Boy do I feel stupid. After all these years of filling my Camelbak with Cranberry flavour Taut, it turns out that something even better was available down at the end of the garden.
While I’m usually fairly sceptical about miracle cures, magic bullets and superfoods, it seems that the humble beetroot does not one but two jobs for all of us runners.
As you can read on no less a source than the BBC website, beetroot juice appears to not only reduce blood pressure, but also to enhance the performance of endurance athletes by up to 16%.
And so, while there are many pairs of running shoes piling up in my office waiting to be reviewed; my latest pseudo-scientific study is going to involve a large jar of home-made beetroot juice, a blood pressure monitor and my new RunKeeper application, which seems to be the one iPhone app for runners that does what it says on the tin.
I’ll be tracking my blood pressure and running performance over the next fortnight or so, while at the same time ingesting the recommended 500ml a day of Beetroot juice.
I’ve already been drinking the stuff for a few days, and there’s been no sign of any improvement yet, unless you count being able to wee in a delicate shade of pink as one of nature’s miracles.
But hey, it’s early days. And what’s the worst that could happen…
How did you go about making up the 500ml of homemade beetroot juice; i.e. quantities of beetroot, water etc?
Cheers
JIm
Hi Jim,
no idea I’m afraid. I just throw a couple of cooked beets in the blender with half a cup of water and ingest the results. It’s not ideal, but I really can’t afford to drink shop-bought juice.
Best, TJBFS