In this video FasCat’s Registered Dietitian (RD), Lacey Rivette, explains what, when and how much cyclists should eat before training in order to optimize performance and recovery. Included in the video are helpful charts and sample meals to help you learn how to apply the recommendations and start riding faster!
Full Transcript with graphics and example pre ride meals below.
Download the Pre Ride Nutrition Charts Here
Hey Everyone!
My name is Lacey and I am the RD and a cycling coach here at fascat. I am excited to let you guys know that this is the first of many nutrition related videos I will bring you all. In the future we will cover some in depth questions, but for now I am going to start by covering the 3 nutrition topics all cyclists should know which are what to eat before, during and after training to optimize performance and recovery.
Clearly based on the title, in this video we are going to cover pre-ride nutrition, and by that I mean what to eat, when to eat, how much you should eat before you ride
A quick note to keep in mind before I jump in though is that the answer to all 3 of these questions is really individualistic. It depends on the intensity and duration of your training, how much you are able eat during that training and how well you can tolerate food in the hours leading up to your ride.
With that said, the first question to answer is WHAT should cyclists eat before training?
Well despite everyone jumping on the low carb bandwagon these days, I can promise you that no races will be won or peak performances will be set when following a low carb diet. Sure, sedentary individuals can get by eating a low carb diet, but as an endurance athlete you aren’t looking to get by. You need to perform, recover and be ready to train again the next day. And for that, carbs reign king!
On screen text — In athletes, low carb diets can lead to: 1) suboptimal performance 2) poor recovery 3) reduced immune function 4) muscle loss
So with that said, you can assume that I am going to tell you that the primary focus of your pre-ride meal should be carbohydrates. Think “oats, rice, fruits, some vegetables, maple syrup, pancakes, etc. all of these are great sources of carbohydrates.
Now carbs contain fiber, some more than others. Carbs that are high in fiber are things like whole grain oats, broccoli, sweet potatoes, etc. So say you do Coach Franks favorite breakfast, Rice n’ eggs, which has broccoli and some other veggies — that should be eaten further out from training because it contains more fiber (from the vegetables) and fiber slows down digestion. If you do not fully digest your pre ride meal, you risk getting “gut rot” which most of you probably know… is NOT fun, so we want to avoid that.
So for example, 4 hours out the rice n’ eggs is a good choice. But if you are an hour out you should have something like a tortilla or rice cake with peanut butter and honey.
Now you can include a little fat and protein which will help with satiety, but the closer you get to your ride the smaller amounts of these you should have as they take longer to digest.
The next question is WHEN should cyclists eat before training?
For long, hard efforts, such as a race or a group ride, athletes should aim to eat 3-4 hours out from training. For shorter intense rides, say a 90 min sweet spot ride, athletes can eat 2 hours out. And then for shorter rides or early morning training sessions athletes can eat an hour out or even skip the pre ride meal and rely on carb intake on the bike to fuel their training session.
Now for the final and arguably the most complicated question which HOW MUCH should you eat?
Like I noted earlier in this video pre-ride nutrition is highly dependent on personal tolerance and athletes should practice the timing and composition of their meal to find what works best for them. With that said the recommendations for carb intake before exercise range from 1 g per kg of body weight when eating 1 hour before training, up to 4g per kg of body weight if eating 4 hours out.
Note: If you are not using metric system, you can easily convert your weight from pounds (lb) to kilograms (kg) by dividing your weight in lb by 2.2.
In the chart above I have given a range to shoot for. You should aim for the lower end of these recommendations if you are doing easier efforts and or if you are female as females tend to rely slightly less on carbs than their male counterparts of the same fitness level and because women tend to need less calories overall.
Right now I’m sure many of you are thinking what the heck Lacey! That is a lot of numbers. I am confused, how do I apply all of this so that I can ride faster? Well don’t worry I am not going to leave you hanging. Lets jump into some real life examples to help give you a better understanding.
For all of these I will be using a 140lb or 63.5kg athlete (see goal ranges below).
Example #1:
4 hours out: Race, Ultra-endurance, or a Multi Day Event (e.g stage race or bikebacking trip)
For this the athlete should be aiming for ~4g per kg of body weight and they could accomplish with the following pre ride meal:
Example #2:
3 hours out: Weekend Group Ride
Example #3:
2 hours out: 2+ hour Sweet Spot Ride
Example #4:
1 hour or less: Weekday Ride
The final example is an athlete training at the crack of dawn, doing say a 1-2 hour interval session or endurance ride. This is where athletes really need to rely on listening to their body. Some athletes do fine with a bit to eat and others find it negatively impacts their performance. Typically the impact on performance is caused by choosing the wrong foods or eating too much which results in an spike in insulin that leaves them feeling bonky during the first hour of the ride, but again I digress as this is a really detailed topic that I will cover in a later video.
