Why you should eat before an early morning training ride!

An article by Renee Eastman, USA Cycling Coach.

Many athletes who have to train early in the morning skip eating all together. However, going out to train on an empty stomach is not good for the quality of your training, and doing this day after day can lead to glycogen depletion. Today's tip is about eating before you go training in the morning.

You definitely want to eat something before your training session in the morning. After an overnight fast your liver glycogen stores are almost depleted. Normal liver glycogen stores are about 75-100g of carbs, that's equal to about 300-400 calories. Athletes can store a little more than that usually. After an overnight fast your stores are down by 80%. Usually you only have enough liver glycogen to supply blood sugar for about 1-1.5 hours, so if you don't eat before you ride you are already putting your body at a deficit.

Here's how it works. Liver glycogen is used to keep your blood sugar levels up. Although you may have plenty of muscle glycogen still left in your muscles, once you run out of liver glycogen, you'll start to feel the bonk. At that point the only thing you can do to keep your blood sugar up is break down body protein to supply carbs to the blood. Muscle glycogen and fat can not be used to supply blood sugar. Even though at lower intensities fat can provide around 60% of your energy, that capacity to burn fat is limited to how much carbohydrates you have. "Fat burns in the flame of carbohydrate". Once you run out of carbohydrates you can not continue to burn fat. You need to have some carbohydrates in order for your body to extract energy from fat. That's why, if you do not consume carbohydrates during a long ride you feel the "bonk" and run out of energy even if your body has plenty of fat stores to keep it going. Same thing will happen, even on a shorter ride, if you don't eat before a training ride.

By not eating you're likely to decrease your performance and recovery from training. Eating some carbs before you exercise will maintain blood glucose levels and help you have higher quality workouts. If you're eating about an hour before your workout about 1g/kg of carbs is recommended, a little less if you eating even closer to your ride. Ideally your carbs from a medium or low-glycemic index sources to avoid a big insulin spike. Good examples are of medium and low glycemic index foods are skim milk, yogurt, apples, bananas, and oatmeal.

Find what foods work best for you and minimize GI distress. You may want to try things like energy bars as well. For those who can't tolerate solid foods, sometimes an energy drink with mostly carbs and a little protein may work well too. This will not only help with energy needs during your workout, but also hydration. Having a bit of protein is ok, but you want to avoid too much fat in this meal right before training as it slows gastric emptying. If your training longer than 1.5 hours you may also want to bring sports drinks or gels with you to further help with maintaining carbohydrate levels.