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Running lost in London

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been in London on a course. The course was really good knowledge-wise but it was a lot of material to get through in four days so I was at saturation point by the end! But what has also been fantastic is actually spending a longer period of time in London. I’ve never stayed longer than a night so this was quite exciting.

As I’m still marathon training I needed to continue my running schedule. How fantastic, I thought, running London!  You see all those “instarunners” run-commuting to and from work looking very cool. London to me in general is very cosmopolitan and exciting. So on Tuesday after my course had finished I walked the ten minutes back to my hotel, kitting myself out in my gear and headed out.

I’d received some great route guidance on Twitter so had a vague plan in my mind, basically going across the bridges and doing a 2.5 mile out and back. Simple. Easy peasy. (I’m sure you can see where this is going).

Just to quickly add a precursor as a reminder before I go on: I’m a country girl, I’m not used to big cities, I don’t go to London that often and, when I do, briefly (and usually under the strict supervision of someone more adult than me) and I’m Anna, the idiot.

My hotel was located in the Whitechapel area near Tower Bridge so I headed there first to cross the Thames. My first annoyance was just as I started going I had to stop for traffic several times before actually making it onto the bridge. This was annoying but I didn’t want to die sooo I couldn’t make any leaps of faith like I can in Hedge End (dodging one car a mile down the road).

Then as I got onto the bridge I was suddenly faced with a sea of people. Tourists and commuters were everywhere and suddenly I was dip-diving through any tiny gaps I could see. I knocked shoulders with several people and my inner-Britishness of being strictly polite at all times cringed in abhorrence. I briefly noticed a 9k race sign and wondered what was going on.

I carried on and eventually got across the bridge and parallel to the water to an equally busy area. It became exhausting having to look ahead to spot spaces and avoid people. I realised I hadn’t listened to any of my podcast. I turned it off so I could concentrate on not colliding with anyone.

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I spotted a race HQ-type area and a sea of blue t-shirt wearing runners. I stopped and asked someone what was going on because I was curious. They told me it was a TeachFirst race (10k Run the River apparently). I pitied their cotton t-shirts as it was so humid that evening and carried on.

Now I’d become a pro at dodging people. I saw so many other runners that I assumed were commuting (backpacks on and a steely look in their eye that they’d seen it all before). I tried nodding and smiling but they had a fixed glare ahead. Even regular runners seemed to ignore me. I think I counted one smile and two stiff nods. Blimey.

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As I got to around 2.5 miles I realised I should think about heading back. I’d gone across a few bridges and knew all I needed to do was head back and find Tower Bridge again, which was super easy because Tower Bridge is a well-known landmark and looks different to the other bridges (dangerous Anna logic).

I had to move off from the safety of the Thames and head into the “wild”. I got myself a bit confused and realised I needed to stick to the safety of the river to keep myself in check of where I was. I quickly checked the GPS map on my phone. Yep, looked about right, just gotta keep heading along the river.

IMG_4754When in doubt, take a selfie

I kept running and running and I couldn’t see the Tower Bridge anywhere in the horizon which was odd because surely I would by now? I checked my phone again and realised I had moved further from the area I knew my hotel was at. What?! I couldn’t get my phone to show me what direction I was pointing and by now, having run almost six miles and no sign of getting back, I started to panic a bit. I asked someone nearby but they were foreign and didn’t know. So I did what I always do in these sorts of situations. I rung my dad. I’d love to say he was surprised but he knows me too well. After he stopped laughing he asked me what was around me and what I could see. Well, the river and Big Ben in the distance and Lambeth Bridge not far from me.

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My dad quickly helped me work out where I needed to go (“go past the London eye”). I now realised I was about four miles from the hotel. Bugger.

I couldn’t follow the river all the way because people had built silly buildings like hospitals right next to it (Winking smile) so I had to veer out again and, my sense of direction being appalling, I got myself mixed up again. I checked my phone and I was running away from the river completely. GARGH!!! I stopped someone and begged them, “please, where’s the river??”.

After getting lost and confused a few more times I ended up on a ridiculously busy area of traffic where cars were going very fast and realised I needed to cross the road. There were no crossing points, limited pavement and no other pedestrians. This was highly stupid I know but I was tired and fed up and legged it across when I could. I then realised there was nowhere for me to go as it wasn’t a pedestrian area. I could see the Thames but I couldn’t get there. Unless I jumped over the wall…which I did. Into a huge stream of blue t-shirt wearing runners. I then had to run against the tide of the race. Much to their and my annoyance – it was not a fun situation for anyone but I just had to do it. The race route wasn’t closed off to the public so technically I was allowed.

