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The Post-Race Performance of PreRace
Introduction
Since its release, we’ve been touting the performance benefits of PreRace, but we don’t want to neglect the benefits it brings after you’re off the bike, the neoprene is drying, or the shoes and singlet are in a heap by the door. Specifically, when used as directed (before or during exercise), PreRace helps between sessions by decreasing exercise-induced soreness and inflammation, improving mental well-being, and reducing the systemwide impact of stress and catabolic effects.
NOTE: These effects are achieved when PreRace is taken as directed: Before or during exercise. Do not take an additional dose after exercise.
These benefits obviously impact recovery time, but they also improve other, less tangible aspects of an endurance athlete’s lifestyle – aspects that don’t get much attention in typical supplement marketing but are foundational to the levels we hit in our target races and events.
PreRace isn’t just designed to gear you up for one big outing; rather, it helps you repeat those elevated efforts throughout your most intense training blocks and multi-day target events – elevated performance that’s repeatable and that compounds by helping you expand your limits on key training or race days.
Maintain the frame
The first aspect of PreRace’s long game is, of course, the physical. Its blend of five actives collectively check some key boxes, including supporting immune functions and reducing recovery time. Given that each of PreRace’s actives have shown to increase workload and output, tearing your body down more than a normal workout, this extra support is a crucial effect.
Immune function support is pretty self-explanatory. An endurance athlete’s lifestyle subjects the body to constant cycles of exhaustion and recovery, creating immune vulnerabilities that we’re all too familiar with. Did Not Finish, Did Not Start, Did Not Even Travel to Event – the effects can put paid to months or even years of dedication and prep.
PreRace’s formula has specifically been shown to reduce the impact of upper respiratory tract issues and symptoms following long-distance, intense endurance exercise while also blunting the impact of both infectious and non-infectious factors. PreRace reduces the post-exercise stress on your immune system, limiting the risk of a prologue cough lingering to become something more serious.
The value of reduced recovery time is also obvious at face value, but we’ll touch on it lightly here with some impressive results from our survey of the scientific literature. In clinical studies, the actives in PreRace almost universally demonstrate positive antioxidant effects, reducing the fallout of exercise. Less exercise-induced swelling, less delayed-onset muscle soreness, less loss of strength, and lower markers of tissue damage – PreRace effectively limits the amount of recovery work your body has to do.
Key actives in PreRace have also demonstrated a reduction in muscle catabolism biomarkers after half-marathons and marathons, giving recovery mixes like Ultragen a head start in rebuilding those tissues by limiting the risk your body will continue consuming them after the event. Since the formula also activates fatty acids to burn for fuel during exercise, PreRace’s overall effect is to protect muscle material from being consumed after training while encouraging the consumption of fat during training.
Keep the lights on
If any aspect of endurance training is overlooked by the supplement industry, it’s the mental side. So much stock is put into electrolytes, amino acids, carbs, protein, etc., while – in the final selection at elite levels of competition – the podium order is usually decided less by who has the best legs and more by who’s got the mental edge to initiate the winning move. It’s mindgames. It’s the look. It’s the mental space we all hope to have when the race blows apart.
But there’s another aspect to mental toughness, one that takes place outside of competition and can impact everything from the quality of training sessions to quality of life. We’ve all experienced cognitive lethargy, brain fog, and irritability following a grueling training session or race. Since most of us aren’t pros, but are people with responsibilities and commitments beyond the segments, PRs, and heart rate zones, balancing the mental strain of dedicated endurance training is crucial.
To address this, PreRace includes a curated blend of nootropics, which are compounds and ingredients that produce positive cognitive effects that go beyond competition. The nootropics also produce performance benefits, which we’ll continue to discuss at length in future blog installments, but here, we’ll focus on how they support general daily mood, blunt post-exercise mental fatigue, and dispel brain fog when you’re trying to get on with your day.
The cumulative result of these effects: less irritability after a session (it happens to the best of us), less procrastination and more motivation before the next session, and less muddy cognition while trying to navigate life, work, domestic duties, and everything else that interrupts training. The improvement to mood and overall well-being also promotes better sleep, our body’s best recovery tool.
Conclusion
Life doesn’t begin when you strap on a heart monitor and end when you upload your training data. While PreRace’s suite of actives do have clinically supported effects on performance, they’ve also demonstrated enhancements to recovery, mood, and mental performance after training – an effect that’s all the more important considering that, by supercharging your efforts, PreRace helps you dig even deeper, so you’ll be even more spent than usual.
