Beta Alanine For Runners – The
Science Behind This Unknown Protein
Watch, listen and read the full episode here
[00:00:00] In this episode, you’re going to find out about the following three things.
One, beta alanine isn’t a quick fix. It’s a slow burn solution for better endurance.
Number two, I used to hate fart lick workouts. They made me feel out of control, but
I discovered a quick fix. And number three, did you know the wrong weather app
can ruin your long runs?
[00:00:18] Well, I’m going to answer that in a second. Yes, we’re going deep into the
woods yet again on things that I’m using to help me get 1 percent better each day,
because that’s what I’m all about. That’s what we’re all about here at the 1 percent
Better Runner. Who am I? Well, I’m Darren D. Leg Runs, certified running and
nutrition coach, sub three hour marathoner, 10 hour Ironman finisher.
[00:00:36] And since 2012, I’ve been coaching other self coach runners, researching
and experimenting on how to better myself 1 percent each day. And unlike other
running brands, we don’t do the quick fixes. No, no, no. Instead, the 1 percent
Better Runner transforms you through step by step daily habit improvements, all so
that you, yes, you runner can live a doper run life.
[00:00:58] Before we start full transparency, I was not paid to talk about any of these
products, but Or brands, and I am just all about that 1 percent improvement that I
uncover. And I want to pass all those onto you because they’re like little tokens or
pebbles, like penguins giving you pebbles. It’s a thing. It’s a thing.
[00:01:12] Look it up. Let’s get into it. All right. Nutrition that I’m digging beta alanine
supplement, an easy way to get a 1 percent gain on race day and in training. It’s a
weird one because I swore it off. Taking it for two days, only two days last year and
getting crazy itching inside my body, aka parathesia, parathethesia.
[00:01:32] I’ll touch on how I sorted that out shortly. Beta alanine also is not a race
day hack like caffeine or beetroot juice extract that you take and immediately gives
you a one, two, three percent. performance boost. It’s a slow burn, like six to eight
weeks of slowly saturating in your body, specifically your muscles.
[00:01:50] I’ve been taking it for four weeks now, and I’m seeing the start of some
gains either that, or I’m riding the fitness boost wave from a half marathon three
weeks ago. I don’t know. What does it do? Beta alanine is an amino acid that helps
buffer acid in your muscles, which can delay fatigue during high intensity exercise.
[00:02:07] So that is the acid that is produced by too much lactate, accumulating
the hydrogen ions, quick science E thing. The lactate is not lactate acid that sits in
your muscles. It does what all endurance sports supplements should do. It enables
you to push harder for longer by reducing that burning sensation.
[00:02:24] When you’re going all out, power athletes and sprinters have widely used
this for years, and there’s a lot of science and real world studies to document which
the links are below in the show notes or video description. The document is
success in most short distance and middle distance, uh, the 5k up to 25 minutes.
[00:02:40] So people that take this. You know, 20 to 25 minutes might not see the
effects, but if you’re in the 15 to 20 minute range, beta alanine will really, really help
you. The shorter, the more effective it is, but if you can tolerate it as in that itching
sensation, which I have a fix for, and you can afford it, it’s not, it’s not expensive,
but it’s also not cheap.
[00:02:57] It doesn’t hurt to try it for the longer distances because again, they
haven’t done the proper studies on longer distances with beta alanine. So the way I
got rid of that internal body under my skin itching and which caused anxiety and
really anxious feeling. was the old low and slow technique. The dose you should try
to take is three to five grams every day for six to eight weeks for full effect.
[00:03:17] So three grams is like minimum three to four grams. But if you can get
three to six grams or three to five grams, then you get even more of the effect.
Everyone should try this out on your own. And I am not a doctor. So this is all
supplemental stuff that goes inside your body. I am not a doctor. I am not your
doctor.
[00:03:32] Go Google this, go talk with your doctor. And then again, like I said, start
low and slow. When I first took it, I did all three grams at once. Absolutely no bueno.
I was trying to scratch the inside of my body more than Tyrone Biggums from the
Chappelle show. If you know, I heard on the Huberman Labs podcast with sports
scientist genius, Andy Galpin, Dr.
[00:03:49] Andy Galpin, that if you get the inching sensation, the parathesia, take a
little bit for a few days and then slowly work your way up to three grams. Or more.
And I was like, no way I could see with confidence. It works. Zero itching. Well, not
really. And I’ll talk about that in a second. There’s a bit of tingling in my mouth, but it
lasts for 10 seconds.
[00:04:07] So it’s around my lips and that actually only lasted for a week or two. So
it basically, the tingling sensation goes away as you slowly kind of dose more and
saturate your body more with it. That’s the genius to it. So I do get a tiny bit of
tingling. general, like I’m on edge, but it subsides after about 10, 15 minutes.
