What to Eat Before a Race

While there is no special elixir that can magically give you the abilities of Bolt or Kipchoge right before a race, there are plenty of nutritional tips that will prepare your body to perform at its best. In prepping for an event, you should be putting as much thought into your nutrition as your workouts. Whether you are gearing up for a track and field meet, cross country event, marathon, or just a good hard run, you will want to fuel your body appropriately for the effort.

When it comes to an endurance exercise like running, carbohydrates provide the most readily available form of energy for our bodies. Our bodies use glucose from carbs to help fuel our muscles so that we can continue to perform throughout our runs.

The glucose that is stored in your body is called glycogen. Unlike fat, which can be amassed in the body in almost unlimited quantities, glycogen has limited available storage in the body. Glycogen is kept primarily in your muscles and in your liver, accounting for only about 1 to 2% of your total energy stores.

A hard workout can quickly deplete glycogen levels, which could lead to fatigue and weakened performance. To avoid this, it is important that your glycogen stores are topped off before a race and your muscles have enough available glucose to get you through your event.

After roughly 90 minutes of exercise, glycogen stores in the body can become completely depleted, which can lead to muscle cannibalization. In this process, the body converts lean muscle tissue into additional glucose, which can lead to muscle soreness, stiffness, or, in more extreme cases, injury.

This is why eating small amounts of protein is so important for longer runs. Protein combined with carbohydrates in your pre-run meal can reduce tissue cannibalization and increase muscle protein synthesis, leading to prolonged and improved performance.

As mentioned above, glycogen is the primary fuel source for short, high-intensity workouts. However, your body also uses fat as fuel, especially on longer or lower intensity runs. You probably do not want to chow down on a stick of butter before your morning run, but including a small number of healthy fats in your pre-run meal can be very beneficial and provide much-needed fuel for longer runs.

Including high-fiber foods in your normal daily diet is healthy and can support the overall well-being of the intestinal tract. However, when it comes to pre-race nutrition, you’ll want to avoid eating large quantities of fiber, as it can lead to unwanted gastrointestinal distress like gassiness, bloating, and diarrhea, which can derail any race.

When considering how much a runner should eat before a race, balance is the main focus. Eating too much or not eating at all before a race will have tremendous adverse effects on your performance. The total quantity of food a runner should eat before a race is a bit of a Goldilocks situation—you don’t want too little or too much, only what is just right. To find this perfect balance, runners should experiment with different foods and quantities throughout training to find the exact pre-race meal that works best for their bodies.

It is generally recommended that a runner's pre-race meal should be 400-700 calories and consist primarily of carbohydrates. It is also encouraged that runners eat a 100-200 calorie carb-rich snack before their race. If these two meals are timed properly, then runners should have ample energy to conquer their run.

The timing at which you eat your pre-race meal and pre-race snack is once again about balance. Finding that "just right" time to eat is crucial to maximizing available energy and avoiding GI distress. Runners should try and eat their larger pre-race meal 2-4 hours before their race, and their pre-race snack roughly 30 minutes to an hour before race time. These recommended timing windows should provide ample time for runners to properly digest their food and avoid any digestive issues during their race. But once more, to get the most out of your nutrition, we recommend experimenting during training to lock in the ideal amount and timing for your individual needs.

Hydration is another critical component of race-day nutrition, and without proper implementation, runners can experience reduced muscle strength, stamina, and overall energy. Even worse, dehydrated runners are much more susceptible to injuries. This is why having a specific hydration plan can be so crucial leading up to a race. It is recommended that runners drink roughly 16-20 ounces of water in combination with their pre-race meal to ensure adequate hydration before the race. Runners should also drink another 16 ounces of fluids 1 hour to 30 minutes before a race.

Sports drinks and hydration mixes can further hydrate athletes and provide runners with additional electrolytes and carbohydrates. Keep in mind that hydrating before a race also needs to be properly balanced in regards to timing and quantity. Too little hydration can lead to bonking, while too many fluids can flush much-needed electrolytes out of the system and cause stomach discomfort.