Hi, Nuun!

You might recall – but if you don’t, I honestly wouldn’t blame you – a post I wrote last month describing a brief non-conversation I had with a cute girl at our local running store. In that post, I mentioned that I was stocking up on Nuun tablets and Sport Beans, which have become staples of my training.

The following week, I received the following e-mail to my blog inbox:

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hey donald,

you’re exactly the kind of athlete we love to support! you’re sporty, passionate about what you do, and, obviously, very smart about managing your hydration effectively. plus, you have just the look we’re after… it looks like you’re going to have a ton of fun this year and we’d love to get you set up with some nuun for the season, so here’s what to do …
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Once I overcame a temporary blindness caused by the lack of capitalization or any other discernible punctuation (I’m kind of a grammar wonk, which reminds me – it’s Spelling Bee season! More on this later.), I realized what I had before me: a sponsorship offer!


Truthfully, it’s a very, VERY limited sponsorship offer – primarily an opportunity to buy discounted products from the Nuun website. They do have a sponsored ultrarunning team, but in order to be on that, you have to actually be, you know … good. Like these two.

(And before we go any further, allow me to put a question to rest: according to the website, the name of the product is pronounced like the time of day when it’s 12 O’clock, and not like the term for a woman who lives in a monastery. No need to thank me – I’m here to help.)

I’m fully aware that the e-mail I received was a complete copy and paste job probably sent to hundreds of other athletes - but occasionally it’s nice just to be noticed, even if it’s in an arbitrary, “throw a handful of darts at the wall and see what sticks” manner. Plus, they called me sporty, passionate, and obviously smart – and I’m very easily flattered sometimes.

Besides - as I explained earlier – I was already buying and using this stuff anyway, so grabbing myself a discount seemed like a no-brainer. I ordered my products from the website - for the record, my favorite flavor is Kona Kola - and also received some water bottles and stickers with the delivery. (I was supposed to get a visor, too – but apparently that got lost in the mail or something.) Ever since then, Nuun has been my primary means of hydration during workouts.

In light of that, I thought I’d offer a very quick primer on its use – as well as a couple of quirky drawbacks.

Nuun is basically a calorie-free electrolyte replacement supplement that is added to plain water. The tablets are effervescent, and dissolve within a minute or so after being dropped in a water bottle.

The zero-calorie thing threw me initially; after all, one of the primary reasons I used sports drinks was to replace calories burned during exercise. Or so I thought.

After using Nuun for several weeks, I’ve realized a couple of things: first, for shorter runs (less than 2 hours), I’m really more concerned about replacing fluids than calories. Whereas dehydration would definitely impact my workout, calorie depletion in this amount of time is somewhat negligible. (Eliminating caloric intake during workouts would theoretically enhance weight loss as well, but since I can’t seem to lay off the cookies or ice cream this month, I’m not really in a position to make that observation yet.)

The second thing I’ve found is that during longer runs, I prefer to take in calories by eating food rather than relying on a sports drink. I kind of always knew this, as I invariably grow sick of the taste of Gatorade by the end of a 6-hour bike ride or 10-hour trail race.

On my long training runs, I’m partial to Clif Bars, Sport Beans, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, and so on. It’s worth noting, though, that my intensity level during these runs is fairly low – obviously, I wouldn’t try eating a sandwich in the middle of a hard bike ride or an 8-mile tempo run. But for what I’m doing now, it works quite well.

At the Diablo race, I carried a tube of Nuun tabs in my waist pack, and popped one into each of my two water bottles at each aid station, then filled the bottles with water. I ate sandwiches, potato chips, and cookies at the stations, and drank Coke at each station during the second half of the race. Even though it was a hot day, and even though I was losing a lot of salt (remember this picture?), I never felt overly dehydrated on the course.

In fact, my biggest error was not bringing enough tabs with me: I only carried one full tube of 12, but didn’t figure that I’d go through two whole water bottles (44 oz total) per hour between aid stations, so I ran out of tabs at the mile 37 aid station. Carrying an additional tube wouldn’t have been a big deal – I just didn’t think of it. Next time I’ll know better.

Now for the drawbacks I’ve found – both of which are logistical in nature, not performance-related.

First, the tablets are formulated to provide perfect electrolyte balance in 16oz of water. Now … what size bottle do you normally carry? It’s probably either a 20/24oz bottle that fits in a bike cage, or a set of 8oz bottles used on Fuel Belt-type holsters. So you have the same problem as when hot dogs are sold in packs of 8, and buns in packs of 10: the math doesn’t work out in any compatible manner.

The solution I’ve employed is to use 20oz bottles filled just below capacity, but I still wonder if I’m making it too diluted for the intended electrolyte balance. As for the Fuel Belt users, I suppose they could buy and use one of those pill-cutter things from the geriatric section of their local pharmacy – but that seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to get a workout in. (Not to mention … is sharing equipment with nursing home residents really how you Ironmen want to roll?)

The other downside I’ve found is that the “fizziness” of the tablets can be an annoyance. When the mixture is bouncing around in my waist pack, it’s somewhat like shaking a can of soda before opening it for a drink. If your bottle has a very firm seal, it’s not that big of an issue – but if there’s any minor air leak in the valve (like on the first bottles I used), pressure inside the bottle will push water out of that opening throughout the entire run.

Overall, though, I have to say that I’m pretty satisfied with using the Nuun tabs recently. I don’t think I’d use them in shorter, more intense workouts or races; during a marathon or Olympic tri, I’d probably just grab whatever drink is offered on the course and blow through the aid station. However, for the ultra training I’m doing, it’s really a great product.

Finally, on a similar note: this whole sponsorship thing started with a blog post I wrote – so if there is anybody reading this who is affiliated with Sport Beans, be on notice that Nuun is totally making you guys look bad. It’s not too late to make amends, though. My mailbox is always open.