[00:04:28] And what I found is to take this with my protein powder, with my protein,
creatine, whey protein, and my collagen. I have a lot of stuff going on here and I
take that right before workout. And then I actually don’t have any tingling, but if I
take it right from a sit down at my desk or I’m just going to sit down and chill out at
night.
[00:04:43] No, no, no, no, no. I still get this kind of anxious feeling. And I’ve actually
been taking it for about three or four weeks. So take it right before you work out.
There you go. Nice little hack. So yeah, back to how I did it. I slowly up the size from

5 grams. So half a gram to one gram over the course of one week, and then two
grams over the course of one week and then three grams on the third week.
[00:05:00] So basically ramping up and now I’m at five grams per day. And
sometimes I’ll do four grams in the morning and then two grams in the afternoon.
You can not saturate this in phases in the beginning, like. Weightlifters that would do
this, bodybuilders, powerlifters would do this with creatine where the first week or,
you know, two weeks, they saturate like 15, 20 grams instead of the normal five
grams and they taper down the five grams.
[00:05:20] Do not do this with that. So from my research, unlike creatine, beta
alanine doesn’t have a quick loading phase. It would be best if you took it
consistently for a while to see results. The sweet spot is three grams daily for six to
eight weeks. I’d say four, if you really want to see the effects, but it depends on your
weight, three grams, if you’re in between 70, 80 kilos, which is 140 to 170 pounds.
[00:05:41] So a little bit less, if you’re a smaller woman, a little bit more, if you’re a
bigger guy, this slow and steady approach helps build up muscle carnison levels.
That’s the good stuff without giving you that weird tingly feeling as much,
everyone’s different. My one friend loves the tingly feeling by the way.
[00:05:54] No. No, no, no, no. Taking more won’t speed things up and might make
you feel uncomfortable. So stick to the plan, be patient, and you’ll likely be seeing
better results in the long run. No pun intended. Most medical professionals say to
do the old low and slow approach. We running coaches tell you to do this with new
running shoes, running gear, running plants, and strength.
[00:06:12] Why would it be any different with supplements? Oh, it also tastes better.
Like nothing and a tiny bit sweet, unlike most of the protein powders that can taste
like, uh, the earth. Some tastes like plastic. I do BCAs without any flavoring. Yes. It’s
horrendous. This one actually is quite nice. You can do it just in water, rinse it up,
take it back like a shot.
[00:06:29] I’ll report back after eight weeks and possibly my 3k 10 minute track race
debut on how It worked and how I did and everything around it. I’ll also do a deeper
dive into beta alanine and a longer piece of content around my 100 percent legal
science back top hacks for race day. I’ve got 17 of them that I’ve been using over
the last six, seven years.
[00:06:49] And it’s a big one. It’s a monster of an episode. It’s going to be really fun.
So stay tuned for that. Future Darren here. I won’t do the thing. You know, that thing
where people go, Hey, you should subscribe, rate, share, and give a thumbs up.
Now, while I would love for you to do that anyway, the next steps would be to
transform your running life with our free 1 percent better running 30 day habits,
guide and email newsletter.
[00:07:14] And I’ll be straight for some of you, your obsession with. Quick wins
might just kill your running career. This episode, while helpful, most likely is just the
first step of many to making you a more consistent runner so you can last from 30
days all the way to 30 plus years or settle for a mediocre existence.
[00:07:30] The choice is yours. Sign up for free at either DLakeCreates. com forward
slash news, web search, 1 percent better runner newsletter. Or get the link in the
show notes or video description below all value. No fluff. Cancel any time. Let’s get
back into it. So ever since my triathlon days in the mid 2010s, about 2015, I’ve
checked the weather incessantly.
[00:07:52] Maybe it’s my personality. I’m a bit compulsive. Always three to five days
out, sometimes five to 10 days out in Sydney, Australia. I don’t trust anything. That’s
24 to 48 hours away. As it has rained on many of a 0 percent chance of rain day.
Sydney’s wild because it’s on the coast and the way the wind shift, I’ve heard that
predicting the weather isn’t the same as the U S anyway, I digress.
[00:08:12] It legit is raining before my eyes when the weather app says no rain for
hours, it will say the weather app says 0 percent chance of rain cloudy. And it’s just
raining. That happens probably once a month in Sydney, if not more, but there’s a
huge problem with the mobile phone weather app that I use. It’s not.
[00:08:27] Usually wrong, not one to two degrees wrong. I mean, five to 10 degrees
Fahrenheit, three to six degrees Celsius off wrong, absolutely wrong. And the rain
forecast, as I said before, can be just disgustingly wrong. How it’s helping me this,
this app ignoring my obsessive compulsive tendencies of controlling everything.
[00:08:47] Checking the weather informs my training plan. I speak to many runners. I
coach advise, and they don’t check the weather and instead get a rude awakening.
When they suit up and look outside to see cold, soggy weather before a two hour
long run in the off season, when I’m cross training more, I’m always moving
workouts and asking myself if I should do a swim on this warm day or harden up
and bike out in the downpour.
