Beetroot juice for Ultra marathons. A test.

If you're even a little bit interested in sports nutrition, no doubt you will have heard about one of the latest crazes; beetroot juice.

According to scientists at Exerter University, it can increase your time to exhaustion by 16%.

Now, 16% may not seem like much to a 10k runner, but to someone who is running a 50 mile ultra in 12 hours, that 16% would knock nearly 2 hours off it!

Now I am sceptical to make such broad sweeping mathematical statements.  I very much doubt that 16% will scale up perfectly no matter what the distance, and besides, there are plenty more factors in ultras as to why people go slow, cramp, sickness, muscle fatigue etc, but even if there were an 8% improvement, or a 5% improvement, that would still be significant in an ultra.


In the study, the scientists at Exeter gave their test subjects 500ml of beetroot juice per day and told them to sip it throughout the day.  500ml is a heck of a lot of beetroot juice, and the only brand they sell in the supermarkets costs £2.99 for 1000ml.  That is a lot of beetroot juice and money per week!

I am going to be a little more money savvy with my test.  I decided I would buy 1000ml per week, over 7 days.  So thats 1000/7 = which is roughly 140ml.  The scientists told the subjects to sip throughout the day.  Im not willing to carry it with me everywhere, and besides, it tastes horrible, so I will take a quick shot of 70ml in the morning, and 70ml in the afternoon.

I started this on Monday 23rd, and I have a 10k coming up on Sunday, so I'll report back to tell how it goes.

The true test will be in an ultra.

I may have to just go out on the local trails for a few hours and see how I feel.

Not quite a scientific test but it will definitely be an honest one!