11/20/2024
Is caffeine your friend?
I’m guessing that just about anyone reading this right now uses caffeine on a regular basis, whether it is in the form of coffee, tea, soft drinks, or energy drinks. There are lots of stories of where caffeine was first discovered, most point back thousands of years ago to a farmer in Ethiopia that noticed after moving his goats to a new field, that they were behaving differently, or antsy. After observing for a period of time, he noticed that they were grazing on a certain plant of small berries. Later these berries were dried and called coffee beans…. or so the story goes.
Fast forward to today and Americans consume about 400million cups of coffee/day!! With 325 million americans, that’s more than 1 cup for day for every person! And with about 60% of us drinking coffee, that means close to 2 cups/day for all coffee drinkers.
Many people believe that if caffeine was going to be introduced to the market today, that it would most likely be marketed as a prescription stimulant. Yes, caffeine is that potent! Many of you reading this use or have experimented using caffeine in some way during sporting events. This is usually in the form of caffeinated gels or drinks. Caffeine has been studied pretty extensively, and many would argue that caffeine is the single most beneficial LEGAL Performance Enhancing Drug (PED). Caffeine WAS actually banned by WADA along with pseudo ephedrine for a period of time. Pseudo ephedrine is still banned for in competition use. Because of its presence in SO many commonly used products, WADA removed caffeine from its list of banned substances.
My goal is just to share some knowledge that I have regarding caffeine as a drug substance, as well as personal knowledge acquired as a user and athlete. The effects of caffeine on athletic performance when used properly can be significant. But are you using caffeine products in athletic competition properly? Do you caffeine deplete prior to racing? Do you go to the caffeine too early in races? Do you use too much? Not enough?
First I’d like to talk about dosing and strengths, this is something that many people overlook and fail to understand properly. Most people consider 400mg to be the “safe" daily maximum dose. This is a pretty general number…I can tell you that someone naive to caffeine use would have a much different reaction to 400mg in a day than someone who routinely drinks 4+ cups/day of caffeine. If you are consuming more than 400mg/day on a regular basis, you might have an addiction! Here are some examples of caffeine content of some average beverages. Keep in mind that concentrations and sizes can vary significantly so these examples are not absolute.
8oz cup of home brewed coffee =100mg
20 oz Starbucks (Venti) =475mg
Snapple Lemon tea 16oz =37mg
Mtn Dew (12oz) =54
Coca Cola (12oz) =34
(FDA limites 12oz cola and soft drinks to 71mg)
5-hour energy 2 oz =200mg
Monster 16oz =160mg
Red Bull 8oz =80mg
Caffeinated gel (1x caffeine) =25mg
Caffeinated gel (2x caffeine) =50mg
NoDoz tablet or caplet =200mg
Secondly, I’d like to talk about tolerance, caffeine is a drug and just like many drugs, you can build up a tolerance to caffeine and even become dependent on it. I can tell you that the MORE caffeine you consume on a daily basis the LESS effective caffeine will be as a performance enhancer. In fact, for those 400mg/day caffeine consumers, you are likely getting little to no effect from additional caffeine consumed during athletics. It has essentially become your baseline, i.e. you need to consume it just to perform to your normal standards. Those who rarely consume caffeine, or employ a caffeine depletion strategy prior to racing will receive the biggest advantage from the substance.
Third, How does it work to help me race faster? Well, this could be an entire article on its own, but I’ll just stick to the advantages that are most widely accepted. Caffeine will delay the depletion of glycogen stores (increase time to exhaustion), it enhances your alertness, and it reduces your perception of pain, or at a minimum your ability to cope with pain.
So now we have talked about dosages, and have a high level understanding of tolerance, and how it works….Now what does this mean to me as an athlete? How should I be using it?
Caffeine works best as a performance enhancer if you are not a habitual user, if you regularly consume >200mg/day of caffeine, it is a good idea to try to taper off caffeine in the 7-10 days prior to an event (or your A-Races if you are not really concerned about its effectiveness for B/C races). There are lots of ways to taper, I would suggest you just google “how to caffeine taper” and you can get several options of how to cut back prior to a race.
