I am starting winning in the kitchen plan and I have a couple of questions. When I ride during the week I heve to ride in the evening due to work hours, My question is how how much time before a ride should I eat? Also on Saturday and Sunday I ride first thing in the morning and theyre my bigger intensity days so I dont like to eat alot before those rides - basically what I’m asking is how do I time my nutrition before and after on those days. I usually use Recoverite after a ride. Is that something I’m going to continue to do? Also rides longer that two hours usually use a gel like Gu or Hammer Gel. Lots of questions but I just opened the plan and Im starting it tomorrow. Thank you.
Hey @brianmisek!
This is a great question and one that I just recently addressed here:
During the week, I would eat 2-3 hours out if you have a harder ride and then fuel during your ride. If it is a shorter ride (say 60-75 min), you can have your lunch as usual and then eat a small snack 1-2 hours out. If it is a recovery ride or low endurance, you could likely get by without fueling during the ride. An exception to that would be if you have a race the next day though… as you want to keep glyocgen stores as high as you can at that time.
If for bigger days (3+ hours of SS) such as you’d have on the weekends, you find that you do not tolerate food that well in the morning… I would aim to top off your carb stores at night with a meal and a snack that adds up to at least 100-150g of carbs. Then the morning of consume a small snack of about 30-75g of carbs (or about 0.5-1.0g of carbs per kg) in the hour or two before. Then as always, fuel during your ride. For long SS group rides I’d shoot for at least 60g per hour on the bike. (Video on during ride nutrition coming soon 
)
Now post hard/long rides, recoverite is fine (though I am a huge fan of Gu’s Chocolate Recovery Mix blended with a banana 
). Some people like the convenience of these especially when they are on the go or if they poor appetite after hard rides, but I would suggest trying to either incorporate real food with them (such as the addition of the banana) or using your post ride meal to kickstart your recovery. The Burrito bowl in the meal plan is a great example of this!
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