The night before

[grizzly adam]

What are some rituals that you go through the night before a race? Do you eat a big pasta dinner? Do you sleep with your shoes on? Or do you make sure that your bike is safely tucked in at night? Does the pasta dinner really help? How many days in advance do you start drinking water more heavily?
Just curious to hear what others are doing to prep for a race.

Grizzly Adam

[martini]

yeah, I've got a ritual. I usually drink a few beers (carbo loading!) the night before. Dunno why, but the best races I've had are where I've been buzzing along quite happily the night before. I know that it dehydrates you, and makes you groggy(hmmm, hangover?), but I felt great those mornings, and most mornings before the race, post beer.

That's my only ritual, other trying to get agood meal in the night before.

[SickBoy]

Pasta and chicken. The longer the race the more protein you need. You can only pack away and absorb so many carbs the night before and the morning of at breakfast before you feel sick.

A chicken breast is usually enough for me on shorter races but if I know it's going to be over two hours I try to eat some red meat.

Get the bags and bike packed if I have to leave real early, otherwise I just try to relax and clear the mind of anything unneccessarily stressful.

Day of the race I try to warm up and either listen to mood music or go out on my warmup alone and visualize the key things I need to do to do well.

[grizzly adam]

what do you usually eat for breakfast? sometimes I'll eat a bunch of French Toast covered with PB and syrup, but now that I start racing later, I'm all confused. Do you bring a lunch with you to the race?

[s1ngletracker]

Yeah i find that confusing too, since i moved up to comp even more so.... we race at 1:00!!!

when you think about it, usually I eat breakfast at about 8:30 on race day, and go 4.5 hours till the race.. not good

they say to eat a big meal 3 hours before.... so i also need to figure this out.

[viv]

Good nights sleep followed by 2 fried eggs over toast and a pot of coffee...black.

[s1ngletracker]

ish, sounds like bonk breakfast

[viv]

Oh, I forgot to mention the Cliff bar.

[s1ngletracker]

in that case......

[unstuckpilgrim]

Dry white toast and four fried chickens. Can't go wrong.

[grizzly adam]

and a Coke.....

[SickBoy]

Followed by ice cream and morphine handups on your first lap.

[viv]

But seriously folks, Isnt the big Pasta blow the wrong deal. I"ve heard it takes too long for the bod to utilize those carbs. I think pasta should be taken maybe 2 days before ?

[grizzly adam]

I don't know for sure....I've always done it the night before. Does anyone have any data that would shed some light on how fast the carbos break down. I realize that it will vary per person, but maybe there's some data that is relatively generic that would give us a clue.

Personally I think I would go through the pasta (or the other way around, if ya know what I mean!) if I ate it two days prior!;)

But that's a good point. I'll see what I can find.

[smeulebroe]

When I was running marathons years ago, we would have 3 depletion days of a low carbo diet, then three loading days of high carbo intake. Unfortunetly research has indicated over the years that the depletion days offered no benefits. Now days the diet recommendation is to always have your carbo intake at 60-70%. 4 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight per day. Now I've got to go my steak is burning on the grill.