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The race then looped back round so I was running alongside runners which made me feel a bit of a fraud as the marshals cheered them on. I was very thirsty by this point as it was so warm and hadn’t anticipated being out for this long (now at 8-9 miles) and wondered if there would be a water station I could beg some water from…but thankfully I spotted a Starbucks and the kind barista gave me some tap water.

I then ran past the lovely scenic Tower of London and got trapped in a garden which didn’t seem to allow me out, but then finally found my way back to familiar territory. At 10.6 miles I was finally back.

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I was tired, hot and bothered. It was entirely my own fault of course but I was just annoyed.

IMG_4762Back at the hotel, not happy and very sweaty

It was now closing in on 8pm. So much for an early night as I still needed to get dinner.

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On the plus side, my splits were fairly consistent and the run itself felt good (albeit very warm and sweaty). I got to see some of the sights and get a few selfies so it wasn’t all bad! It just confirmed my lack of sense of direction and idiocy. Not carrying money on me was probably my biggest mistake as my phone battery got perilously low.

But there we have it, Idiot Anna strikes again! Winking smile

Have you ever ran in London?

Do you ever run-commute?

How do you plan a route in a new-to-you place?

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Savse Smoothies Review

I’m currently in London living this week on a course.

That sounds quite dull but it’s actually very cool – and I get to stay in London rather than do the dreaded commute, which I rarely ever do. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in London longer than one night! So prepare for some hipster-style cold brew iced lattés (don’t think that’s a thing), avocado on toast breakfast, roof-top yoga and street food extravaganza. Ha, I wish.

But back to my post for today. I was kindly sent a selection of Savse Smoothies try out. So here’s what I thought.

I’ll say upfront I’m not actually a smoothie person. I don’t drink them regularly and rarely ever buy them. I just prefer eating fruit. But I tried them all, and my parents got in on the action too so they gave me some of their thoughts as well. And they’re serial orange juice drinkers so this is right up their alley.

What makes these smoothie special? There are quite a lot of smoothies out there. These are a little different to most because they’re cold-pressed, 100% natural and contain no added sugar. I actually had no idea what cold-pressed was… Basically it’s using high pressure processing (HPP) to extract the juice from the fruit and vegetables. It means that it doesn’t need to be pasteurised as the bacteria etc. has been wiped out by the process but the vitamins and goodness remain. This means they can last for 45 days in your fridge (unopened)! I tried quite a few different flavours. I won;t go through each one as i

Super Orange

Contains: mango, celery, apple, lemon, orange, passion fruit and carrot. It has 110 calories per 250ml bottle.. It was one of the sweetest smoothies of the bunch and had a definite underlying taste of mango. It was very tasty!

Super Red

Contains: strawberry, orange, kale, spinach, broccoli and celery. It has 98 calories per 250ml bottle. This was lovely and tangy and not overly sweet. Very refreshing and one of my mum’s favourites.

Super Blue

Contains: Blueberry, kale, beetroot, spinach, blackcurrant, apple strawberry and orange. It has 105calories per 250ml bottle. This was very tangy!

Protein Punch

Contains: coconut, pineapple, lime, vanilla, maca and whey protein. Each 250ml bottle has 175 calories and almost 11g of protein. This really tasted like a non-alcoholic piña colada, it was lovely and creamy. It felt a bit more filling than the others. Definitely one for post gym or to tide you over between meals if you’re in a pinch.

My favourite though was…

Super Purple

Contains: beetroot, apple, lemon, lime, mango, avocado and coconut. Each bottle has 105 calories. It wasn’t very sweet at all (just enough) but had a very earthy flavour due to the beetroot, which I love. I’m a big beetroot fan and I love the beetroot shots you can get to help with endurance so this was right up my alley. My parents weren’t as keen though so perhaps it’s an acquired taste!

The two other flavours I tried were the Purple Carrot and the Super Green. Both contained vegetables, such as carrot (obviously) and broccoli, and though you could kind of taste they were there it worked well in the smoothie. You felt saintly drinking them Winking smile

Overall thoughts? I quite enjoyed them. They were very refreshing on a hot sunny day and I like that there’s a lot of goodness packed into them. I’d still personally prefer eating my fruit and vegetables but that’s probably because I like volume over convenience. So for people who struggle to hit their five a day these would be handy as it’s really not a struggle to drink them at all!

Do you drink smoothies?

