Prepare smarter for your next bike race or triathlon. Learn what to eat the day before to maximize energy, support digestion and avoid pitfalls so you can start strong and race with confidence.
TL;DR
To optimize performance and avoid digestive issues on race day, it’s vital for cyclists and triathletes to fuel correctly, prioritizing familiar, easily digestible high-carbohydrate foods spread evenly throughout the day before your event, rather than overeating at dinner.
For races lasting longer than 90 minutes, aim to consume 6-12 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight while limiting fibre, fat and protein. Spreading thoughtfully chosen meals and hydration evenly across the day will help ensure your glycogen stores are fully loaded by the start line and reduce the chance of sleep or stomach issues.
Nailing your pre-race nutrition is essential if you want to arrive at the start line with a clear head and perform at your best.
The duration of the event determines the approach you take and when you begin making changes to your nutrition. Long events may require a few days of preparation, but the day before and day of a race are the most important to get right.
Athletes taking part in events longer than 90 minutes should follow a structured meal plan the day before a race to ensure they meet their nutrition goals, but simply prioritizing carbohydrate-rich foods is sufficient for short races.
In this article, we aim to help you understand what to eat, when to eat it, and why it’s important, so you can get the most out of your next race.
WHAT SHOULD YOU EAT THE DAY BEFORE A RACE?
The day before the race, prioritize carbohydrates for every meal, not just dinner. In an attempt to “carb load,” people often overeat at dinner the day before an event. Doing so can negatively affect sleep, something you want to avoid before race day.
In an ideal world, by the day before your race, you would already have a meal plan and the corresponding groceries bought to make the day as relaxed as possible, allowing you to focus on other preparations. This is even more important if you will be travelling the day before, as food choices are limited while on the road.
Kim Schwabenbauer, a professional triathlete and registered sports dietician, recommends going to bed “a little bit hungry with an almost empty-feeling stomach so there isn’t much digestion going on overnight.”
On the day before a race, keep fat, protein and fibre intake low. These macronutrients take longer for your body to break down, meaning they are not used as freely for energy, and they slow the digestion of the carbohydrates consumed. Simply put, the majority of your plate should be carbs.
All of your food experimentation should be well and truly over the day before a race. At this point, eat only things that you know do not upset your stomach. Low-fibre carbohydrates like white bread, rice, and pasta are ideal, or even pancakes or corn-based breads.
HOW MANY CARBS SHOULD YOU EAT THE DAY BEFORE A RACE?
The amount of carbohydrate needed the day before a race depends on its duration (shorter or longer than 90 minutes) and your body weight.
If you’re new to racing, you may not know how many carbs you can consume without causing digestive distress, so aim for the low end of the target range.
Fueling recommendations from the Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise in grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodyweight are as follows:
1-hour event: 5-7g/kg (typical fueling)
1-3-hour event: 6-10g/kg (moderate carb loading)
3-4-hour event: 8-12g/kg (maximal carb loading)
From these recommendations, we can calculate the required daily intake of carbohydrate for three example athletes: 55kg, 70kg, and 85kg:
Carbs
Athlete’s Bodyweight
1 Hour: 5-7 g/kg
1–3 Hours: 6-10 g/kg
>3–4 Hours: 8-12 g/kg
55 kg
275-385 g
330-550 g
440-660 g
70 kg
350-490 g
420-700 g
560-840 g
85 kg
425-595 g
510-850 g
680-1,020 g
1 Hour: 5-7 g/kg
55 kg
275-385 g
70 kg
350-490 g
85 kg
425-595 g
1–3 Hours: 6-10 g/kg
55 kg
330-550 g
70 kg
420-700 g
85 kg
510-850 g
>3–4 Hours: 8-12 g/kg
55 kg
440-660 g
70 kg
560-840 g
85 kg
680-1,020 g
For longer-duration races (>3 hours), it’s recommended to begin this fueling at this level 36 to 48 hours before the event.
