My creatine experiment

Frightened Inmate #2

I just started taking creatine. Mostly to gain strength for the PURR contest. I've never taken it before, so it's all new to me.

You're supposed to take a loading dose (20g/day for 5 days) before you go on to regular maintenance doses (5g/day).

I'm on my 3rd day of the loading dose and I've only been doing 15g/day.

I weighed myself at the Y last night and I weighed in @ 174 lbs. That's 4 lbs. heavier than my normal weight range of 165-170 lbs. Probably all water weight. One of the side effects of the supplement is water weight gain. Not usually a good thing for endurance athletes.

So today I thought I'd skip my regular 7 mi. easy run and bust out a short and quick one just to see how fit I was. Managed a 6:51 pace for the distance. It's been a long time since I've hit the sub 7 mark on the asphalt, but I usually don't run in the mornings or for short distances either. Creatine? dunno

Hard to say, could be a number of things.

This afternoon (Monday), I went for a bike ride. Did pretty much the same ride on Saturday at the same time of day and with the same weather conditions and managed a 18.7 MPH pace for 38 miles (on Saturday).

On today's ride, I felt stronger on the bike. At maybe the 10 mi. point, I noticed that I was avg. 19.2 MPH. That's quite a bit faster than I usually go at that point in the ride. I added a little bit to today's (Monday), but it was pretty much the same route as Saturday, but I managed to finish out with 42 miles @ 19.3 MPH avg.

The only differences between Saturday and Monday's rides...
1) Creatine. I started on Saturday.
2) I really kicked it for the last few miles on Monday's ride. Managed to add .2 MPH to my avg. speed.
3) doughnuts. I don't normally do doughnuts, but I think I've had 8 or 9 over the past two days.
4) Weight. I weigh 4 more pounds than I did on Saturday.
5) Saturday was ride/run brick. Monday was early run and bike later in the day.

So, was it the creatine that gave me the extra edge?

Excelent

Not sure if it was the creatine, sounds like it could be helping though.
Good luck with it

Member

hmmm...could be the doughnuts..mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!

only over time will you be able to really tell if there is a direct correlation between the creatine and improved performance. Never have taken creatine myself.

Gone Fishin

doughnuts.. definitely

Member

I ate 2 donuts monday before working out and running. They are definately muscle builders. Wink

Keith takes creatine sometimes, but I mostly think its a waste. dunno

crazy cat lady

I vote donuts too. Wink

No I have no clue except for some stuff I read and that my A&P1 teacher said about the body not being able to use creatine supplements and that they are a waste? He thinks that the body has to produce it itself? dunno

The Pinball

um, whatever it is, it seems to be working just fine. Shocked

kickin' butt aren't ya?

Frightened Inmate #2

UPDATE :: I was able to hit 19.2 MPH for a 35 mi. route today. That's a .5 MPH increase over what I was normally doing on that route pre creatine.

your favorite weapon

PH - it's my understanding that creatine will help you bulk up, but i haven't heard many good things about it actually making you stronger.

i mean it helps, but the muscles aren't as good as if it was done naturally.

at least that's what i've gathered from different people.

some people swear by it too. good job on the gains though! it could be mental too Wink

-blue

Frightened Inmate #2

Member

Just thought I'd add what I know about creatine. I've got a ton of it somewhere, but haven't used it in awhile.

Creatine supposedly makes your muscles develop and recover faster, but it also makes the muscles retain some water and bulk up a little. Creatine is a salt, and most of it just gets filtered right back out by your kidneys. You should be extra careful that you get enough water. Most people agree that you should not exceed 20g creatine for 5 days during loading. After 5 days, 15g of the 20g is going right back into your urine, so there's no point (and this is unnecessary work for your kidneys). When you're taking 20g during the loading phase, you should take 5g doses 3 hours apart, otherwise, again you'll just see most of it filtered right back out by your kidneys within a few hours. What you're trying to do is saturate the muscle. After loading, take the 5g maintenance dose right after (or before) your workout. Note that there are reputable sources who call 5g overkill, and there's probably no need to take more than 2g creatine as a maintenance dose. This is mostly done to sell more creatine, but it's gotten cheap enough that nobody's going bankrupt taking 5g a day, and it's still a relatively low amount.

