I found this very informative article and thought I'd share it with you.
Thanks to Monique Ryan for putting this together!
Article By Monique Ryan R.D.
Find the Right Fuel the Hours Before You Race
Race day has arrived. You feel confident because training has been going well. Last night you devoured a large carbohydrate meal and enjoyed a good night's sleep. This morning, you are as ready as you can be. But are you really ready? What about what you ate or drank the few hours before the race?
Many factors make pre-race eating challenging. Early starts make timing tricky. A stomach tied in knots hardly promotes an appetite. And then there is the fear of your meal "talking back." So why bother with food at this tumultuous time? Because research is constantly proving that you should. It appears that carbohydrates consumed several hours before and right up to race time can significantly improve your performance.
Part of the problem is basic physiology. Athletes who race at high intensities for longer than 75-90 minutes are at risk of draining their precious carbohydrate stores. This is especially true if they have difficulty taking in enough carbohydrates while racing. Why the fuel drain? The longer your muscles work hard, the more you dip into your glycogen reserves. When your muscle reserves run low, your body relies on blood glucose. This blood glucose can be supplied by glycogen broken down from your liver (a limited supply) and carbohydrates you consume while cycling. Or it comes from glucose supplied from the pre-race meal you are still absorbing! And not only can pre-race eating keep blood glucose high, it can also "top off" muscle and liver glycogen stores, helping you start the race with the fullest tank possible. Several well-designed studies support the cause of fine-tuning pre-race eating. One study had subjects cycle for 95 minutes to drain carbohydrate reserves before completing a time trial. Those who consumed 312 g of carbohydrates four hours before cycling completed the test, on average, eight minutes faster than cyclists who consumed no carbohydrates.
Another study had nine, well-trained cyclists perform intense exercise to exhaustion. Those who drank five grams of carbohydrate per kg of weight from a concentrated carbohydrate solution three hours prior exercised an average of 17 percent longer than cyclists who took a placebo. It's important to note that both these studies used large carbohydrate amounts. These study results
