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Follow the whole nine yards here (a 95 part series) :- Half Marathon Blog

Why I am running:- West Coast Eisteddfod Bryn Seion Church

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There have been occasions in the past when, faced with hours of blogging/coding and other webby stuff, I have resorted to a 5 or 6 hour energy shot. I know the debate rages as to whether these products will do any more than a strong cup of coffee in terms of promoting alertness but they seem to work for me. In fact some times too well. I darent take them later in the evening for fear of not being able to sleep.

I'm wondering if these drinks would be useful for training purposes. Of course the idea is to build one's natural stamina and endurance rather than relying on a 'shot in the arm' from the local 7-11. On the other hand runners occasionally hit a plateau in training and maybe one of these things would help to further progress. At the moment I seem to be comfortable running for about 15 mins but I'm not having much luck persuading my weary old carcass to persevere for any longer than that.

I suppose I am going to be told that there is no healthy potion or magical elixir that will help in the long term but still, it probably does no harm to dabble with temporary expedients once in a while. I'll put it to the test one of these days and report the result in a future post.

Meanwhile here is a list of the active ingredients ( together with links ) from the Wikipedia :-

The ingredients of the drink are, in order of listing, taurine , glucuronolactone , malic acid , N-Acetyl L -tyrosine , L -phenylalanine , caffeine , and citicoline . ^{[ 5 ]} The maker claims the product "contains caffeine comparable to a cup of the leading premium coffee."

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Certainly doesnt seem like there is anything particularly or potentially harmful in that lot. Or am I missing something?

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