What’s your favourite fruit and vegetable?

How do you get your five a day?

**Full Disclaimer: I was sent the smoothie for free in return for my review. All opinions are my own honest ones.**

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19 miles and no more glasses

And just like that, summer seems to be over.

September is here, the sunshine seems to be diminishing each day, and the nights and mornings are drawing in. But it’s quite nice in some ways to snuggle into the duvet at night and feel cosy rather than hot and stuffy!

I’m also grateful for cool days for running as well. Like the weekend before I did my long run on the Saturday and combined it with a parkrun, Netley parkrun this time. I stayed at my parent’s house on Saturday and had a route planned out that would get me to Netley after running 15 miles.

I set off at 6.30am and it was almost cold. I remembered my compression socks this time and wore shorts and just a singlet. I was at a perfect temperature. The first mile took me up to the seafront at Hill Head and the mist over the water tempted me to take a photo as it was so beautiful but in all honesty I couldn’t be bothered to faff about and get my phone out. I took a mental snapshot instead. It was so quiet and peaceful at this time.

There were a few lone dog walkers and some photographers and fisherman setting up near the water (along Hill Head there are usually lots of photographers taking photos of the wildlife and sea; it’s a very picturesque place and it’s right next to the Haven Nature Reserve so there are usually lots of birds and wildlife about).

In my head I had broken the run up into 6 miles (where I’d be running a familiar route – actually my usual long route but going the opposite direction) and then 6-11 miles would be getting to Hedge End (where I live) and then from there getting to the parkrun. So it was nicely broken up. There were a couple of nasty inclines at points (but also a great decline as you can see!) but otherwise the miles ticked away quite quickly.

In my head I really wanted to do a bit more than last week (18.5miles) and when I arrived at Netley I’d done 15 miles so I went round the long way to add on some extra distance. I’d also arrived at 8.40am and didn’t want to stand around for that long before parkrun.

In the end I only managed another 0.7 as I bumped into my friends (and one of my friends from my non-running group who’s been doing parkrun on and off for a bit and we’ve been meaning to meet up to do a parkrun for a bit – another Anna. It was lovely to see her).

The parkrun itself felt tough and I was mentally ticking off every 0.1 to the finish. It did feel a bit sad to be relatively slow compared to my normal times of late but I’m more than happy to take a slower parkrun (24:17) and get the long run done so early than a fast parkrun and still have the long run to do the next day! I’m chuffed I beat last week’s time at Fareham though by about 30 seconds.

I decided as I was running I’d add on a little extra to bump up my total distance to 19 miles. This meant running through the finishing funnel, taking a token and carrying on running up and around the field until I got to 3.3 miles. Woohoo 19!

I then sat down and contemplated life for a bit I was knackered!

I then helped clear down parkrun with the other guys – which was good as it meant I could shake off my legs a little bit. After a coffee, my friend Mike gave me a lift back to my house. I’d checked with him beforehand if it was OK because otherwise I’d have been a bit stranded (and luckily just before I left my parent’s I remembered my keys so I could get in my flat!). Thank you, Mike!

I felt pretty good after the run! Though I distinctly remember being in the shower washing my hair thinking, I could honestly do with a good nap. I didn’t though sadly as I had to rush around getting stuff done before my dad picked me up and took me to my eye laser surgery appointment. Can I just stop for a moment and celebrate the happy circumstance of my weekend travels? So my car was at my parent’s house, I ran to parkrun, I got a lift back to mine. Coincidentally I had an eye appointment that meant I couldn’t drive afterwards due to the drops they’d use in my eyes – so handily my dad took me and brought my back to their house – reuniting my with my car. Ta da! Obviously big thanks to my dad for being my taxi of course.

So yes, laser eye surgery. I had a consultation and after a lengthy eye examine and, well, consultation I decided to go ahead and book my appointment for 31st October. No more glasses and no more contact lenses! Now me wearing glasses might be a shock to some of you because I never have any photos taken with them on and I rarely wear them in public. I hate them and think I look awful in them. But I am very short-sighted and have been since I was about 10, just progressively getting worse. Now my eyes have finally stopped getting worse and I’m fed up of the faff of lenses. I’m fed up of not being able to tell the difference between the shampoo bottle and the conditioner bottle in the shower. Or seeing the clock in the middle of the night.

