EnduroPacks Review

Supplemental knowledge

I will start off this review of the EnduroPacks sports nutrition system by saying that they sent me one month’s supply (worth $75) for free. You may now take a moment to bask in the power of NYVC.

Are you finished? Great. EnduroPacks is a company concept that seeks to fulfill the needs of a special subsection of athletic society—the person who is both hyper-motivated and hyper-lazy. The hyper-motivated side of this "Sporting Sybil" will appreciate all the benefits of the supplements, while the lazy side will appreciate that EnduroPacks have formulated the system themselves and ship the stuff right to you, like an animo acid topped pizza if you will. The supplements come to you in this box right here.

The first thing I noticed about the system (I call it a system, because there’s many components involved here, it’s like Ikea started making vitamins) is that there’s a poop-ton of things to put into yourself.

There’s this.

And this

This.

And finally, this.

That’s a lot to keep track of. Luckily for me, I work at home and can easily incorporate another obsessive ritual into the maddening monotony of my daily routine. (All work and no play makes Dan a dull boy…) But if you are a person who is not cemented to a chair in front of a computer in your basement, if may be difficult to always fulfill the vitamin duties of the EnduroPacks system.

And there are quite a few duties to be fulfilled. First, there’s the liquid multivitamin. It should be taken before your workout—preferably with a meal. It’s the color of iodine, it needs to be refrigerated and tastes like, well, vitamins. (Do you care what your vitamins taste like—what are you, five?) This fits pretty well into my monotonous rut, I have the multivitamin with breakfast every morning. Easy living. Step one dominated.

The next product that get added to your athletic check list is the electrolyte salt spray. You are supposed to squirt this into your water bottle 5 times before you leave to ride. I admit that I am not always diligent about this procedure. I did try the spray in a bottle of plain water once, and the taste was akin to um, a plate of nothing with a side of glycerin. Personally, I enjoy fluids in my bottles that taste like something, so I’ve been adding the spray to my normal drink mix (it’s pizza flavored), because doubling up on drink mixes can only be more better-er, right?

It’s after your workout when things get a little weird because that’s when you put on the amino acid patch. Yes, a patch—as if you’re a recovering nicotine fiend or a US Postal rider seeking a refill on the "nectar of the man gland". Attaching acid to myself in the place where the bathing suit covers gave me cause for concern, so I emailed Dave Wiswell, one of the founders of EnduroPacks about it, this was his reply:

As for the patch issue, we understand that there might be some difficulty with the patches and people having a bit of apprehension because of Lance & Co. Our objective as a company is to provide you with the most effective mediums and our amino acid patches are the best delivery method as they bypass harsh stomach acids that breakdown a lot of the BCAAs and their recovery benefits. Instead, our patches allow for the branch-chain amino acids to be directly absorbed into the blood stream. Consequently, you are getting the entire benefit of the BCAAs as they are time-released over an extended period and avoid harsh stomach acids at the same time. Your body can only absorb so much at once. So having our amino acids time released allows your body to effectively absorb a larger amount and leverage their full benefits. With that said, we are trying to combat the patch concerns by preaching the benefits of the delivery method and how it can benefit you and your recovery.

Evidently the stomach harshens the amino acid mellow. Who knew?

So after taking the iodine-y liquid vitamin, downing some squirts of electrolyte salt spray and slapping the acid patch upon yourself, there’s one more thing you need to take care of—you need to sleep the sleep of the glutamine recovery complex. (I told you there was a poop-ton of stuff in this EuduroPacks pack) The last step in the process is to take two glutamine recovery pills before going to sleep, presumably so you can dream of kicking ass while you simultaneously become able to kick ass. (EnduroPacks does not currently back the claim of creating ass kicking dream scenarios—yet.)

Complete all of these steps and boom! One day of supplements done.

Does it work?

That’s a valid question, and for the time crunched people out there I’ll give a quick answer so you don’t have to read any further. And that answer is: probably.

If you are still reading now that means that you are not lazy. Congratulations. The longer answer about the efficacy of the EnduroPacks system involves what I thought was science, but really ended up not proving anything whatsoever. Every morning I get up and test my heart rate variability (HRV) with my phone, we did a review of this before, but a short recap is that HRV is a heart rate based metric that tells you how awesome you are, using science. Essentially it’s a metric can tells you how recovered you are. I began using the EnduroPacks on August 15th, and planned on seeing if my HRV data showed that I was, indeed, better recovered. I was going to use my HRV data the morning after racing at FBF with the EnduroPack and compare that with the HRV data of racing without the EnduroPacks. I had two supplemented FBF HRV readings and they showed an average HRV of 76.4 with an average HR of 68.7 (it’s a small data sample, I know, but there were only two races left). I compared this data with four other FBF dates without the supplements and the numbers were a HRV of 79.575 and an average HR of 66.025. For those of you who don’t know science like I do—those numbers are not better. They are worse, my supplemented HRV is lower and my HR is higher, which means that according to my HRV, the supplements make me less recovered.

But that’s not the whole story, because while all this pseudo-science is a fun way to use my seventh grade math skills, we have not yet discussed any feelings. The world of supplements can sometimes seem like the world of hallucinogens— where everyone sits quietly and tries to tell if they can feel anything. And the answer to the eternal question of "Can you feel anything?" is yes, I can feel it working. I feel fresher in the morning, I feel stronger on rides, and strangely, it’s been easier to maintain my weight as of late. All of these effects may be due to inhaling some sweet, sweet placebo, but my bathroom scale doesn’t lie—it does steal, but we’re trying to work on that.

