With Mont Sainte Anne finished, there is still racing to be
done. But it’s a good time to look back a little bit on the season and reflect.
One of the big things I’ve come to find is that my race preparation and race
routine has become naturally more defined and exact. So I figured I’d share
with everyone one of the components to it, nutrition.
The day’s nutrition is a big important part of what makes
you go fast, and even go for that matter. If my legs and body are an engine you
can think of racing bikes as racing cars. You wouldn’t put gasoline with sticks
and dirt in a car and the same applies for your body. You need good clean, good
burning fuel. This starts with breakfast. I’ll eat a solid breakfast. I usually
like to eat a pretty low fat breakfast, like oatmeal with eggs and fruit and
nuts in it. But that’s most days to keep calories down because breakfast most
days is all about giving your body enough to charge up after not eating all
night. But on race days you need to get some extra, long burning calories in
you. So I’ll take the egg off the oatmeal and put it in a breakfast sandwich
with ham and cheese in a corn tortilla or bagel. I’ll eat a smaller portion of
oatmeal too. The extra fat stays with you and keeps you full so that when you
eat pre-race, you’re just topping off the tanks.
Once breakfast is done it’s off to the course and I’ll bring
with me some rice and veggies, lightly seasoned with salt and peppers with some
beans in there too. This is a perfect pre-race meal for me, about 2.5-3 hours
before race time. Once I get to course I chill out, but when it’s meal time it’s
time for serious business. After eating it’s all about getting ready. It’s good
to have some more specific food with you for those hours before the race. While
I’m doing bottles and getting the bike set up and doing all those little
things, I’ll keep a few Clif bars or those Clif shot bloks handy. If I ever
feel hungry I’ll top off with a bar or a thing of bloks depending on how close
it is to race time.
Bottle prep is a big one too. I like to have a ton of bottle
for each race to give me choice. I’ll have 2 types of bottles; water and drink.
Each water bottle will be half full of water with a Clif Shot screwed into the
top. I’ll use ones with some caffeine like the strawberry or mocha are my
favorites. But then I’ll always keep a few extra in my feed bag just in case
too. The second bottle type will be half full with drink mix. I have some to
like the Mikes Mix sports drink, especially now that I have the mixing ratio
right. I’ll mix it a little lighter than they recommend. For a half bottle, I’ll
use 1/3 or ¼ of a scoop. For a 5 lap, 1:45h race I like to have 3 mix bottles
and 3 water bottles.
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| Also Wendy's. Sometimes I like to treat myself. |
Post-race it’s all about the Mike Mix recovery drink. 2 big scoops in a bottle and you can down that
while you cool down. I’ll sometimes do 3 scoops if it was a long race or if I
know dinner won’t be soon. I find that with Mikes, you’re recovery is never
compromised, no matter how far you have to go to get dinner. I drink it and
dinner could be an hour or 2 away and I won’t be hungry until food is in front
of me. Another thing thats really handy to have is a few Clif Builder bars or those Mojo bars. both are good if you get hungry after a race because they have to right type of sugars and protein that goes straight to your muscles in the same way the Mike's does.
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| Ice cream, for Mondays only. |
So there you have it, a little view into my routine and how
I fuel up. It’s critical to have what you need and I know that Clif bars and
shots, and Mikes Mix has me covered. Definitely check both of them out. If you
ever have questions on this, I’m no expert, but I love to talk about it, just
ask.
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