Last weekend, I decided to follow my own advice and speculation on what I believed might have been the problem with my previous races. I did stock up on the normal gels and electrolyte capsules, but I purchased a couple dozen low-fat pint-sized milks. Not chocolate milk, just plain milk.

The results were rather stark. I felt great the entire race (even though this was in weather over 100 – the highest temp for all the events I’ve done) and did not have to refuel as often. In fact, for the last 50 miles, I just drank milk and had bites of sandwich (munster cheese). Not only did I have even energy for the whole race, I never had any nausea or fatigue issues. But the most suprising result. Both during the race and after – no muscle soreness at all.

Now I do want to say that I felt the most under-trained for this event, so muscle soreness and such was the expectation. I do credit the electrolyte capsules, but I also think the milk had an even greater influence as it was the only element I changed from every other race.

I realize that lactose intolerance is a relevant issue and having consumed milk my entire life, my digestive track is used to this product, but that aside, the results were so startling that I believe there is something to milk not only as a recovery drink, but also as a performance drink. I also realize that this is one experience, but being a skeptic, it takes very compelling evidence to shake up my thinking. Regardless, I wanted to share my experience and obtain any more insight from the author of this blog/book on milk. And provide any additional information regarding my experience.

Ken

Homogenization causes a number of potential problems, which can be read up on by searching for “what’s wrong with homogenized milk” or something similar.

I am getting my first raw milk this Friday and I am excited!

Ryan: That’s interesting to hear! Thanks for sharing that info! That probably plays some role, but how much is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps that could be a contributing factor to the differences seen between the two types of milk?

Lyle’s solution was adding protein and carb powders to milk. I just decided that it’s cheaper and more effective to use powdered milk and simply mix it stronger. It’s pretty easy to mix it 2-3x as strong and get 50+ carbs and almost 40 g protein in just a pint of liquid.

I call it the “white-trash Anaconda Protocol!”

One thing I feel like pointing out is that…more than 75% of world population have hard time drinking milk because “…the normal mammalian condition is for the young of a species to experience reduced lactase production at the end of the weaning period…”.

Meaning that milk was not supposed be consumed after that phase because you were expected to eat something else in lieu of milk, enabling you to get way from nursing mother’ breasts and let you be an independent entity instead of mommy’s boy all the time.

That is the mechanism the Mother Nature found to be successful and implemented throughout many many millions of evolutionally years. However with human race, with domestication of animals, reversal is happening with evolutionarily recent adaptation to dairy consumption.

I do not know whether that will be a good forced evolutionarily adaptation or not…only time will tell. When not clearly proven, I tend to go with Mother Nature-centric view since her ways have produced the reality we live in-meaning you, I, them and every shads of gray between. When you really think about it, in addition to going against proven and successful Mother Nature’s mechanism, you are really drinking something has been specifically tailored to the need of calves. Anyway, when it comes to the animal milk issue I think proponent and opposition both have some valid points and hopefully whatever the outcome, it will benefit human and animal too.