If you’re a 70-kilogram triathlete preparing for an IRONMAN that could take anywhere from 7.5 to 17 hours, you’ll likely want to consume as close to 840g per day as you can starting 48 hours before the race. However, that same athlete may only need to consume around 400g the day before a one-hour time trial.
This is a lot of carbohydrates to eat in a single day, so that’s why it’s important to prioritize mostly high-carb, low-fibre foods from the first meal of the day. Consuming high-carb, high-fibre foods will increase the chance of experiencing gastrointestinal distress. Sports drinks are a helpful way to boost your carb intake without increasing digestive load.
WHY DOES THE DAY-BEFORE MEAL PLAN MATTER SO MUCH?
The day-before meal plan is vital because fueling properly allows your body to store as much energy as it can, so that when the race starts, you can maintain a higher intensity for longer. Obviously, maximizing your performance still depends on fueling correctly during the event.
The primary goal of pre-race nutrition is to fill the glycogen stores in your blood, liver, and muscles. Skeletal muscle holds roughly 75 percent of the body’s glycogen. During high-intensity exercise, you draw primarily from blood and muscle stores, so you want to start each race with them as full as possible.
Again, pre-race nutrition plans focus on being prepared with foods your body tolerates well and spreading the required number of carbohydrates across the day rather than cramming them into a single evening meal, which would likely disrupt your sleep.
If this is your first race, it’s also key that you don’t consume anything in the lead-up to the event that you haven’t tried at least a couple of times in the past.
DO YOU NEED TO CARB LOAD BEFORE EVERY RACE?
It’s not necessary to carb load before every race. The current scientific understanding is that there is no performance benefit to carb loading for events lasting less than 90 minutes, or less than 60 minutes if the intensity is extremely high, such as a cyclocross race.
If your race is longer than 90 minutes, you will almost certainly benefit from a structured carb-loading plan. For example, longer-duration races (3+ hours), such as a full or half IRONMAN, require maximizing your glycogen stores with 8-12g/kg of carbs per day for up to 48 hours before the race, but a 3-hour race only requires 6-10g/kg the day before the event.
WHAT FOODS WORK BEST THE DAY BEFORE A CYCLING RACE OR TRIATHLON?
The foods that work best to fuel cycling and triathlon races are those high in carbohydrates, low in fibre, and with low to moderate fat and protein.
By consuming high amounts of carbohydrate, which is then broken down into glycogen in the body, you fill your glycogen stores. However, doing so primarily with high-fibre carbs like legumes or high-fat carbs like fries is a quick way to cause gastrointestinal distress.
Some excellent options for snacking the day before a race include bananas, sports drinks, and rice cakes or toast with jam, Nutella or honey.
WHAT SHOULD YOU AVOID CONSUMING THE DAY BEFORE A RACE?
There are a few things that you should absolutely avoid the day before your race, and others that, in an ideal world, you would also avoid.
The most important things to avoid are the following:
Do not consume this the day before the race
WHAT TO AVOID, AND WHY IT MATTERS
High-fibre foods
Can make it difficult to hit your carb goal without bloating and gas, and may cause an urgent need for the toilet
High-protein and high-fat foods
These foods slow digestion and may push you over your calorie goal or make it harder to hit your target carb intake
Unfamiliar foods, supplements, or heavily spiced foods
Could upset your digestive system
Alcohol
Dehydrates you and disrupts sleep
Caffeine in the late afternoon or evening
Can disrupt sleep
Drinking most of your fluids late in one go
Spread them throughout the day to ensure proper hydration and reduce nighttime awakenings
Cramming most of the day’s nutrition into dinner
May upset your sleep and impact race-day digestion
Overeating
Eating too much throughout the day can leave you feeling heavy the next morning
HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU DRINK THE DAY BEFORE A RACE?
The amount you should drink the day before a race is dependent on your individual needs and the demands of your pre-race environment.