Basically an hour out athletes can either aim for a small snack of ~30g of easily digestible carbs or skip eating and rely solely on eating carbs on the bike to fuel their training. An example for those eating in the hour before could be a small 6 oz smoothie or even something as simple as a cup of grapes and ½ cup of oat milk with their coffee. In either situation here, and for all rides longer than an hour, athlete should be fueling during their ride with about 30-90g of carbs per hour.
And this brings me to the topic of our next video, which will be during ride nutrition! So until then, I hope you all start practicing your preride fueling and if you have any questions I did not answer here, feel free to drop them in the comments below.
I’ll see you guys next time!
Comments (13)
Nice video, some good examples. What about the 75kg rider who wants to get to 70kg or less while still putting in the efforts? What would be the fuelling strategy?
Hey Alan! It will depend on the time of the year and what their training looks like. If they are looking to be race ready, I do not recommend cutting calories. If they are doing base training or in a short break during the season they can focus on carb periodization (more calories in the hours before and during training and the 1-2 hours directly after, then less at other times of the day) as well as consume less carbs overall.
So for example, a 75kg athlete could aim for closer to 1.25 to 1.5 g/kg of carbs 2 hours before a ride. That would be about 100g of carbs. Then do the 45g/hr on the bike for a 2 hour ride. For lunch, aim for about 70g of carbs and 40g for dinner. They could then have 1-2 snacks of about 25g. That would bring them to around 225-250g of carbs. This athlete could also decrease their fat intake a bit to help in reducing calorie intake.
Thanks for the tips. The examples definitely helped visualize what a morning fuel plan might look like. I particularly seem to ride early, and I guess I may need to live with the quick grams of carbs before I ride. However, on the weekends, perhaps I can plan ahead. Question: Is there any merit to eating a bunch of carbs (rice, pasta) the night before. I am looking forward to the next videos.
You are more than welcome John!
The loading up on carbs the night before can be useful for long, hard efforts (say a hard group rides or a race) when you cannot wake up early enough to get in a nice big breakfast. It is also useful for those who have GI issues and often find that eating large meals in the morning causes them stomach issues.
When an athlete uses this approach for a long race, increased carb intake should be combined with little to no training for ~2 days to allow for “glycogen supercompensation”… more on that in a later video though as I can go down a rabbit hole on that topic 😬
Thank you! Still not going to wake up early enough for the morning fuel (hence no morning training for me), but I really needed these numbers for pre-effort planning! No more burp barf in efforts from fuelling too much too late for me!
Glad I could help rid you of those burp barfs, those definitely don’t help you FtFP!
Nice explanation and very helpful examples, Lacey. Thank you.
A few questions: How does this fit into the overall daily carbohydrate intake (what are the assumptions). I am the rider you have in your example (less that kg difference) and am working of a 372 g CHO intake daily. On race day, this would seem totally inadequate with a 240g prerace intake.
Can you please connect three other “dots”, namely, the week leading into a race (load assumptions), in-ride CHO intake (seems like in ride is your next video), and post-ride recovery.
Hey Marcel! 372g of carbs (which is ~5.5g/kg) is likely adequate for your day to day intake during times of low volume (i.e. a rest week) and in the base season when you are looking to lose weight. It should increase once higher intensities/volume comes around. For example, Id say aim for closer to 6-7g per kg once you start to transition from base to race.
Carb intake on Race day should be different than your typical intake as you will need more carbs those days to ensure glycogen stores are topped off. On those days, I would say aim for ~8g per kg or ~500g of carbs (possibly more depending on the event). In that case, eating 230g prior would fit.
The future videos will touch on the other questions you have, but here is a quick answer:
Say it is a typical week for you. On a tuesday you have a 2 hour SS ride, so you wake up 2 hours out and do the example above with 116g of carbs for your breakfast. Then, during your ride you have 45g of carbs per hour. That puts you at 206g of carbs total. At lunch you could do 80g of carbs (more here than dinner because you are using those carbs to recover from training). At dinner you do 55-60g of carbs and then have a snack with 25-30g of carbs either before or after dinner. That would bring you around that 370g daily carb intake you are at right now.
Hope that helps!
Very informative, thank you!
Great video and article. What if your race is at 8am. Do you need to get up at 4am to start eating or is their a plan for 2 hours out? Thank you and I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Ideally, you would wake up at least 3-4 hours prior to these events though to try and ensure you are fully topped off. Sleep is important too though, so in that case just have a good bit of carbs 2 days out from the race (about 6-10 g/kg along with a reduced training load) to help top off your glycogen stores and then aim for about 2g per kg of carbs 2 ours out from your race 🙂
Very nice explanation, but what about the guys who has the time very tight , example, I have to wake up 6am to ride 6:30am , regrads from Mexico
Hey Javier! In this situation you would want to opt for either having about ~30g of easily digestible carbs (as mentioned in example 4) or jump right into your ride and ensure that you fuel well on the bike with easy to digest carbs (e.g. blocks, gels, bars or drink mixes) aiming for about 30-60g of carbs per hour for most workouts and up to 90g of carbs for rides >3 hours or during long races.