New Finds

I'm taking a mid-season break, and I took six days off from any type of training/exercise, but it has felt like 3 weeks. I'm not going to do any formal training until the end of May, and until then, I will focus on weight training and building muscle mass. I will swim/bike/run as exercise. Since there isn't much to blog on the training front, I thought I would finally revisit two new finds that has helped my racing this season. I should also preface my review of the following two products, and say that I am not sponsored by either of these products.

First up is Extreme Endurance. Charisa gave me these tablets to try with the instruction not to follow the instructions on the bottle. Instead, a couple of days before a race, I should start using the tablets. My regimen is two days out from the race, I pop 3 tablets every morning, and then I take 3 tablets race morning. That's it. These tablets do exactly what they claim, they get rid of the burning feeling in your legs during hard efforts. I've read lots of race reports where the race didn't go so well, and a lot of these bad races are a result of feeling dead and/or burning legs. Extreme Endurance basically reduces your chances of getting the dead/burning leg feeling, thus increasing your chances of performing and racing well. It still hurts when you race like racing should, but the hurt is from pushing yourself rather than having legs that won't cooperate. If you want some more science behind the explanation, check out Roger Thompson's blog post on this stuff.

Next is Drip Drop. Drip Drop was formulated by a physician to combat dehydration in third world countries. It is medical-grade hydration and thus, easily absorbed by the body, and tolerable by the gut. I know better than to try something new race day, but I thought it was worth the risk to try Drip Drop at Wildflower. I'm so glad I took the risk because not only did I seem to stay more hydrated than my competitors, I didn't suffer gut issues like I have in the past racing in hot conditions. I only had enough Drip Drop to fill one water bottle, but I think having two bottles would have been ideal at Wildflower.

Give both of these a try during your training and tell me what you think.