Wednesday, August 01, 2007

FRESH LEGS

A day off on Sunday followed by an easy 5 miles on Monday equals fresh legs on Tuesday. Fresh legs equal a solid tempo run; 3 mile warm-up, 3 miles at 6:15 pace (started at 6:20 and dropped to 6:07), 2 mile cool-down. I’ll take it.

This run gave me 253 miles for July, not bad considering I only had 34 miles after the first week. I ran 28 days and had 2 doubles. No races.

Today I started my 38th year with an easy 5 mile run. I was going to push this back till tonight, however, I was wide awake at 5:15, so I decided to just get the run over with.

A few weeks ago I talked about an email offer I received from someone at Accelerade. The deal was basically, “We’ll send you a 30-day supply for free if you agree to talk as much or as little as you’d like in our online community.” I signed up and received 30 ready-to-drink bottles. I thought that was a little surprising, given how much it cost to ship them. Sending the powder mix would make more sense, but I guess they wanted to give exposure to more flavors.

If I’m not drinking water during workouts, I’ll usually take Gatorade or Powerade – they’re both the same to me. After workouts/races I’ve also used Endurox, because of its 4:1 carb to protein ratio. My understanding of Accelerade is that, while it also boasts this 4:1 ratio, it’s more geared towards using during workouts/races. With that in mind, I have used it during some of my harder tempo runs lately – with no ill G.I. affects.

All of the favors (Fruit Punch, Mountain Berry, Peach Mango and Citrus Grapefruit) I’ve tried are pretty good. I’d say I like the taste better than Endurox, but not as good as Gatorade or Powerade.

Now I have no idea whether or not the drink, as the label hypes, “significantly extended my exercise endurance, sped muscle recovery and improved rehydration” as compared to other sports drinks. I wish I had that kind of connection with my body, but I don’t. That doesn’t mean I didn’t find it helpful, it just means I think I’d get a better sense of its effectiveness over longer, harder workouts/races. Overall, I do think I’ve had more success with gels than with sports drinks, so I’m interested in trying their gels, which also have protein in them.

The company seems to be spending huge money on advertising lately, which seems to be paying off based on conversations I’ve had with a few running store employees. Their biggest obstacle will be getting their product onto race courses. Seriously, it doesn’t really matter how great your product is, if I can't get it during the race, what good does it do me? My hope it that they can get their foot in the door with Grandma’s Marathon, seeing how they offer Ultima on the course – something that couldn’t even be given away at a local running store.

Quote of the day;

“If we can’t beat this guy on his honeymoon, we never will.” – Cary Weisiger, on Peter Snell’s California tour in 1963

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