Caffeine effectiveness is limited! In my experience, in races lasting longer than 1 hour, you are best served by putting off the use of caffeine to later portions of the race. Consuming 200mg of caffeine at the beginning of a 5 hour races would NOT be good. The measurable effects of caffeine while racing in my experience is usually limited to about 1 hour or less. There are technical ways to assess levels in your blood, a drugs “half-life” is a common way to look at drug levels. Half-life is the amount of time it takes for your body to eliminate 1/2 of the drug, the 1/2 life of caffeine is about 5-6 hours. IMO its effectiveness as a PED for the purpose of racing is again what I stated…about 1 hour or less
Caffeine is also a diuretic, as most everyone knows…it makes you p*e! For that reason, even in races that I am NOT doing a caffeine taper for, I do not drink coffee the morning of a race. Since I am leaving my house at least 2 hours prior to the race start, consuming caffeine that far in advance will often times cause an increase need to urinate. Caffeine’s action as a diuretic is mostly stopped once you begin exercising, even more so in hot temperatures, so consuming caffeine near the beginning of a race or during a race will rarely increase your need to p*e.
For running races of 1 hour or less, I will typically consume about 100mg caffeine or less about 15 minutes prior to the race start. Like a 5k for example, i may take a 2x caffeine gel 15 minutes before the start of race, for a 10k or 15k, maybe a 1/2 NoDoz tablet 15 minutes before (100mg). For the half marathon I may on occasion take a small bit of caffeine just prior to race (like a 1x or 25mg gel), this just depends on how I am feeling that AM. Since I likely skipped my coffee…if i am groggy or just not feeling zippy, I’ll take a 25mg gel, if I am pumped up and ready to go, I’ll skip the pre-race caffeine. One of the reasons for this is that we usually don’t struggle during the early parts of the race, holding pace obviously becomes more difficult during the later stages, so I may go to 100mg caffeine (1/2 NoDoz) when I know i have about 40 minutes of racing left. In a full marathon, I will never take caffeine prior to the start. I will usually use 200mg total broken up into 2 doses usually 100mg around mile 16 and 100mg around mile 20-21. I will carry 2-3 NoDoz tablets broken in half (100mg) in my fuel belt, i carry extra since it is very easy to drop these when you are pulling them out of fuel belt.
Triathlons- I’ll usually just take 100mg TOTAL just a few minutes before the swim in a sprint. In 70.3 races, since i’m not drinking coffee in the AM… a 1x caffeinated gel (25mg) a few minutes before the swim, 100mg at the very end of the bike (T2) and another 100mg at mile 7 of the run. Ironman is a little trickier since the race is so long! Similar to a 70.3, just a 25mg gel prior to swim (I’ve skipped coffee and am likely caffeine depleted the entire race week), another 50-75mg when I start to get to mile 100 on bike. This helps me get mentally prepared to run, but I’m not going to the well too early, I’m more likely to use smaller doses more frequently in the run during an Ironman since it is such a mental battle.
These are just aa few examples of how I have used caffeine with some success over the last 10+ years. There are a couple of very important things to point out
Everyone has different tolerances to caffeine, do not assume dosages that I have listed above are the exact dosages you should be using, this will require a little trial and error!
While much of what I have written is based on scientific evidence, a lot of it is just conjecture, this should not be considered a scientific paper!!!
Read labels or google information if you aren’t sure about how much caffeine certain products contain. Also watch out for Taurine and Guarana. These are products that are found in energy drinks (Red Bull Monster etc…) often times this is IN ADDITION to caffeine!!! AND FDA does not require the listing of content or concentrations of these products in energy drinks because they are considered herbal supplements. There are many products that contain ALL of these stimulants, and because they add some Vitamin C and some B Vitamins, they are touted as health drinks or health supplements (Advocare Spark). You may be getting massive stimulant doses of these “herbal supplements” without even knowing! If your vitamin drink makes you feel like superman in the AM, it ain’t from the B-6!!
Feel free to ask me any follow up questions!
Thanks for reading my article! As an endurance sports Coach I think that it is important that you are able to share knowledge with your athletes! It is something that I am constantly trying to do with the athletes that I work with! If you are currently looking to up your game for running or triathlon season, I believe I can help! Feel free to contact me or leave me a message on my FB page
Regards
John LaFreniere
RPh.
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