A banana sandwich and powerade.

The first endurance website they have a bunch of pros saying what they eat. Check it out.

Peanut butter and honey sammich, potato chips, and a Coke. I sip Gatorade bottle until about 30 minutes before the race start.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I don't understand why so many people change their breakfast on race day morning. Then they wonder why they have gi issues....sigh

I eat the same cereal I've been eating for the last decade or more. Nature Valley Pumpkin seed & flax cereal w/ whole mike + 2 cups of tea with sugar & milk in them.
Plus you can find this cereal in Trader Joes for $2.99 or Costco for slightly < that on a per ounce basis. Most grocery stores have it as well.

Although I almost always travel with it in a tupperware if I'm going to race.

Now for a long ride or run I just have my 2 cups of tea. No need to eat anything (ymmv) since I'm bringing stuff with me or I'm stopping for a coke & payday at some point

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Oatmeal, banana, toast

Same things I would eat on big training days. If it aint broke, don't fix it. Training is the time to experiment,
not the day of your biggest races.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches FTW.

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-Of course it's 'effing hard, it's IRONMAN!
Team ZOOT
ZOOT, QR, Garmin, HED Wheels, Zealios, FormSwim, Precision Hydration, Rudy Project

one or more things out of the following basket: banana, power bar, peanut butter sandwich, pop tarts. Also, Red Bull or Coffee (typically iced).

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

Mostly liquid, Carbopro mix and Ensure. I hear a good one is Cream of wheat, less roughage then oatmeal and sounds like something worth trying.

Desert Dude nailed it. Eat what you eat for long training days / race sim workouts. The only difference for me, is I increase the quantity slightly and eat it earlier.

My routine is:
T-3 hours: Wake up, drink a can of Ensure next to bed, go back to sleep
T-2 hours: 2/3 cup dry oatmeal doused lots (maybe 1/4 cup?) maple syrup. Combined with the ensure, that delivers me over 100g of carbohydrates with a little helping of fats/protein to keep me sated. Sometimes, if I'm more nervous than usual and can't get it all down (it's a LOT of oatmeal), I'll drink a second can of Ensure and leave 1/2 of the oatmeal. I also drink an espresso, black, while making the oatmeal. I've found the black espresso on an emptish stomach makes me need to dump immediately.

For big race rehearsal workouts, I eat 2/3 of a cup about 1-1.5 hours before the start of my workout. I've found I can digest oatmeal while warming up on the bike, but not while swimming, especially at race pace. When my schedule requires me to do bigger workouts in the evening, I eat this same 2/3 cup of oatmeal about 1-1.5 hours before my workout as a sort of mini-dinner, with a real dinner after.

For small workouts when I need to get going with <30 minutes of waking up: I drink a can of Ensure and go.

So I know it works, because I use this meal all the time.

The one thing I haven't figured out yet, and I'd appreciate other people's input on, is the pre-swim gel/banana. Some people swear by a banana or gel 15 min or so before the swim start. I'm undecided. I read somewhere that ingesting sugar right before the start of a workout can lead to exercise induced hypoglycemia. I've found for shorter (OLY/HIM) events it's fine, because I'm on my bike in 20-30 minutes eating again, but for a 60 min IM swim, I wonder.....

Most days for breakfast, I don't eat oatmeal. I eat Greek yogurt and granola, so that I don't get sick of the oatmeal. My body knows... when you eat oatmeal, it's time to perform -- it's going to be a big training day or a race. So buck up. Empty the bowels. And get your race on.

The one thing I haven't figure out yet, is whether I like eating a gel

Same as every other day. Steel cut oats with raisins banana egg whites soy milk peanut butter and some cereal mixed in. Usually add half a bagel with jelly.

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Let food be thy medicine...

Got it... a can of Busch, a few Krispy Kremes and a Marlboro Red.


(Or coffee, a Clif Builders Bar and a banana or two.)

Used to be two cans of chocolate Exceed, but have replaced it with two cans of chocolate Ensure, basically the same thing.

I think that is about 750 liquid calories with some protein and fat. Goes down really fast, and empty pretty quick, so that I start the race on what feels like an empty stomach. If it was a 1/2 race or longer, then would pump a couple gels in there about an hour before the race too. And couple cups of strong, black coffee..

Same here--prefer to have basically an empty stomach. Last weekend I raced & had just a K-Cup Peet's Cafe Domingo coffee with a touch of raw sugar & half & half about 1.5 hrs before the duathlon. Longer races maybe a slice of sourdough toast & coffee. My calories have been built up the 1-2 days before the race & I'm just replenshing a bit of what Iost while sleeping. Otherwise--it's GI issues if I'm eating too much from 5 PM on the night before. A real issue with travel when long waits tend to happen around a town filled with athletes at bigger races.

