A little caffeine before that run? Coffee as a performance enhancer...

There has been a lot of buzz lately about caffeine and how it can affect running performance. This New York Times' article started me wondering about whether it could really have an effect or not. I am a regular coffee drinker - but mornings only and only occasionally before a run or swim workout. I had a noon race the other weekend and decided to do an informal experiment of my own -- I drank an 8oz. mug of coffee about an hour before the race. I should note that I also had my morning cup (about 16oz) of coffee around 7am that morning. It was raining which meant I wasn't really expecting a great race anyway so I figured a cup of coffee wouldn't hurt.

My caffeine enhanced performance was interesting...I ran the fastest pace I've ever run in a race and it was a course with a long hill. BUT, I don't want to attribute that completely to the coffee because I've been training over the last few months to get faster (see this post for my strategy) so I would really like to attribute my faster pace to my training and not the coffee!

If the caffeine boost was the reason I ran faster, there was definitely a down-side to drinking coffee pre-race -- my stomach was a mess. Normally I never feel uncomfortable running and at about mile 2 I couldn't WAIT for the run to be over. It was horrible.

So I think I'll need to avoid coffee on my next short-distance run to see if I can match or beat the pace without caffeine. Hopefully I'll find out that it's training and not caffeine that did the trick!

My advice on using caffeine to help your runs -- use sparingly and at your own risk. The stomach distress is probably not worth the minor improvement....