[00:09:08] I don’t do that as much soft. People don’t do hard things. I am soft in that
instance. I have done my fair share of running, swimming and cycling in horrendous
weather. cold, downpours, ice, snow. So I’m good, I’m good. I’ve done it already.
Looking ahead helps me with gear planning and with commuting. I don’t have a car
and I can get my rain gear, et cetera.
[00:09:27] Why I am using this. So the secret sauce in the basic AF government one
is that it has all these data points. For some reason, weather. com, a US company,
powers Yahoo weather, Apple weather, and a few others. I don’t know about
Android stuff. But I’m sure it does. Weather. com gets its information and data from
local government meteorological companies.
[00:09:46] I don’t get how it can be so inaccurate, but maybe they are playing
telephone and the message gets distorted as it gets passed along the way to our
smartphones. I don’t know. It also has a 10th. Of a decimal place of the
temperature. I don’t know why I love that so much as the difference between 18. 4
and 18 degrees Celsius, which is 65 to 67 Fahrenheit is negligible to most humans.
[00:10:06] I still like the accuracy again, maybe the obsessive compulsive ways of
my brain. If I’m using data. Goddammit, it should be accurate and clean as it can
be. I think most countries have their own weather apps. If you’re in the United
States, the national weather service, NSW has an app at weather. gov. A few of the
countries are actually in the link below that I’ll put in the show notes also, and
weather.
[00:10:28] com isn’t the only player in the game. So try your countries. I don’t know
where you are, but try your country’s weather app. It might be amazing, or it might
be SHIT. Who knows? Try it out though. And last, the workout I’m doing for the first
time. Goddammit. Fartlick, kinda. Yeah, the Swedish word for speed play, I’m sure
you’re like, dude, really?
[00:10:48] But hear me out. I found that I personally hate Fartlick, or hate’s a strong
word, I dislike it, because of the lack of structure. I’ll blame it on my ADHD and
obsessive compulsive tendencies, again, you’ve heard that, I’m airing out all the
laundry. While I’ll be the first to admit I’m a control freak, I’m working on it, it’s more
so that my brain doesn’t spin out of control with the infinite possibilities.
[00:11:08] Fartlick, the options are unlimited. And that is a recipe for anxiety for me.
Think about it. Go out and run randomly. This is the, how you supposed to do fart
lick, go out and run randomly fast and randomly slow for different durations and
intensities. I’m already confused saying that sentence. So instead of just doing a fart
lick, which has zero boundaries, I now do a structured fart lick, potato.
[00:11:32] Potato, tomato, tomato, hoover, hover. It usually has an input or end goal.
So I, I’m, this is again, this is semantics right now. I might be slicing things in, you
know, different ways and still calling it half a dozen, six one way, blah, blah, blah.
The structured fart lick usually has an input or an end goal. If it’s a fart lick between
bass and And race period, the structured fart lick, then I’ll do shorter stuff and try to
get about 10 to 12 minutes of fast running total until I feel fatigued or like I got a
workout.
[00:11:57] So that would most likely be in the VO2 max range and probably even
higher anaerobic zones, Z4, Z5, effort, heart rate, pace, depending on what you’re
measuring power. I’ll then rest until I feel recovered or whenever the road is safe. So
lights, et cetera, even surfaces, not slippery. and go again. It’s kind of fun to do the
short structured fart lick stuff in the trails too.
[00:12:17] I’ve also prescribed structured fart lick to some of my runners that I
coach to give them a sense of direction as they can easily do it wrong. The fart lick
stuff, if I just go do a fart lick, they can overcook themselves, injure themselves. Uh,
et cetera. But I think there is no wrong or right with fartlek from what I’ve heard.
[00:12:33] I just, I just don’t like it. Cause again, it’s just, it’s a bit too, uh, hairy at the
edges. Not really a fan. After doing two of these, I can say that I don’t hate them. I
don’t hate the structure of fartlek. So I don’t hate fartlek as much. I don’t love it, but
again, I don’t hate it. Right tool, right job. So the sections that I’ll be doing the next
edition will be shoes.
[00:12:51] I’m digging again, tech. I’m digging and closing. I’m digging. This is the
Kaizen Jersey. Kaizen is Japanese for brick by brick consistency, teaming up with
them on some gear in the future. So I might do another review if we get another
version. Thanks for letting me try something new with this format. I’m a runner and
like everyone, I need stuff while I’m not big on buying things just to buy them.
[00:13:10] Some purchases are necessary. I’m all about sharing products that can
actually improve your life. No shame in that. Capitalism, while it’s flawed, is still a
good thing for humans. One day I’ll create 1 percent better gear or digital content,
but things I actually use and believe in that will help you as a runner.
[00:13:25] For now, I’ll stick to recommending the tried and true stuff that I know
that will help you on your journey, consistency, and self improvement. Thanks for
rocking with me. If you want to learn more about this topic, we went into further
detail. You should go and check that out right here.