Proper hydration involves replacing fluids and electrolytes. The typical recommendation is two to three litres of water per day based on body size, but avoiding thirst and maintaining light-yellow urine are good reference points.
The day before your race, it’s important to drink regularly throughout the day and avoid drinking a lot in one go, especially at night, which can cause nighttime awakenings.
Drinking sports drinks with electrolytes the day before an event can help you hit your carbohydrate goals while providing fluids and electrolytes.
When travelling the day before an event, especially if it’s by plane, it’s even more important to stay on top of hydration needs. As sports scientist, performance coach, and ultra-marathoner, Dr. Peter Tierney states:
“I’m always conscious of staying hydrated when travelling, particularly on planes … I would definitely advise drinking electrolytes when flying to a race.”
It’s likely that you won’t be sweating heavily the day before a race, so your intake won’t be as high as a typical training week, but if you’ve travelled to a destination with a different climate to your home country or city, you will need to adapt your fluid and electrolyte consumption. Increase your intake if you’ve travelled to a warm or humid place, and decrease it slightly if you’ve travelled from a warm climate to a cool climate.
WHAT DOES A GOOD DAY-BEFORE RACE MENU LOOK LIKE? What you eat the day before a race will depend on your carb intake requirements (body weight and event duration), your food preferences and tolerances and food availability.
In an ideal world, you’d have all the foods that you enjoy and tolerate bought in the days leading up to the day before the race to ensure you can space out your meals and snacks well and hit your macronutrient goals.
Here’s a sample menu focused on carb loading the day before a long-duration race:
A GOOD DAY-BEFORE RACE MENU
Time of day, Food And Quantity
Breakfast - 08:00
Large bowl of instant oats with honey, 2 bananas, glass of orange juice, coffee
Snack 1 - 10:00
2 slices of toasted white bread with jam, glass of apple juice
Lunch - 13:00
Large serving of white rice, vegetable portion, small lean chicken breast, bottle of sports drink
Snack 2 - 15:00
4 rice cakes with Nutella or honey, small tub of vanilla yoghurt
Snack 3 - 16:30
Bowl of sugary breakfast cereal with low-fat milk or oat milk
Dinner - 18:30
Large serving of pasta with tomato sauce, serving of rice pudding
WHAT SHOULD YOU EAT FOR DINNER THE NIGHT BEFORE A RACE?
For dinner the night before your race, you should consume a regular-sized meal ideally around three hours before you plan to sleep, to give your body enough time to digest and avoid the possibility of sleep disruption from being too full.
This night-before dinner should consist mostly of low-fibre carbohydrates, such as white rice, pasta or potatoes (not fried).
Fat and protein should be kept to a minimum, as these will slow digestion and reduce the amount of carbohydrates you can eat. Avoid creamy sauces (carbonara or curry); instead, choose pasta with tomato sauce or white rice with a sweet stir-fry sauce.
HOW IS THE DAY-BEFORE PLAN DIFFERENT FOR SHORT RACES VS. LONG DISTANCE EVENTS?
How you prepare for a race depends on the length of the event. As mentioned previously, it’s not necessary to consume as many carbohydrates before short races (<90 minutes), as the performance benefits of carb loading are typically seen at durations over 90 minutes. This means the frequency at which you eat and the percentage of carbohydrates per meal can be reduced. If you’re aiming for 10 or 12g/kg for a long-distance race, however, you must focus on regular eating throughout the day and choose mostly high-carb, low-fibre foods and drinks.
Aside from nutrition, the preparation should be the same: prioritize good sleep and hydration, and try to limit physical exertion and stress.
Jordan is a writer and editor who specializes in cycling content, as well as a keen recreational cyclist. From his adopted home in Palma de Mallorca, he trains locally, leads rides with a local club, and, in service of his love for travel, he regularly takes his bike on trips around Europe. He’s obsessed with data, performance, and nutrition, and you’re likely to find him diving into his Strava stats at the clubhouse over a post-ride flat white.
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