When preparing for a race, in a perfect world, it would be ideal to arrive at the venue a few days before the race. Taking those few days to pre-ride the course and spend the nights in a high-quality place. However, for most of us, that’s not the case; we don’t have sponsors covering our stays at these events.
Being a competitive cyclist is a balance of managing performance while being cost-effective. Luckily, in California, we have lots of racing for every discipline of cycling. Especially being in the Sacramento area, most races are usually one to three hours away. For many of these races, arriving the night before or even the morning of can work great. Here are the guiding questions I ask myself to aid my decision-making on when to arrive at a race.
Pre-riding
Do I need to pre-ride?
Whenever I’m racing off-road, the answer is always yes. If I’m racing road, I can usually get away without pre-riding and just studying the course file.
How much of the course do I need to ride?
I like to pre-ride the entire course if I can. However, some of these events can be quite long. If I can’t ride the whole course, I’ll find a way to shorten it. If the event has a mix of road and dirt, I’ll edit the route so I can ride most of the off-road sectors. Here’s an example using Truckee Gravel-
Riding the whole course at Z2 pace would most likely take around 6 hours. I didn’t have the time to get up to Truckee for the full course, so I went in and found a way to shorten the course to ride just the beginning and end.
When do I need to pre-ride?
When I’m two weeks out from a race, I’ll take a look at my training peaks and pick an endurance day to get out on the course. Depending on how far away a course is I’ll pre-ride within the same week, a few days before or the day before. Here are 3 examples-
Truckee Gravel- This event is about an hour and a half away. So I was able to go up the same week on a Wednesday and get about 3 hours on the course.
BWR California- This event is far, and about eight hours away. This was a goal event for me and I wanted to pre-ride a good chunk of the dirt on the course. So I got to the venue early on Thursday. I was able to get in three hours of preriding on Friday before I raced on Sunday.
Sea Otter Gravel- Sea Otter is over 3 hours away, so it was too far to drive out twice. This race was a 3-lap course, and the laps were around 2 hours long at Z2 pace. For this one, I left home early morning to get in a pre-ride the day before.
Where do I have to be and when?
Depending on how early a race starts is one of the biggest factors on when I arrive at a race. I’ll use the starting time of the race and work backwards to figure out my schedule of the morning. Going back to Truckee as an example-
Truckee Gravel started at 8am. So I wanted to be at the venue by 6:45 so I had enough time to pick up my race plate, get ready, warm up and be at the start line in time for staging. That meant I had to leave home at 5:15 and wake up at 4am.
How much sleep do I need?
Personally, the night of sleep before a race doesnt effect me too much. I’ve had restless nights where I’ve gotten minimal sleep and perfomed just fine. When I’m following a race taper and sleeping well the nights leading into a race, I’ll wake up physically fresh on race day no matter how much sleep I get the night before. However, if I can get a good night of sleep, I’ll feel more alert and awake.
With that said 6 hours is the minimum amount of sleep I like to get before a race. I can get to bed as early as 8:30, and if I have to wake up any earlier than 3am to get to a race is when I’ll consider getting a hotel. Here are two different races and my decisions for both-
Truckee- I had to wake up at 4am to get to the venue on time. Going to sleep around 9 put me at 7 hours of sleep and I was good with that.
Levi’s Grand Fondo- This one was a little more than 2 hours away with a 7 am start time. I would have had to get up before 3am so I ended up getting a hotel for that one.
In Summary
- Pre-riding
- Figure out if you need to pre-ride
- How long will the ride be
- When you are going to do the ride
- When to get to the venue
- When you pre-ride will be the main deciding factor
- Use the start time of the race to figure out your schedule of events
- If you are thinking about going up the same day, calculate how much sleep you will get
- If you will lose too much sleep going up the same day, get a hotel and arrive a day early