Ensure has worked in the past for me quite well.

Oatmeal with syrup. Banana. coffee. Let that settle and hopefully get the system moving. The. On the way to race a clif bar and and maybe some Gatorade

Yeah me too - had nothing at breakfast for 140.6 (only 5hr energy, Red Bull), but big dinner at 11pm.

At Haines City 70.3 - I had nothing the morning of but 10 cheeseburgers the day before and other stuff from McDonalds

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

Banana x2, a white bread roll with peanut butter and honey and a Starbucks espresso doubleshot. If it's a full, I'll top off with Clif Bar and Gatorade about an hour out, and a GU gel while I wait for the swim start.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

OK I deserve that....ask people what they eat and they all eat 'ffing oatmeal.
Or old people food. I'm old and even I don't eat that crap.

So I went looking further afield because, for example, here's a group that have been doing this for 100 years, so I figure they are ahead of IM on the food score.
Here was a typical breakfast they eat 3 hrs before they start (each day) at the Tour. This is an example of just one rider's first meal of the day:

A bowl of oatmeal with nuts, a large omelette, three sandwiches with cheese and ham,
100g of pasta, 1 cup of yoghurt, 500ml fruit smoothie,
1 glass of apple juice,
1 coffee.

And these guys weigh 135 lbs if you're lucky and average 50kph on each ride (yeah I know, in a pack).

This from an Australian dietary study on bikers

On race day, the final pre-event meal should be eaten ~3-4 hours before the start. Foods chosen should be rich in carbohydrates and low in fat and fibre to to aid digestion and prevent stomach issues. If the athlete is nervous or solids don’t sit well a liquid carbohydrate (e.g. smoothie) is a good alternative. Some other suitable ideas include:

• Porridge with milk and fruit
• Rice based dish (e.g. risotto)
• Pasta with beef mince in tomato-based sauce (whoo hoo!)
• Fruit smoothie

Not sure I want to swim with all that, but as the old wives tale of eating before swimming has been disproved and it has had 3 hours to settle....

Lets face it, after the swim everyone has a Tour de France level bike ahead of them, not to mention the run and most of the breakfasts I've seen wouldn't get normal people to the first coffee break of any working day, let alone swim, bike then get off and run a marathon..

I'm doing a warmup Half next week, just for fun, I'm looking forward to a lasagna this time. :0)

The main goal of an IM breakfast is to fill up the liver glycogen which emptied half during the night. Further to get even more carbohydrates into your body. You do that by having an ample breakfast.

This goal was not mentioned yet in this thread but it is important to know. It could mean, other than meant by other posters, that you actually eat differently as normal if normally you for example eat little to not gain any weight. I would even say for most folks the IM breakfast is NOT the same as that what they generally eat. All kind of stuff which is healthy in the long run but which needs time to digest is maybe not such a good idea. Of course you should not experiment either and only eat that from which you know you react well on it.

Further point: I tend to get in a lot of carbohydrates day 4,3 and 2 before an IM, so the breakfast on those days resemble the breakfast on race day. Day 1 I eat normally to not have such a full belly on race day.

What you eat exactly to achieve those goals is another question and is dependent on:
-which food generally achieves the goals in the best way and it which quantaties.
-what is tolerated by your body.

And, not in the last instance: what you eat is dependent on what is available in the very hotel you checked in. I had my IM breakfast in Lanzarote in the same hotel as Frederik van Lierde and took notice precisely: he had about the same as I had.

A bowl of cereal or oats, two eggs and a cup of coffee.

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Cannondale Slice 08
look keo pedals
fizik k3 arione saddle

Usually rice and eggs. But sometimes I’ll have a sweet rice porridge. I also like a box of waffles and Red Bull. Whatever really your heart desires.

The text books say 3-5 grams of carbs per a kg of body weight. 3-5 hours before the big event. That’s actually really hard to do. Everyone is right that when they say don’t change it up on race day. Try it before a long run and get used to it.

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I still lapped everyone on the couch!

Torq snack meal before going to bed (can either be a pasta dish or a bowl of cereal) can make them with hot water so easy to make in a hotel.

Morning - 3x Weetabix with milk followed by a tin of rice pudding. I'll then just nibble on a couple of energy bar's until you get booted out of T1. (Clif & Chia Charge are my faves)

SiS do a carb loading energy drink which is pretty good - they say to have 2 the day before and a third on race morning. It's actually aimed at footballers because it's in their Pre-90 range.

3 Pancakes w/butter and syrup, 2 hard boiled eggs, coffee and a Diet Coke.

T-3 2 Scoops Inifint Mud banana 2.5 oz of First Endurance Kona Mocha, Cup of Coffee
T-2 Ensure
T-1 Ensure

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic