It was twenty-eight degrees when I met Ashley for our run tonight. We wanted to do speed work, but the track had about an inch of snow on it, so laps around the high school it had to be. We chatted as normal, but our conversation quickly turned to the cold weather and vitamin C.

And then I remembered this fall I read an article about the importance of Vitamin C for cold-weather runners. A little Google-action led me to the article at Naturally Engineered. (Great blog. If you don’t read it, you should.) There are a number of other results relating to the cold weather/running/vitamin C connection, but this is the original article that I read a few months ago.

Basically, runners who spend a lot of time in the cold need extra vitamin C for two reasons:

1. The obvious boost in immunity. Cold weather lowers the body’s defense to germs which increases the chance of infection. Vitamin C supports the immune system.
2. Vitamin C is critical in the anti-inflammatory response the body performs after intense exercise to heal the muscles.

So it’s one thing to take vitamin C because it’s cold outside, but our vitamin C intake needs to increase dramatically because, as runners, we need twice as much! And the good news is that vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin, so you can essentially take enough to make your pee turn orange. You obviously don’t NEED that much if you’re peeing it out, but the point is that and excess of vitamin C won’t harm you.

So whenever I came home, i added a packet of raspberry Emergen-C to a cup of green tea. Deeeelicious! And good for my cold, sore legs.

Drink up!

What are some ways you get vitamin C in your diet?

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