Creatine supplementation for runners is a tricky topic. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it for years. It’s a game-changer for strength and muscle gain, but for running? I think it sucks. That’s not my scientific opinion; just my personal experience. In this deep dive, I will explore creatine’s bizarre effects on running performance: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Switching to a Plant-Based Diet and Losing Creatine
To add some context to this story, five years ago my diet underwent a drastic alteration after I learned I had heart disease and hypercholesterolemia. To improve my lipid profile, I went from being a relentless meat eater to embracing a whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet. Imagine if Ron Swanson and Chris Traeger underwent a Freaky Friday experiment. It was a shock for sure.
The shift transformed my health. But with no creatine in my diet, I noticed a marked decrease in strength and muscle volume. I was doing fewer reps in the gym, and when coupled with fat loss, the reduction in muscle size had me return to the skinny beanpole frame that had been the hallmark of my youth.
But my departure from an artery-constricting, high-fat diet had me feeling like a new man. And at the time, my exercise was predominantly running, so I didn’t mind the reduction in strength.
However, as my marathoning advanced, I began to gravitate back toward weight training as a means for improving running mechanics. Plus, I was learning how much I cared about all-around health and fitness, and I needed to gain back some areas of strength that running could not provide.
For the first couple of years of being on the WFPB diet, I had gone without creatine. In fact, I avoided supplementation altogether. Creatine is made naturally in the body, which generally is a pretty good sign that the body has evolved to be optimal without it coming from dietary sources.
Creatine is made in the liver and has a vital function in the body, behaving as an energy store for ATP. It plays a crucial role in providing us with greater access to energy. When our muscles use up this ATP, it recycles and becomes available faster.
Eating meat or supplementing with creatine has the effect of adding higher quantities of this molecule to our muscles, which results in greater strength and longer-lasting energy so we can do more reps in the gym.
Ultimately it was this loss of performance that lured me back to creatine supplementation. I resisted for a long time, but my lackluster gains in the gym, painfully slow recovery times, and a general feeling of weakness in my workouts were severely affecting my ability to enjoy my strength routine.
My Journey with Creatine and Running
After many years of eating all-natural, I decided to bring some creatine back into the mix. The effects on my running routine were startling. I felt markedly slower. Each step felt heavy and slow. My breath felt labored, and my chest heaved.
It’s not that I thought the creatine would help my running—studies have shown over the years that creatine does little to improve distance running—but I just wanted my gym strength back.
And it did come back. I immediately was throwing up more weight and getting higher reps. But the trade-off was intense.
When I was supplement-free, I would run with the sense that I was like a nimble-footed wood elf. Light on my feet and fast as the wind. Running trails and hopping up rocks felt like a breeze, and if I had been any lighter, I felt I could have gone dashing right up the trees themselves.
By contrast, running on creatine, I felt like a clobber-footed dwarf, utterly glued to the ground by my stout weight and the threat of gravity. Each step became a lumbering eternity, and every breath felt like it was pushing through a tunnel.
I waited weeks to see if the effects would subside, but they never did.
My strength had returned, however. I was getting more reps in at the gym. But if I was miserable in my runs, what was the point? After all, my runs are where it’s at.
Another side effect was a loss of flexibility. My yoga routine went from being a process of rejuvenation and grace to being an exercise in futility. I guess it's hard to achieve balance and flexibility with waterlogged muscles.
Eventually, the creatine had to go. I had a marathon coming up, and after all my time spent training for it, I wouldn’t jeopardize that run for a few more reps at the bench press.
WFPD
Why hadn’t I noticed these effects before?
After all, I had been a runner before I stopped eating meat. And back then I used a wide range of supplements, creatine among them.
As it turns out, being on WFPD creates a perfect baseline for studying the effects of creatine on our bodies. The real reason most of us don’t notice these drastic differences is that we are accustomed to having elevated creatine levels through diet. Animal-based foods, like red meat, chicken, and fish.
Going plant-based while also abstaining from supplementation put me into my body's natural creatine-level state. And remaining that way for a number of years created a sense of normalcy. This puts me in a prime position to observe the effects of ingested creatine on my body and overall training performance, because the differences are starker and are easier to measure.
Going Off Creatine
I went on to run my marathon creatine-free. It only took about three days for the effects of the creatine to noticeably wear off. In the week leading up to race day, I felt light on my feet again.
Still, I was intrigued by my conundrum. Wanting badly to make use of one of the fitness world’s most effective supplements to make the gym feel good again. Yet stuck with an agonizing trade-off between enjoyment in the gym and enjoyment on the road.
Finding a Balance: Can Runners Use Creatine?
But I had many more questions than answers. I searched through the literature on creatine’s effects on running and found next to nothing that could shed light on my experience.
And in looking at my own running performance, there was no obvious difference that jumped out at me. Despite feeling slow, my running times didn’t appear to be any slower.
This leads to the question, are the effects of creatine on running purely experiential? The difference may not be in my performance but rather how the runner feels. I don’t enjoy running when I’m on creatine. And that matters.
A Search for Answers
I am currently designing a series of experiments to test this hypothesis. Stay tuned for that in the coming months. If you’d like to be notified when that article becomes available, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter.
For more information on how creatine works in the body, be sure to check out The Science Behind Creatine: How It Powers Your Muscles.
Have you tried creatine as a runner? Share your experience in the comments!
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