So I’m lighter, I feel stronger, but I can’t scientifically quantify that I’ve recovered any better. That’s why I say that the supplements probably work. A one month subscription to EnduroPacks is $75, which is quite a lot for a casual rider. The price drops if you commit to a longer subscription, but they are still a lot more than the multivitamin you buy at the grocery store, but I’ve used the grocery store vitamins, and they’ve never made me feel anything like the EnduroPacks have.

Get info on EnudroPacks in Twitter form here, FaceBook form here, Pinterest form here and Instagram form here.

 

 

30 Comments

Luchino Seatmast

There is sooooooo much wrong with that M Drive ad. The guy is obviously getting something done with his hair line. I think he stole that bike from an old lady. It’s purple, from 20+ years ago, has a rack, and looks like it’s a woman’s bike. You can’t look “T” filled riding that. There is also a strong creep vibe coming from the spokesman. What kind of insecure looser would buy that stuff?

Meh.

On Sunday October 6, 2013, the Metropolitan Cycling Association is presenting the Pete Senia Memorial bicycle race. You can get more information at http://www.newyorkbicycleracing.com. This event will be held in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY. The start finish line and registration is at the wil-link triangle. The entrance is on Flatbush avenue near Ocean Ave. Parking is not available in the park so you must park out side the park and ride into the park.
Park Notes: No riding against traffic on the roadway. No riding on walkways. Please use the restrooms provided by the Parks Department. No riding in the joggers lane ever! 
Pete Senia was a consummate bicycle race fixture in the New York as well as the national bicycle racing scene. You can read his story at: http://www.avdgraphics.com/MCA/Pete%20memorial/PeteMCA.html.
Last week I stumbled onto race-results.com. Yes late to the party as usual. I found it fascinating. Each rider has stats on the site. Along with the stats are the headings—Nemeses or Victims. Nemeses, for that a particular rider loses to. And of course victims are those who do not have a snowballs chance in hell against that rider.
So I went to the results of the 2013 Criterium New York http://www.bikereg.com/Results/2013/09/28-crit-ny.asp  held in Floyd Bennett field on September 28 and saw who were the nemeses and victims of the winners.
For example:
The winner of the Master 45+ George Suter was listed as follows
Nemeses: William Thomson, Andrew Melnychenko, Doug O’Neil, John Olsen, Kevin Kolodziejski, Robert Orange, Doug Chiasson.
Victims: Bob Meikle, Robert Stern, Christophe Wilkes and Tim Borsetti
 
However, the victims list for the winner of the cat 3 race, Sameul Frias was very impressive. As impressive as the jabs after last weeks win.
Victims: Robert Lombardi, Stefan Singer, Egor Astakhov, Samuel Barker, Christopher Chong-tenn, George Schroeder, Samuel Torres, Justin Tyberg
 
Even the Category 4 winner Nick Jurman had an impressive amount of talented victims on his page. I was shocked to see Eli Curt Fuld as his number one victim followed by Stephen Chang, Erick Fernandez, Kavaugh Blake, Brett Halpern, Peter Rugel and Todd Brilliant.
Technology is really making hiding your skills as a racer tough. But me as a race promoter will do the best I can to create opportunities for riders like Eli to move from victim to nemeses.
That being said, I am a firm believer in making your voice heard with registration. If you do not like what a promoter or any other business for that matter you take your business else where. And last week (well for a lot of the MCA races) the Pro,1,2,3 field continued to vote and vocalize about how our races do not suit their needs. Well we have heard you. And cancelling the Pro,1,2,3 field at the Pete Senia Memorial Race. This year we will replace it with a category 3 field.
And as we move forward we will continue to make changes so we can reach and service the most amount of racers as possible.
We will also give out medals for all those cat 5 racers who finish. All events will be long enough to get upgrade points for each field. Results will be posted on http://www.USACYCLING.org and bikereg.com.
Come out on Sunday and get upgrade points or move from victim to nemeses, but only if your good enough.
Please preregister for this Sundays event. https://www.bikereg.com/Net/2013-pete-senia-memorial
Again we thank you for racing with us.
 
 
Anthony Jay Van Dunk
President
Metropolitan Cycling Association
 
P.S. Because of the government shut down our invitational even that was to be held at Floyd Bennett Field this Saturday, October 5, 2013 is canceled. We are sorry for this turn of events.

Bernardo Tank

Anthony. I don’t know who these people were complaining about the Pete Senia race, but I for one was looking forward to doing the 123. How many people were complaining? Please bring the 123 race back as a last event for the season. I’m sure there are a lot more people who would like to race than those who complain.

Btw, is it Sprouts? ANswer never seems to work.

liquiguts

So you’re saying his phone naturally produces white points in the 3000s? White points float within an normal range, unless the phone is dehydrated or has the runs, so I think we’re owed an explanation. Either that, or Dan should release all his photos for the last few months.

usada testing piss checker

Are they certified to be free of all illegal supplements? Will they get me an accidental ingestion ban?

Lapo Biopace

but will pass. try whole foods, balanced, and if you really want to go crazy chug some pulverized beets every day. it’s like hooking up a nitrous tank to your car!!!!!!

Axel O-Ring

My response to the patch is — Fake! Probably like bunk acid, but without the “that filthy hesher ripped me off” let-down. Since you say think you “felt” something, we can’t get our money back from the dude now, can we? Way to go, dan….

Jasper Rim

Dan your response to USADA testing piss checker, specifically the linked material on enduropacks website, does not specify whether the products are free of banned substances. Can you confirm? Can Dave?

liquiguts

Dan, unless you’re intending to do hommage to Andres Serrano, or priming people to use the word “piss” in the comments, have Andy show you how to set a white point in a photos.

Romain Tubie

“our patches allow for the branch-chain amino acids to be directly absorbed into the blood stream”
I’d like to see the science behind this. Smoke and mirrors. I don’t see how this is different than doping.

Comments are closed.