Ever wondered if you should drink coffee before a run? or what are the benefits of having coffee before a run? Well look no further as we have listed off 5 benefits of drinking coffee before a run!
5 benefits of drinking coffee before a run
1. Improved state of mind & mental alertness.
Coffee is known to boost your mental alertness, changes your mood and will motivate you to go for a run. This really helps you get the motivation you need before your morning run, or if you are an evening runner who needs that mental push to go for a run after a long day at work.
Did you know that caffeine reduces the runners perception of effort, which would make your run feel easier. Not only that, caffeine increases the concentration of endorphins in the brain. Those are the exact same endorphins that produce a runners high.
2. Increases the ability of burning fat while running.
Researchers agree that caffeine increases the amount of fatty acids in the blood stream. This increases the speed at which your body can convert fat to usable energy. This enhances your body’s use of fat as a fuel.
3. Increases your speed in running long distances.
Having coffee before a run can enhance reaction time, durability and neuromuscular coordination (Which means how fast your brain tells your muscles to contract and relax).
This means you can run faster with less effort because your leg muscles will move faster and more efficiently.
4. Heat tolerance running.
Recent studies show that the effect of consuming a caffeinated drink (coffee) in a warm environment before a run can make you push yourself more than water or a traditional sports beverage.
If you are running this summer in the summer heat, this will help you make it through those tough hot runs.
5. Helps you run a faster 5km.
Throughout this blog post we have focused on how drinking coffee before a run can potentially improve various aspects of your running performance. It is also important to examine if these improvements can bring results on race day.
A group of researchers examined if these improvements actually brought results on race day and this is what they have found:
Researchers found that runners who drank coffee before their 5k run improved by 1 to 1.1% (This means a 20 minute 5k runner would run 10-13 seconds faster just from having a caffeine intake).
While this is not a big improvement, it does show that the science does translate to real life running situations.
