Race day prep?
 

OK so in looking around most everything I have seen has talked about what you should eat the night before, breakfast, etc. Here is my question though, I am doing my first road race on Sunday but it has a 1:00 start time so should I be eating a special breakfast or lunch, should I eat lunch at all? Not sure as there isn't much info for later starting races, most seems geared toward morning races. TIA!

Personally, I would get a good night's sleep, eat a normal race day breakfast, and by 11-11:30 I am already at the race for number pickup and warm up on the trainer so I would be snacking on powerbars or other pre-race food. I would not do lunch unless you are normally awake at 5:00 on the weekend and breakfast was 5.5 hours earlier.

I would eat a meal at around 11am. I ride pretty crappy if I eat less than 2 hours before the race - but you are going to want something.

Also, I would still be eating your big carb dinner at dinner or even lunch the night before. For an early morning race I actually usually eat the big crab loading meal for an early dinner after a good ride 2 days before (get 40-60g of liquid (gatorade, etc) carbs and some protein powder within 20-30 minutes of your Thursday ride) . So if the race is on Saturday, I'd be eating it on Thursday at like 4-5pm. Then Friday would be a big breakfast with lots of carbs, sandwhich or something for lunch, go on an hour ride or so - easy with a few efforts into LT for a couple seconds, then a moderately sized dinner. Also, I'll have a 1L nalgene of diluted (75% or so) Gatorade with me all day thursday and especially friday. Just sip it all day. Between thursday and friday i'll probably drink 6L from the nalgene alone - not counting drinks at meals and stuff. Then for a morning race I'll start drinking the gatorade again at breakfast (which will be carbs, but easy to digest - milk and cheerios or oatmeal) and finish the gatorade befoore I get on the trainer before the race - another 1L. Then I use the inevitably nasty porta-john at the race, warm up on the trainer for 30-45min while drinking gatorade from the cycling bottles. Maybe drink 1/2 a bottle unless its warm out. Pee again, and then head over to do a team pre-ride of the course (if its a crit), a couple laps usually keeping the intensity up a bit to stay warm. Then line up and get ready to go!