If your blood test shows normal levels of vitamin B group and iron you can save your money

Nice advert. Bro. Dude, seriously?

Huh?

If it actually worked, it would be banned.

Yes in peak periods grind it up into a powder and dab it onto your gums every second day during an iron man build

Just buy the real stuff like every other triathlete.

haha..

There is a "legit" EPO boosting supplement just plenty expensive. xD

I don't put a ton of weight on that. They tested a grand total of 9 riders, including recreational.

Interesting, but I wouldn't chalk that one up to "settled" yet.

It was also a metric shit-ton of ketones. The cost would bankrupt anyone, even if you could stomach drinking that much of it, which seems tough.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

TLDR; EPO Boost is basically echinacea. They base their claims on an older study. That study (that as memory serves me correctly, was borderline in terms of methodology) indicated that taking echinacea may increase hematocrit slightly. A more recent and sound study indicated that in normal dosage amounts, there was no effect. There was some suggestion that at extreme supplementation amounts, there may be a chance for an increase. These levels were approximately 4000-8000mg.

I wrote a short paper on it during my grad program (it was more on the ethics of advertising, but I did read the studies), and the takeaway was - probably doesn't do anything, if you want to experiment then buy super high dosage echinacea.

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MS: Exercise Science
Your speed matters a lot, sometimes you need to be very fast, where sometimes you need to breakdown your speed.

Thanks, helps!

Exogenous keytones as recovery after a hard workout is supposed to increase EPO.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37062892/


Impossible to make comparisons, but after St George 70.3 this year, I didn't train super consistently, but I still raced some local races and a 70.3.

Going into Lahti I trained moderately for 4 weeks (8-12hrs a week) and tried ketones, about half the time during exercise a day half the time after. Not every session, but 3x a week.

Anyway, my point is, I didn't train any more than usual and didn't do much difference.

My StG time without transitions was 5:02, my Lahti time without transitions was 4:35.

I view the St G swim as faster (2 turns) the bike as a little slower and the run about equal.

Over the last 3 years my training, nutrition and race load has been similarly consistent (if anything I'm doing less now accroding to Stravas fitness rank, and I wasnt ever doing so much to be over trained) and I've never showed this much improvement. It's certainly the overall effect of cumulative fitness at play but I can't help but wonder if I should buy more of these keytone snake oil as well...

Maybe Lahti is just way faster course?

n=1. The amount of differences in an otherwise 'same' training block are huge. St George is in the spring, Lahti is in the fall, so you've likely trained in the heat for Lahti. That has a measurable effect on fitness, especially if (like you said) you kept training the same. 8-12h/w when it's 50deg is less of a training load than when it's 100deg. It's also reasonable to think that your performance after 3 years of training is markedly better than after 2 years. What was the weather like on each day? Barometric pressure, humidity, sunshine, wind, all of this stuff can make a race tens of minutes faster or slower.

Maybe the ketones do work a little bit. They're not taking you from 5:00 to 4:30 though. With how expensive they are there has to be lower hanging fruit to optimize. Realistically you could do 100% of your run training in Vaporfly's for the same cost and be able to run more miles at less impact. Or buy a single wind tunnel session. Or a new skinsuit for every race.

Ya, n=1. Every post on this forum is that. Incidentally, I linked to a not n=1 study... I qualified and discounted the "snake oil" as much as possible. New vaporfly 3s for both races incidentally...

Keytones either work to increase EPO when used as recovery or they are used for cover by epo dopers on the Peloton.

The data does support something as linked above and elsewhere.

The idea of a wind tunnel test doing good is interesting, but I view that with as much suspicion as this snake keytones oil I tried. I'd consider giving it a try if one was near by. Incidentally, hvmn was on sale at the Feed at the same time as I used a very generous coupon so the cost wasn't significantly more than I'd pay for nutrition, so I figured why not try.

Back to wind tunnel, you have to be able to hold the position the tunnel gives you and you have to be convinced that bouncing around on the road with your body moving etc that all things will be equal. I'm sure more people can highlight issues there. But I'm not saying it's useless but it's one of those "you really never know variables". I felt Ben Kanutes multiple videos on wind tunnels and most of his subsequent results convinced me to put them in the who knows category.

That said, I did use the hydration bladder. I'd use that if it made no difference to my cda as I like drinking from it.

4000-8000mg per day? That’s ALOT!!!!