I still need a firm go-ahead from the surgery, and I’ll have that appointment in a few weeks but (hopefully) I’ll be able to get it done. It takes four minutes to do the surgery but about a day to recover (though no pain, just blurriness). THIS IS AMAZING. Yes it’s a lot of money (just under £3k) but it’s something that really affects my confidence. And it’s just such a faff wearing lenses and then having to take them out in the evening and effectively being all ugly again (in my head). I’m not saying people who wear glasses are unattractive, absolutely not. I just don’t seem to look as good as other people in them. I wish I could wear those bold, in-your-face glasses but I just don’t seem to suit them. People say I look “studious” in my glasses but I don’t want to look studious!!

The worst part about the appointment was that I wasn’t allowed to wear my contacts for the day of the appointment. This meant running 19 miles in my glasses and my running friends seeing me. I felt so self-conscious (and not to mention how annoying it was to run in glasses – steaming up, getting droplets of water on them and not sitting right with my Aftershokz headphones that go over my ears). But if it meant the possibility of never wearing glasses again (OK until I need reading glasses) then I was happy to do it.

Finger’s crossed my next appointment goes well!

Do you wear glasses, or contact lenses?

Is there anything you feel self-conscious about?

Would you get your eyes lasered if you needed to?

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Fitbit Surge Review

Through being connected with Run Reigate (I’m running their half marathon and blogging for them), I’ve been given a Fitbit Surge to help with my training as they’re one of the Run Reigate sponsors. So I thought I’d do a little review of how I’m finding it and what I think.

When the fitness trackers first started coming out I had an original Fitbit. It was fairly basic but it did what I wanted: counted my steps and monitored my sleep. Then when the Garmin Vivofit came out I decided to upgrade as I liked the idea of it also working as a watch (the original Fitbit didn’t have a screen) and I have a Garmin running watch so it seemed to make sense.

Now I have the Fitbit Surge. I was really excited about this because I liked the idea of having a heart rate monitor on all the time. I’m a geek and love all the stats so this really appealed to me. Plus I liked that it looks a lot more like a watch that the Vivofit. A few of my non-running friends often laughed at my Vivofit saying it looked like I was wearing a prison tag device on my wrist *sighs*.

So what are the features of the Surge?

Activity Tracking

It tracks steps, distance, calories burned, floors climbed, active minutes, hourly activity and stationary time. And, using the Fitbit app, you can see cool graphs of your activities over the day and week:

And you can delve into this further to see when those steps were accumulated over the day:

This day had a run in the morning as you can see by the spikes at the beginning of the day.

Tracks Workouts

Unlike the Vivofit, you can track an actual workout. There are different exercise groups you can choose from, such as hiking, weights and spinning.

This was a spinning session I did. It tracked my heart rate and calories burned. Not visible in the screenshot is, if you scroll down, it will tell you how many steps were taken during this workout and activity minutes – basically the “impact on your day”. So when I go to the gym and do weights I can see how many steps I take purely during that workout, which I think is quite interesting. And very handy as well with running as when you run it’s easy to get over 10,000 steps and maybe you want to hit 10,000 despite the run (basically not being an active couch potato ).

You can then see what you’ve been up to during the week in terms of activities (that Thursday run went a bit wrong as I was just getting used to how to use the watch!).

Tracking Runs

The handy part of the Surge is that you can use it as a running watch. It has GPS so you can track a run exactly as you would using a Garmin.

On the watch face you can choose what stats you see. So, average pace, heart rate and distance etc. It vibrates when you hit a mile (though you can change this to whatever increment and metric you like). I wore my Garmin watch with it as I still prefer my actual Garmin to run with but I liked that I could see my HR and the stats were very close between the two watches. If you were looking for a running watch and wanted an activity tracker then this would be ideal for you.

Interestingly even when I didn’t select the running functionality and just used my Garmin (but still wore the Surge) when I synced it later to my phone it had picked up I’d run anyway (though contained no map as the GPS hadn’t been engaged). I love this! It means that I can still partition my steps away from a run but not waste battery on using GPS. Very clever. And yes, it does connect to Strava.

Tracking Sleep

Like other trackers, it monitors your sleep. You don’t have to click anything to say you’re going to sleep, you just sleep.

Like the steps, you can hone into the detail of each night’s sleep and it will give you a graph displaying when you were awake, restless or asleep and for how long.

Notifications

It also picks up messages and incoming calls by gently vibrating and displaying it on the screen. You can read the messages on the screen which I think is quite handy. You can also control your music through your watch. This is amazing for me as when I go for a run and listen to music my phone will invariably be in a bag or armband and be tricky to get out. If a song comes on I don’t fancy it’s such an effort to get the phone out – but using my watch makes things a whole lot easier! The same goes for if I receive a message or a phone call – I can just click to read/answer it there and then.

