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Old 04-24-10 | 01:08 PM
  #11  
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grolby
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From: BOSTON BABY
You are way overthinking this. Doing something unusual with your diet before a race is a pretty bad idea.

First of all, eat a normal dinner. You're looking at completely overloading your system with calories. Believe me, this doesn't work like you think it does.

And eat a normal breakfast too. Unless your normal breakfast includes bacon. Seriously, WTF? I typically eat oatmeal or toast with a couple of eggs. I prefer steel-cut oats for pre-ride or race breakfasts, they seem to disappear the way that rolled oats do an hour after you eat. I generally make some extra and snack on my way to the race. That's pretty much all there is to it.

People differ, but I seem to do best with mostly liquid and gel calories during races. It's okay to eat solid food relatively early on, but it varies. I've found that Clif bars do me no good once I'm on the bike. On the the other hand, I do pretty well with some homemade, high-density oatmeal chocolate chip raisin cookies - it's a recipe out of Fannie Farmer, believe it or not, but they sit much better than the Clif bars do. I don't know why, but these are the kind of things you need to learn.

This year I've been experimenting with taking on most of my calories through my water bottles. 300-400 calories of maltodextrin in each of two water bottles will have me covered for hours and hours, but this gets questionable in hot weather where you need to be able to drink plenty of water.

In short, eat normally, don't stuff yourself, find out what works for you. Don't spend too much time thinking about it. For the bike, take a combination of solids (energy bars, cookies, bananas, whatever) and gels and/or sports drinks. And then just eat whenever you get a chance. You are probably going to be in for a surprise as to how much hard riding there is liable to be in a 60+ mile RR.

You're also in for a surprise about making time to pull over and pee. It's not going to happen. Go before the race. The solo break to pee idea is laughable. If you can get enough of a gap to pull over and take care of business without being left behind, you might as well just roll it and try to make it stick. In any case, peeing in public during an amateur race is a really bad idea, as it's the kind of thing that tends to keep bike races from being allowed back.
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