Just watched great youtube clip about what it takes for Shane Perkins to be a total 0-50km/h in 5s animal. They flashed up a pic of his daily supplement intake so I grabbed a still out of interest.
I’ve been using L-glutamine as immune support and for enhanced glycogen uptake, beta-alanine for lactic, and caffeine because of every reason under the sun. Any other ultrarunners out there using supplements you think are pretty clever to either support your running or manage the depletory effects? e.g. fatigue, immune stress, tissue breakdown, bone damage etc.
Here’s the full clip too – pretty fascinating stuff. Hungry Beast is generally pretty invested in producing innovative and high-quality mini-doco like this… in between some public affairs pranks that may or may not always work : ) Enjoy, it’s fascinating.
run, eat, sleep, run. 
That is a pretty impressive set of everyday stats that attempts in no small way to demonstrate how freakin powerful these guys are. As for the cross over to ultras, running is a combination of efficiencies, both physiological, mental and emotional, all of which take their toll on the body and how well it performs. Would these supplements benefit a 100miler, I don’t see why not when the purpose is to get to the finish line as fast as possible. I have never bought 100% into the fast twitch/power brigade v the slow twitch/endurance game myself, as I see someone of the likes of Kilian who produces such huge forces and impulse when downhilling that I can only dream of replicating on the squat machine in the gym let alone attempt on the trail yet he is still quick over 100miles . All he is trying to do over 100 miles is run as efficiently as possible.
Yep, I totally agree there’s something to it for distance runners. In Bryon Powell’s book Relentless Forward Progress, Geoff Roes makes a case for not doing speed training. Because his impressive results are built entirely on a base that doesn’t involve speed training it’s an apparently compelling argument. But he also trains on slopes covered in snow with gradients of greater than 16% – which, as NegSplit points out, is speed training. Put that running on the flat and he’s definitely sprinting.
I also agree that distance runners’ idea of speedwork is too narrow. We think that we’re doing speed sessions when we recover between single kms, but even off the back of one sprint session doing 10 x 200m I felt f*cking awful and I also felt it had an almost immediate effect on my longer stuff and the ability to find a higher top gear. Definitely more of that in the future.
Creatine can work badly in the gut, but krealkaline seems quite sound. Same thing but alkalised, if you’re looking along that route.
Any chemists out there want to weigh in on that one?
As you know Roger I live on powders and vitamins. Whatever is in Hammer Recoverite and Protein powders plus 10 odd vitamins is doing some good I feel.