Yesterday, I did a 45 mile bike ride (17mph avg.) and a 8K run (6mph pace) yesterday. I was complaining about heavy lactic acid build up and muscle fatigue so my brother pushed some SportLegs my way again. While it didn’t help for the ride, they did kick in about 30 minutes into my (very) painful run. The last 30 minutes was MUCH better.

This morning, Scott and I went out for a follow-up run of about 6 miles. Scott pushed the SportLegs on me this time BEFORE the run. My guess is that he didn’t want to hear me bitch about my legs and stop every 5 minutes like I did yesterday.

THEY WORK. I’m a believer. I felt ZERO leg pain this morning during the run. Not only would my legs normally have hurt like hell on this run by itself, but after yesterday’s workout, I don’t think I could have done an 10K.

Go buy them now.

My brother, Matt, (Palm Beach Bike Tours Cyclists) passed me a Ziplock(r) bag yesterday with some of these in it.

It had been three weeks since I had done any type of physical activity, because of a busy work schedule and a vacation mixed in there, too. So, I was surprised that I managed to get my 5K distance done two minutes faster that normal and still felt really good. When the clock ticked past 45 minutes, I was 4.5 miles into my run – a solid 10 minute mile pace. About this time, my legs felt a little fatigued, but I ran through it and started to feel much better with about 10 minutes to go to hit my goal of six miles.

I’m pretty sure that’s when the SportLegs kicked in. I was actually able to raise the pace from 6 mph to 7 mph. I think my legs could have taken more, but my heart rate was getting very close to my max. About 5 minutes before the 60 minute mark, my stomach started to feel ’strange’.

I slowed the treadmill down to about 6.5 mph and had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment. I decided that I would power through it and get to my goal of a sub-60 minute 6-miler. I finished, did a quick cool down, practically ran to my car where I had a pretty good stomach cramp. Needless to say that I rushed home as quickly as possible. I’m glad that I was on the treadmill at my local gym and not running in the middle of nowhere.

So…. Can I go further with SportLegs with less pain and a quicker recovery?

While my legs felt GREAT comparatively to what they normally feel like for that distance at that pace, my stomach wouldn’t have let me go any further. After the ride, my legs feel very little pain. I think that I’ll try it again with two pills instead of three. At this point, the jury is out on SportLegs.