There is a nice list of Wattie Ink Elite Team sponsors along the left side of this page, but let me disclose we are not given these products and are in no way required to use them. Every logo on that list is there because I feel those brands are offering top-level equipment and service that I personally have chosen to help me perform my best.
I had already been taking advantage of many of these brands before hooking up with Wattie Ink, but one that I was introduced to is Extreme Endurance or xendurance. They have a line of supplements to protect an athlete’s health and immune system but their flagship product, Extreme Endurance, is designed to improve the athlete’s performance by improving aerobic threshold and lactate threshold. As it says on their website, their goal is to encourage the athlete to “Do More”.
With every product I use I always do my homework first, but this is especially important for anything that I’m putting into my body. The first thing I noticed is that the product was based on science and has been fully tested for both its drug-free cleanliness and its scientific claims. In fact, it’s the only product in the world that has a Gold-Standard, third-party, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study – that has been published. They aren’t even letting their own scientists or partner companies do the testing! You can read more about that here and see that the results showed a 15% reduction in lactic acid and a double-digit increase in aerobic threshold.
I recently heard a podcast interview with Extreme Endurance president Sandy Kellin where he says they only state it as a “double-digit” increase in aerobic threshold because the number was actually 41% and no one would believe it! The interview has some great success stories and info about the product and how to best use it. You can listenhere.
I tried to do some research outside of the company’s website and found a few forum posts about people having good results, but everything seemed 
real hush-hush. I decided to give Extreme Endurance a go and can now personally say that this stuff is legit! Few people are publicly talking about it because it really does work so well that you don’t want your competitors to know. After just three days of taking the recommended three pills in the morning, three in the evening, I noticed that my sleep quality improved. That alone was awesome because, as we know, sleep is the number 1 recovery tool. Taking three of these things may seem like a lot, but I was happy to see they’re small and thin, similar to the Smarties candy.
As I stated in a earlier post, I’ve been putting on a heart rate monitor and starting to build an aerobic base for Ironman Arizona. I’ve done that for just over a month now, which in heart rate time should show some improvement, but not much. I would have expected to take a few seconds off my pace at the same heart rate, but check out this data. First we’ll look at a Wednesday morning run (Garmin Connect link) that was two weeks into my heart rate training, so I had some time to figure out my goals and limits. I ran an out and back route along some rolling hills averaging an 8:47 min/mile pace with a pretty steady 153bpm heart rate. Two weeks later, four weeks into taking Extreme Endurance, I hit the same route for a Friday morning run and averaged an even 8:00 min/mile with an average heart rate just 3 beat higher at 156, still well within my target range.
In the first week of heart rate training I was struggling to be in the 9:00 min/mile range at heart rate and now, one month and one bottle of Extreme Endurance later, I literally rest easy knowing that my HR pace is in the high 7:00 min/miles and will continue to improve. I can’t wait to get into the thick of training to take full advantage of the lactic buffering benefits provided by Extreme Endurance. I highly recommend checking out their website to get the full run down on the what it is is, why it works, and how it was tested. Whatever you do though, don’t share this info with any M25-29ers racing Ironman Arizona.