Alarms

This is what I really missed about my old Fitbit when I moved to the Vivofit. I loved that there was an alarm functionality which was basically a gentle vibration of the device and this is the same for the Surge.

Heart Rate

This was the best part for me: seeing my heart rate through the day. Especially during marathon training, it’s important for me to monitor these things to make sure I can catch any early signs of illness or over-training. I check my heart rate in the morning as soon as I wake up (I always remember Steve Way telling us at the MT Run Camp that he checks his HR all the time and noticed that one morning he woke up and it was 10 beats higher than normal and felt a lot more tired and realised he was over-trained and needed a break before he crashed).

It’s fairly accurate I think as I had my heart rate taken my a proper HR machine thing a few years ago and it’s always been around 50, which I guess is below average (probably why I feel dizzy when I stand up too quickly!).

The App

I love the app. I love the design of it, how easy it is to use and the sheer amount of data you can delve into. The Garmin Connect does have similar data but I just prefer the Fitbit app. It’s more intuitive and interesting.

It also syncs really quickly and easily to it. You can connect with other Fitbit wearers and do different challengers as well to gain different badges. All very cool.

Other functionality I really liked was that the screen is touch screen and it’s very fluid and smooth moving. You can go back and forth through the different bits very easily. I disliked the Vivofit as it involved clicking a physical button and you had to click all the way through to get back to the time… and if you clicked one too many times you had to cycle through them all again.

I also really like how it has a backlight. This means I can tell the time in the middle of the night without looking at my phone (being short-sighted is an issue at bedtime). I hate looking at my phone in the middle of the night as it can sometimes distract me – “ooh a new notification on Facebook or Instagram…”.

But the one thing that I really don’t like though is the battery life. The Vivofit didn’t need charging, whereas the Surge needs to be charged once a week. For someone who’s used to wearing a watch now all the time, it’s hard to remember!

All in all, I really love it. I won’t be going back to my Vivofit!

Do you wear an activity tracker?

How many steps do you do on average in a day?

Do you like to track your workouts?

**I was given the Fitbit Surge for free by Run Reigate in exchange for my participation and blogging in the Reigate Half Marathon. All opinions are my own honest owns.**

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Running goals and things I’m loving

In the aim of continuing some positivity, I’ve got another rantless post

Running: Ahh running, you little sneaky demon, you. My relationship with running is always up and down. I train well, I run as much as I like, maybe I PB (not all the time – in fact, quite rarely!), I get injured, I’m forced to stop running… But I’m currently at a peak. Running (*touch wood*) is going well. Though I’m not running particularly fast (I’d need to do actual training rather than my “whatever pace” miles…), I’m loving it.

It’s amazing how much I’ve changed over the years. When I first started running it was purely to keep fit and healthy, then I joined a running club and wanted to RACE ALL THE RACES. This quickly caused me to get injured and get frustrated with myself and my abilities. After many, many injury cycles (mostly of my own idiocy and training bloopers) I’m now at a place where I rarely RACE a race. Or indeed, do many races. I fell in love with the marathon. Just completing a marathon for me is the dream. PBs are superficial bonuses. I have vague lofty marathon time goals to achieve at some point (realistic to my ability and my willingness to really put some hard graft into training) but really just to tick off different marathons is the goal. And ultimately do all the Marathon Majors (Berlin, Boston, London, Tokyo, Chicago and New York).

And this is very similar to parkrun. I can’t see me ever trying to go sub-20 minutes any time soon. Again this requires some hard training and I’m not ready or inclined to put that effort in for a goal that I frankly don’t care too much about. But 20+ different parkruns? Now that’s a cool goal I can get on board with. My friend Adi also mentioned the ABC of parkruns (running a parkrun for every letter in the alphabet). That sounds like fun too… though I have a way to go (I haven’t even done ‘A’!).

So that turned into a bit of a free-wheeling reflection!

My dad: I’ve often mentioned that my dad’s been trying to lose weight. He’s been occasionally going to parkrun but finds it very tough as he’s quite overweight. 5km is a long way to walk when you haven’t been doing much in the way of exercise and you have a lot of weight to carry around with you, especially the impact on your joints. Though I’m so proud of him for doing it, it’s not the best way for him to lose weight (at the moment).

And in an effort to do more exercise in a way that is less impacting on his joints for the moment (he’ll be going back to parkrun when he’s lost half a stone), he cycled alongside me on my 3.5 mile run on Sunday.

