PureSport

I am not the most nutritionally sound person. I don't come close to my daily requirements for vegetables or fruit, I almost never get the recommended daily 64 ounces of fluid and I consume too much trans fats. Although I can't quantify its affects, it is obviously having a detrimental impact on my athletic performance. It takes much less effort to eat well than it does to work out every day but I seem to have a mental or tastebud block against doing it. I know if I want to stretch my endurance and get faster and reach level three in all the Petraneks in 2009, I can't keep futiley tapping against this block.

Step one in my nutritional makeover could be PureSport. A former client who now works there recommended that I give it a try. It has the same premise as most of the other sports drink like Acclerade or Kona Endurance (KE that is an example of a company that doesn't know how to market - 20 tweets a day saying we rock is not marketing and offering to sponsor athletes by sending them $200 off coupon if they spend $800 is lame) - there are pre-workout and post-workout drinks that contan lots of electrolytes and protein to help you perform and recover from hard workouts. The difference for me in PureSport is that I know someone who works there, they are a new company without slick marketing (although they have some huge sponsored athletes including Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin and several other Olympians) and the way you take it is a challenge in and of itself.

Before a workout, you chug 16 ounces of the liquid and after you do the same for a slightly different drink formula. For me, drinking 32 ounces of anything in such a short time is a challenge, let alone right before and after an 8 mile run. Completing the drinking is almost as much of an accomplishment as the workout.

I have tried PureSport once, two days ago when I ran my usual 8 miles. I am coming off a bad cold so I ran pretty slow for me (7.57 pace) and felt pretty tired during the run. Running with the extra 16 ounces didn't really affect me although I did feel like I had a little more energy than I should have had given my cold. The most noticeable impact was how I felt after the run and after drinking the recovery drink. I felt like I hadn't run at all. I do recover pretty quickly from workouts, but this time I felt great, better than I had since I first got my cold five days prior. I don't tend to push my workouts so I don't usually get sore so I can't claim that PureSport eliminated any of my usual soreness, but maybe if I get balls and start pushing it more I will be able to make that observation.

I am doing the Kaiser Half Marathon on Sunday so that will be an even better test for PureSport, and maybe then I can adopt PureSport t-shirts and pants as my new outfit rather than gray t-shirts and jeans.

Addendum
I might be getting hooked. I ran 6 miles this morning and figured I didn't need to drink anything pre-run. My run was horrible compared to the 8 miles on Thursday. It's definitely residual affects of the cold but I highly suspect the PureSport was also a factor. I felt as good the first 2-3 miles as I did on Thursday but then got really tired coming back. Let's just say I gulped down the recovery drink.