Coffee and running

I’m one of those very rare souls who can never stomach anything before a workout or run without the risk of having to purge my stomach midway through. I know most folks would need to have something to line their stomachs and would have a light meal an hour or two before their scheduled workout. The only stuff that I could tolerate is water and liquid creatine. I tried consuming coffee once before my cardio session and was thoroughly “punished” for it – the heavy stomach, bloating, the nausea and feeling of throwing up. Since then I’ve stuck to plain H2O and creatine every morning.

Now, the oddity about this arrangement is that I usually have some cream crackers with peanut butter about 2 hours before the Thursday Adidas Running Community and I’m absolutely fine during the run.

A marked contrast to my early morning experiment and the tea break I had before the Adidas Sundown Marathon Women’s 10K. Golly in the latter, I had a bun and some coffee 3 hours prior to the run and still felt like throwing up 2 km going into the race.

The initial experiment with coffee was because it has been reported that caffeine can boost sports performance. Naturally, increasing fat burn was also another factor. Since anything in the mornings are out, I tried having a cuppa about an hour before Thursday’s runs. The results? So far so good – in the sense that I haven’t vomited in Lake Gardens! On a serious note, I did notice some minute energy boost – maybe it’s just psychological (a.k.a. the placebo effect conundrum).

I’m nursing a headache now and it’s probably from lack of coffee until tea break and the lack of shuteye over the weekend.