Osmo

Right.

So anyone who knows me knows that I take holiday to watch Le Tour De France live. Which means getting up for 8AM start times on non Col or Alp days and 6AM for anything that has the words Tormalet or Huez in it.

This year there was an advert for a product called "Osmo". Apparently Peter Sagan, an excellent sprinter is using the product. What is it? Well it's a hydration product that is said to be science based to deliver proper levels of nutrients in a manner that the body can quickly absorb. In a moment of advertising influence I looked up the website, saw all the rave reviews and decided to go get some.

So today I took my first ride with it. I used the orange flavor in a 20oz water bottle in a 16 mile ride. Definitely not a stage of Le Tour but enough for me to get dehydrated if I wasn't drinking anything and definitely enough to lose essential minerals.

Rewind. I took a 3 mile run in the morning having drunk that Gatorade Pregame fuel drink. You're supposed to have that 15 min. before "competition". OK. I'm not explaining myself properly.

Look. I cannot stand having anything in my stomach when I run. Bike? eh? But before run? No. Not only do I not like the feeling of "heavy stomach" but I risk getting cramps during the run and if I'm not careful some serious gastro issues after.

Since I run relatively quickly (6:15 min miles) Just water is not going to cut it, particularly on hot days. Particularly in the AM. Normally I'd run at midday, but in the summer, that's asking for heat stroke. So it's mornings or evenings. Mornings it is. Which means empty stomach, good for no sloshing and gastro issues, bad 'cause I've just finished an 8 hour fast. So enter sports drinks.

I long since dropped high fructose corn syrup from my diet. That eliminates Gatorade*, Vitamin water and those things. I've tried coconut water, but ended up with it fermenting in my stomach. Not good. So I was on water and losing minerals. What to do?

Osmo.

Osmo is a powder that you put into water. I saw that the on product directions said to add 2.5 scoops into 20oz of water and I got nervous. This is a small container vs. things I've gotten from say, GNC, so I thought that this was going to be an expensive habit (it is if you're poor). Luckily the scoops are small.

I put it on my bike and set off. When I drank my first swig I knew this was different. You know that feeling when you're thirsty and you drink some nice cool water and you can feel this "feeling" in your gut as the water hits it? Yeah, it felt like that. That was good. The second and most important thing to me was that unlike Gatorade and Vitamin Water, it wasn't sweet. It had a light taste. So either you're being cheated or this is serious stuff, not "lets get 'em hooked with sugar" stuff.

If you look at the ingredients you'll note that the most pronounced items are vit. B6, B12 and C. The other main ingredients are sugars (sucrose), Potassium and Sodium. I could tell there was quite a bit of sodium because I could taste it leaking out of me. I've tasted my sweat before, but this was different.

I won't say that I broke any endurance records....personal endurance records. Nor will I say that I didn't feel the workout. I did. But I did not feel drained. This is important to me because usually if I do a run and a bike in the same day, I will feel....blah, time to sleep.

Now for all I know this could all by psychological. I suppose I will find out in the days ahead but not having gastro issues makes it worth it.

I rate this a buy. I'm not being paid by these folks. I'm just a happy customer.

Reminder folks, you still have to eat right and get decent sleep.

*The regular drinks have high fructose corn syrup the pouches have sucrose. Matter of fact the ingredient list of the Gatorade Pregame drink has a lot of similar items to the Osmo but is noticeably sweeter. It may be due to the fact that it's meant as a pre-workout drink whereas Osmo is meant to be taken during a long term event.