said above about picking things that worked in training? Well the same holds true here. What do you usually eat for breakfast before you train? What do you eat that causes you the least GI distress? Stick to what is familiar to you. Most endurance athletes do well with liquid meals, oatmeal, milk and cereal, yogurt, fruit, fruit juice, toast, frozen waffles, etc. My all-time favorite is a waffle sandwich made with couple of whole grain toaster waffles spread with all-natural peanut butter and a sliced banana. It’s quick, it’s portable and it’s got plenty of carbs along with a little healthy protein and fat.
- To make sure everything clears your system pre-race, the general recommendation is to eat 1 – 4 hours before the event. The larger the meal, the earlier you should eat. So, if you choose something that’s around 200 – 400 calories, you can get away with eating about 2 hours before the race. If you want to eat more than that, you should think about getting up early to eat about 3 – 4 hours before the race. Higher calorie meals take a little longer to leave the stomach.
- Wait – you say you have a twitchy stomach the morning of the race? Well, there’s a solution for that. Be sure to eat well the day before the race and have a large pre-bedtime snack instead of breakfast. Do this during training. Do not wait until race day to try this idea!
- If you want coffee or tea, go for it if it is what you normally do in the morning. Again, don’t do anything different than you’ve been doing in training. Do drink some water when you get up to top off the tank.
So, back to that original question on whether or not you should do a pre-race pasta feed. A dinner of pasta is perfectly fine if that is what you are used to eating. However, I recommend that you eat at home where you can control everything that is going into your meal. Restaurants add a lot of extra fat, sugar and salt. But, surviving the restaurant jungle is a completely other blog post.