It was fairly windy but he survived. Three and a half miles might sound like absolute peanuts to any regular cyclist, but this was perfect for my dad. He found it tough and it worked him hard, but didn’t ruin him or his joints for the day. I’m so proud of him.

Awesome Supplements: Talking about reviews, I’ve recently been trying out some Awesome Supplements. I bought them myself and wasn’t compensated in any way for this review. I just thought I’d share my experiences.

They’re made by Ben Coomber, who I really respect. The ethos behind the supplements is something I can really get on board with. They argue that supplements will only really make 5-10% difference to your health and training. Really you have to get the foundations nailed down first (nutrition, sleep, training, etc.). All the products are backed by scientific research and the doses within the products are clinically significant doses comparable to those studies.

So what did I get and how did I find them?

Daily Dose

It’s essentially a high strength fish oil and a multivitamin. The reason why this appealed to much to me was because I always take a fish oil supplement anyway and I’ve previously been considering a zinc and magnesium product to help with recovery. But most of the Zinc and Magnesium products out there aren’t the best quality. For example, Zinc Citrate is far better than Zinc Sulphate or Zinc Gluconate, which are cheaper but have less actual zinc in them. The rationale behind each vitamin included and the percentage of it is well thought out and rationalised (Coomber links to Examiner.com).

The downside is that it is expensive (£35 for 360 capsules). For the quantity and quality it has to be. And not only this but you have to take 12 capsules a day. That’s a lot of tablets obviously (though they are small and easy to take). It’s advised to take six in the morning and six in the evening to break it up. But I don’t feel like I’m being duped or taken for a ride. I feel like the product justifies the price. I do eat healthily but I’m a stickler for keeping with the same foods and I feel like this just tops me up with some things I might be missing.

Electrolytes

I’m a big fan of electrolytes in general. I love nuun and High5. I’m not a fan of carb-based drinks that contain electrolytes as they’re often sickly sweet and not refreshing at all. When I was at the Body Type Nutrition Retreat, Ben Coomber (who organised it) brought along a load of his products for us to try out while we were there. I tried out the electrolytes and fell in love. The taste is really good. Like really good.

The ingredients: Electrolyte blend (Potassium sulphate, calcium citrate, di-potassium phosphate, magnesium oxide, sodium chloride), dextrose monohydrate, flavouring, malic acid, citric acid, colouring (turmeric), sucralose.

And it’s 20 calories per serving. And a tub is only £8 for 250g.

Why are electrolytes important? Well, they basically keep you hydrated above and beyond what plain water would do. It allows your muscles to absorb liquid and reduce cramp and hyponatremia (where you lose far too much salt through sweating and your body can’t regular it’s level properly).

During this hot weather I always drink electrolytes before and after running. I sometimes fill my water bottles as well and take them with me. The flavour reminds me of sherbet lemons. It’s very orangey and tangy. It’s about the strength of squash, rather than the very weak flavours of High5 and nuun, which always annoyed me a bit. This is a game changer for me. I love it. I also like that you can dictate the serving size. Have a huge water bottle? Put a bigger scoop of it in. Just fancy a very small drink? Do half a serving. Though obviously it’s not as easy to transport as the electrolyte tabs (in their handy Durex wrappers ). But you could always put it in a container to take with you.

Recovery Spray

I’ve been wanting this for a while. Basically each ml provides 300mg of magnesium and 10mg zinc. Doing intensive exercise depletes our magnesium and zinc levels which are essential for good performance and energy levels. This spray is applied directly to the muscles and reduces the feelings of DOMs (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness).

I get really bad DOMs after squats and hip thrusters after the gym. And this is annoying because I’ll want to run the day after and I feel like I’m hobbling along. I need to go to the gym to keep myself strong for running but it feels horrific…catch 22. I tested this out by spraying one leg and, er, cheek and not the other.

Honestly, the difference was incredible. (Incredibly annoying incidentally because it meant I was a bit unbalanced but it showed how much of a difference it can make). While one leg and bum cheek was still feeling the effects of the day before, the other leg and cheek were far fresher! Not 100% amazing of course, but markedly better than the other. It’s so simple as well. You spray it onto the skin, rub it in a bit, wait three minutes, shower it off. Boom.

Really chuffed with these three products and fully recommend!

What products have you been loving lately?

Do you take any supplements or use electrolytes?

Are you a smoothie fan? What’s your favourite flavour?