Eleven Miler And Dietary Nitrate Supplementation

Eleven Miler and Dietary Nitrate Supplementation

Ran a nice eleven miler this morning. Creekside to Leland to Zoom to Chainsaw to Creekside. It's great to have all of these trails back open, and it really adds some nice variety and switches up the hills. It took me 1:21:17 today to crank out the eleven miles (~1,400' gain). Felt pretty good, but a bit slow/heavy from yesterday's effort.

An interesting study has been published looking at the impact of dietary nitrate supplementation via beetroot juice on exercising muscle vascular control. As noted in a previous study, consumption of beetroot juice had a significant beneficial impact on running velocity, as well as in perceived exertion. In this study, the authors were interested in finding out if nitrate supplementation had a similar beneficial impact on exercising muscle vascular control. Based on their results, nitrate supplementation improves vascular control and elevates skeletal muscle O2 delivery during exercise, predominantly in fast-twitch type II muscles. So as with the previous study, nitrate supplementation (via beetroot juice) can not only help running velocity, but also oxygen delivery and vascular control to your muscles. More scientific evidence supporting the idea that athletes need to consume lots of veggies (and not just carbs and proteins) in order to ensure that they are getting enough natural nitrates in their diet.