Most people also recommend a wash-out phase lasting several weeks. After being on creatine for 8-12 weeks, you should go off of it for 4 weeks. It just seems like a good idea, but the theory behind it is that if you saturate your body with creatine constantly, it will stop producing it on its own. This has been mostly disproven, as there have been 5-year tests where subjects (although taking less than 5g of creatine) went back to synthesizing their own creatine afterwards. Most large-scale tests have stopped after 8-12 weeks, so there are still people who say that we just don't know about the negative side-effects that could be associated with constant doses of 5g of creatine. If you have that wash-out phase, most people are confident to recommend creatine as perfectly safe. If you were going to stay on creatine constantly, you would probably need to go through another loading phase about every 8 weeks anyway, because the amount of creatine in your muscles seems to start tapering off some after 4-8 weeks of maintenance.

Most studies I've seen focus on the ability of creatine to boost fast-twitch performance and bulk up your muscles a little (though water retention of the muscle and through muscle actually gained). This is obviously good for sprinters and bodybuilders, but it seems like it could actually be detrimental to distance runners.

To quote one source:
Not every athlete works out for only 10 seconds. Creatine has not been shown to improve long term aerobic exercise (Kramer and Volek, 1998). Almost any study that you read will concur. This means that creatine supplementation will work for athletes who's sport is based upon short intermittent bursts of activity, such as body building, football, golf, and baseball. Creatine supplementation may even be beneficial for sprinters in running events. For those athletes that participate in largely aerobic activities, such as swimming, long distance running, and cycling, creatine is of little benefit.

That said, creatine seems to help training of all kinds and speed recovery. It increases the ATP stores in your muscles, which in turn decreases lactate levels. This is good for everybody, but only becomes a major issue during bursts of intense activity.

Still, creatine isn't only found in fast-twitch muscles. Slow-twitch muscles use creatine, too, just not as much. Most people who use creatine are specifically trying to bulk up, but if you use it along with your regular training, I really can't see a down-side to it. If you're not training to bulk up, you won't. If you schedule your training so that your big events are during wash-out phases, then you can't argue that a little extra water weight is slowing you down, either.

Most web sites that talk about creatine are just trying to sell it. The closest thing to non-biased info I've seen on the difference between creatines is:

There are three primary manufacturing sources of creatine powder: China, Germany, and the United States. Companies buy creatine from one of these sources, mix it with other ingredients, package it, and make it into a product. To avoid impurities, I strongly recommend buying only U.S. or German creatine because of their high quality. It will cost you more, but it is well worth it.

At the very least, creatine helps with interval workouts and recovery.

These are the most objective discussions I could find about creatine and endurance:
http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0438.htm
http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/creatine.html
http://www.active.com/story.cfm?story_id=8161
http://www.active.com/story.cfm?story_id=2088&sidebar=33

Another good quote:
As expected, the studies which looked at endurance exercise failed to show any benefit of creatine compared to placebo. In fact one study, which measured running performance over a 6 km course, found slower times in the creatine supplemented group (8). This effect is possibly related to the weight gain (mean 1 kg ) associated with creatine use. Since the creatine-ATP system is not used by endurance athletes, the weight gain is "dead weight" -- it adds nothing to moving the athlete forward. Instead, the extra weight makes the athlete less efficient.

This is a very interesting study that I don't quite understand, but it mentions a "decrease in endurance performance evident following creatine supplementation programs." I'm not sure what they're getting at here, because they point to increased performance when on creatine. So, are they saying you lose that benefit when going off creatine, or are they saying you're worse off than when you started?

http://www.ausport.gov.au/fulltext/2001/acsms/papers/WATS.pdf

Creatine is definitely not much of a benefit to distance runners, but you can argue that it is some benefit, and I personally think it's a pretty good idea since I like to lift and run.

Member

Hey PH... How did your creatine experiment end up? I'm curious...

I'm thinking about trying the stuff in early 2004.

My creatine experiment

LIFEFORM SOCIAL COMMUNITY NETWORK