Eating prior to long riding weekend......how much?

If anything, I hope you were hydrating the last few days beforehand (not beer ). Eat your normal routine.  It never hurts to have a decent pasta dinner, if you like that.

Some general fueling guidelines:

- The day before racing the breakfast is the most important meal to begin working to have your glycogen storage full, hence go nuts! eat plenty of carb (high and low glycemic), and some protein/good fat. For the rest of the day hydrate, drink some sports drink and eat as usual. At night have a regular size dinner with foods you are used to. It could be a good idea to choose foods rich in carbs with some protein and healthy fat. Don't over do it, just eat normal.

- The morning of: eat 2-4 hrs before to make sure your body process and absorb so it can be available as fuel as soon as possible.

-  The longer you are going to exercise you will require more fuel to begin with hence shoot for the high end (2.5 gr x Kg of weight) when training 3-4 > hrs and the lower end when training < 2 hrs. The more you fuel prior training you'll need more time to absorb it.

- Choose food high in carbs (CHO) and low in protein or fat (choose specially high glycemic carbs)

- Shoot for around 2-2.5 grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight

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Calculate how much CHO you'll need x Kg of body weight:

Assuming a 140 athlete doing a 4-5 hrs ride
1. Body weight in pounds divided by 2.2 (i.e. 140 pounds / 2.2 = 63.6 Kg)
2. Multiply Kg weight x grams of CHO (i.e. 63.6 x 2.5 gr CHO = 159 gr of CHO to be consumed around 2 hrs before training)
3. for a 140 pound athlete, 127 gr of CHO is = to consuming 1 large wheat bagel (66 gr), 1 table spoon of natural peanut butter (5 gr) with honey (11.5 gr) 1 bottle of apple juice 15-16 oz (43 gr), 1 medium size banana (27 gr), total CHO - 152.5 gr
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After training

- it is important to begin restoring your glycogen storage after exercise for a faster recover specially if you are training/racing again the next day. It is suggest a critical window of 15-30 min in which your body will absorb it faster hence within 30 min of completing your training/racing eat/drink food reach in CHO (high glycemic) and some protein. There are different ratios CHo to protein suggest but nothing concrete, something like 4:1 should do the trick.

- you should shoot for 0.9-1.1 gr of CHO x Kg of body weight for the 30 min window, hence for the 140 pound athlete above, it will require around 57-70gr of CHO and around 14-17.5 gr of protein within 30 min of completing the training

- after the 30 min window the athlete should shoot to eat around the same as above 2 hrs after training and the just eat/drink as usual for the rest of the day.