Way better than bicarb? How Country Time Lemonade and Rice Krispies Treats fueled Hobbs Kessler's rise to the top

That's quite an illogical leap you've made there. I think most rational humans would read that as: if we are making a pie chart of athlete routine factors that affect performance, 10-30% of that pie chart is going to be good fueling and nutrition (and 20% might be good sleep, 5% strength and conditioning, etc).

He's not saying that rice krispie treats make his mile time 30% faster.

bicarb might cause stress fractures

Hey, thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I was probably being overly picky about the percentage amounts, when the main idea is he's saying he think good nutrition can go further than a single trick like bicarb.

Great coverage always, Jonathan!

Pretty happy to see country time lemonade getting this kind of recognition. It was literally the only thing I drank growing up, probably until sometime in high school. So refreshing

I don't find this surprising at all. Hobbs Kessler probably needs about 5000 calories per day for optimal performance which is an enormous amount of eating. So it makes sense for him to find ways to make the constant eating less hellish.

200 pound body builders and power lifters shoot for 200g of protein/day. Kessler is going to get 200g of protein quite easily if he is consuming 5000 calories/day. He's easily going to get all of his vitamins and minerals. Totally normal behavior for an elite distance runner.

You can get cheap cherry juice, doesn't matter that you consume the fancy brand. Aldi, Lidl, local grocers like Harris Teeter and Tesco

You can get powdered fruits and vegetables online, too

People with higher intelligence would know that there is no such thing as “the window being that short.” This is the sort of thing simple minds cannot grasp. These “experts” are talking about maximizing recovery by fueling almost immediately after a workout. This may be ideal, but 60 minutes later is fine, even if it is not quite as good as 5 minutes post workout. There is no window that just shuts. It is rather gradations of optimal time frames, but not in the sense of oh damn I blew it, the window is shut. That is nonsense.

Lactate isn't buffered. And there's no evidence that Viren blood doped. And Brendan Foster doesn't believe that he did either.

100 g an hour might work for a 4 hour marathon runner, but not for sub 2. When bikers consume that much it's because they are riding at medium intensity. [

your comment is poorly put together. none the less, provide info on it.

i directly reference conversation with coach of Dixon on the1976 race with Viren. it doesn't come out of the blue. Dixon was pegged to win. I met Viren at the airport in a group, nice shy chap in that environment. at the time he was something of a hero, god. probably still is a fine fellow, where circumstance kind of boxed him in, for blood doping wasn't illegal or even on the radar for testing when he was using. come 80, it was a different story, in 80 Viren could barely make the final running like an old dog, and by a miracle there he was competiting at the bell lap in the final, though he ran out of miracles (reindeer juice).

google each topic and letsrun articles go deep on Viren's reindeer juice, which extended to the Finnish invasion of world beaters, similar to the kenya invasion of today. cross country skying was completely infected and it was a mainstay of the tour de france, which is a well known pioneering infestation of PEDs.

= google search

viren blood doping

horse racing sodium bicarbonate

1976 5000 m olympic games montreal

and try

sodium bicarbonate pubmed, for a real eye opener

regarding Foster

he originally was a great sport admiring Viren for his ability and wins, and was anything but a conspiracy theorist., wasn't very impressed when the very incriminating evidence came out a couple of years after the fact.

if memory serves, and it may not, but i recall Viren himself, in the age of total naivety talking about blood infusions himself, you take the blood bag at altitude, and jack after a heat, to be "fresh"

Here is HRE on an old Letsrun thread commenting on Don Kardong and others. Kardong came in 4th in the 1976 Olympic marathon for the USA. The thread title is "You Can't Outrun a Bad Diet":

In his prime, Don Kardong said his daily diet was Froot Loops for breakfast, two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dessert, and pizza for dinner. Shorter reportedly finished off a big bag of peanut M&Ms every night along with many beers, I had a friend who ran well under 2:20 and basically lived on Mars Bars. He kept several on a table next to his bed and would eat one whenever he woke up at night, had a drawer in his desk at work that was filled with them to eat during the workday, then he'd walk home from work stopping at shops along the way to buy a Mars Bar. He said he did that either until he got home or ran out of money.

Usain Bolt ate McDonald's Chicken McNuggets for every meal at the 2008 Beijing Olymics and set world records in the 100, 200, and 4x100 relay:

nbcsports.com

Why Usain Bolt ate chicken nuggets for every meal at Beijing Olympics

https://www.nbcsports.com/author/olympictalk

Usain Bolt estimated he ate 1,000 McDonald's chicken nuggets during the Beijing Olympics -- or 100 per day over 10 days at the Athletes' Village.

Open link

Why?

Had Chick Fil A frozen lemonade (local branch freebie) post run today, thank you Hobbs for normalizing.

Rice Krispie treats aren’t that bad, and before or after a hard workout they are really good. Lemonade is a little more dangerous, but also fine as long as you are training for a long time.

I consume a lot of sugar, and I’m really lean at 47 years old. I still buy gels for long runs, but it’s really the convenience to carry and ingest while I stop at a water fountain. I don’t kid myself into thinking they are anything more than sugar and caffeine.

The supplement business is huge, and really creatine and bicarb may be the only things that give a slight advantage beyond sugar and caffeine (legally).

Of course you should get vitamins from food and eat well rounded at meals, but this clean eating stuff is overrated (assuming you run a lot). I will say when I take a 2 week break, I gain weight pretty quickly if I don’t cut back on the sugar.

Go do an ultra if you want to see really poor nutrition.

Im not sure who I feel more sorry for. A 45 year old Kessler with a mouth full of fake teath and pre-diabetes or the HS kids thinking consuming copius amounts of highly processed foods is the way to go just because some low educated influencer thinks its ok.

Kessler would be just as fast (I’m not saying faster right now) if he stopped eating like a 14 year old the first time his parents were out of town for the night. He will have a longer career, sleep better, and be physically better off post competitive running if he cleans up his diet/nutrition a little with some whole foods. He can afford it.

Nothing wrong with some fake lemonade and Kellogs crispy treats from time to time, but making it a regular part of your fueling is just moronic and childish.

Conspiracy theories don't cut it, no matter how much you wish they did.