Integral to dialing in Horner’s power-to-weight ratio was the diet he and girlfriend Megan Elliott, a two-time under-23 national road champion, devised.
Horner is an athlete with a penchant for hamburgers, candy bars and soda. But together they closely monitored his caloric intake, bringing his weight down from 150 pounds to 140. Though it might sound counter-intuitive, this included nightly dinners out at restaurants.
“We tried it the grocery route, preparing healthy meals at home, but I wasn’t losing weight. While cooking meals, I was snacking, too,” Horner said. “Often you don’t start cooking dinner until you’re hungry, and dinner takes an hour to make. Next thing you know, you’re shredding cheese and cutting yourself an extra thick slice to nibble on, or taking a handful of almonds, or eating a piece of the bread that is supposed to go with your pasta, and even though your dinner is only supposed to be 1,000 calories, you’ve added an extra 700 just snacking while making dinner.”
Horner said he struggled through several hungry nights, and found the discipline required in dieting even more difficult than training: “It’s easy to go out and ride, that’s what you want to do. But you also want to come home and eat with friends and family. That’s what is natural. What is unnatural is to go out to dinner, and while everyone else is having three or four different plates, you are having two, or just one. Sometimes you pay dearly the next day, you’re bonking on the ride, and you have to pull over and just eat what’s in your pocket and give it time to get to the muscles. There were a few days of that.”
The result was that, for the first time in his career, Horner came into the tour of his home state at 100-percent form. It’s what led him to declare, after winning on Sierra Road, that Alberto Contador is the only rider in the sport that is capable of consistently dropping him on a climb.
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