Hello everyone! Spring is finally here! I’ve been training over the winter for my first IM at Lake Placid in late July. The base training went well. However, I noticed lately I’ve been feeling a little run down physically and mentally. I eat well, but wondered if at this level of training whether some supplements may be in order. I’d appreciate your thoughts, personal experience, and any links to info. There’s so much stuff out there it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s just another sales article.
None. All useless. You might be overtrained and need some recovery time.
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Do you track heart rate variability or Resting Heart Rate (morning check)? Could be you went too hard during your base phase.
If you did a good job of base training, you won’t lose any measurable fitness by taking a couple of reduced volume weeks to clear your head and get your groove back. Digging out of an overtraining hole can take time though.
As for the supplements, there’s not a lot of worthwhile stuff out there. I take 5000iu of D3, 1000mg of fish oil daily but that’s it. When I am training hard or racing I will also bump up my amino acid intake using MAP (Master Amino Pattern) capsules.
Just eat real food.
Good luck.
None. All useless. You might be overtrained and need some recovery time.
+10000000
Spend your money on good food
I was approached (and paid to post a blog review regardless if it was favorable or not) by X2Performance to try their supplement. Honestly I probably would not have tried it unless they reached out to me.
I’m a PowerBar gel blast user with sports drinks and nut butter on the bike. I can do semi-solids on the bike, but only fluids on the run. I need my calories through sports drinks or some sort of supplement mixed in. I cannot STAND sports gels. Puke. I also use protein powders and some other odds and ends for immediate nutrition after a workout if I can’t get a meal in.
So, I do agree that beyond training and racing, the best recovery nutrition is real food and healthy food. Changed my diet a year ago for the better and while it’s a pain sometimes to go out of the way to get “natural” foods, I have felt 10 times better during training cycles.
But, with X2Performance I tried it out for the LA Marathon leading up to and during. Wish I would have had one at the 12 mile mark of the race. I’m not a scientist, so breaking down the ins and outs of the molecular interactions is beyond me. What I can say is it’s akin to when I tried creatine in college for strength training. It wasn’t a jolt of energy and didn’t allow me to lift more weight, but I could perform workouts with less fatigue by the end. Some say creatine is a bad deal as well, so to each their own. X2 allowed me to keep my current effort for extended periods of time, reducing drift of pace for longer workouts.
They are running a free trial at the moment (http://bit.ly/Q26ONk), just pay for shipping.
Just thought I’d throw it out there.
whatever you eat, add greens and raw food every day.
Save all that money on sup’s and buy something for your race.
Somebody else said just go easy for a bit.
If you decide to still go down the supplement path, there is some evidence that Vitamin D might be useful for folks who have not gotten much sunshine in a while (due to winter in North America, for example).
You could also take a standard multivitamin daily for a week or two, in case you have an unknown deficiency in your diet somewhere. Probably not it, but it won’t hurt you.
As far as I know, for both Vitamin D and multivitamins, whatever brands that are sold at your local grocery store or drug store are fine, and nothing special is needed.
Unless you have a specific medical need, other supplements are even less likely to be helpful, as far as I know.
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I add whey protein to my smoothies, that’s all I use.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I’m just going to add a multi-vitamin in for now and contiinue with the protein shakes post workout.
Take 5 days off= NOTHING = Read, Relax, EAT really good food, & have a Weizenbier each night, sit around then the next 6 days very light active recovery. Walk, stretch, easy mile jog, easy spin 4 miles. Your tank should be ready for the next few wks before IMLP.
4x Finisher
You should keep it basic and get as much as you can through whole foods. What you can’t get through whole foods, supplement it. I’d look into a good fish oil, glutamine and consider training with vitargo s2. I can’t say enough about vitargo- it’s great stuff.
I can recommend ZMA. Hard training can totally sap you of minerals and zink+magnesium are important for overall health, muscle recovery, hormones etc. Start with 1 pill before going to sleep and increase to see if you can take 3 (30mg zinc/300mg magnesium) without dreaming all strange.