Anyone use creatine monohydate when doing marathon intensive training?

As title really. Just wondered if anyone takes this when undergoing an intensive training schedule?

I had a quick Google to satisfy my curiosity and the first vaguely scientific (i.e. not trying to sell you the supplement) article tentatively suggested the following:

- Short-term supplementation does increase overall muscle mass, but mainly because of increased water retention, rather than lean muscle itself.  (So claims that it increases metabolism and therefore encourages fat buring may be inaccurate.)
- This water retention does have a beneficial effect on protein synthesis, improving recovery and increasing strength/power.  It also increases glycogen storage capacity.
- This increased performance/recovery is only really effective for very short, intense efforts, e.g. weight-lifting, football, etc. No direct improvement in endurance fitness.

So in theory, it seems there could be some indirect benefit in a couple of respects, i.e.
- If you did a relevant weight/strength-training routine, you could see real improvements which could be transferred to performance/injury resistance maybe?
- Increased glycogen storage. I wasn't sure if this meant a long term increase in glycogen storage but that would obviously be useful for marathon training.

I'm wary of supplements full-stop, so I'm not gonna start taking this stuff but would be interested in other people's views.

cougie wrote (see)

 
Mark - didn't you pee blood last time ? I'd avoid anything out of the usual if I were you. There's no shortcuts. Only sensible training.

Good point.  The "anecdotal" side-effects seem to revolve around stomach related issues and stuff going on in the liver, so best avoided really!

I'm one of the few around here who uses a whey supplement, and even I wouldn't think about bothering with creatine.

At best, a waste of money. At worst, a substance which is naturally present in your body, but the levels of which you really don't want to be messing with.