Can Creatine Improve Your Training?

Creatine used to belong in the gym. It was always seen as the supplement of weightlifters and sprinters, and many endurance athletes (runners, cyclists and triathletes) assume it will just make them heavier and slower. But it’s one of the most studied supplements out there, so maybe it deserves our attention.

What creatine does

Your muscles keep a small reserve of creatine as phosphocreatine, a rapidly-accessible, but limited, energy store. When you attack a climb or a overtake, creatine helps to rebuild ATP (the energy your body uses) very quickly. Supplementing with creatine tops up that reserve so the stores become depleted more slowly. And, as an added bonus for endurance athletes, creatine can also help us store more of our dietary carbohydrate as glycogen. 

This isn’t about performance per se

Let’s be clear: this isn’t really about boosting performance in a single event. A 2023 meta-analysis pooled 13 placebo-controlled trials in trained athletes and found no overall effect on endurance performance. 

Where creatine can earn its place

The value of creatine is in the hard work. If your endurance training includes threshold sessions, VO2 max intervals, hill reps, plyometrics or strength work, creatine may help you perform them with more quality and the adaptations will follow. 

Races have the same moments: a hill to attack, overtaking another athlete, a finish line to sprint for. These can be make or break your day so creatine genuinely can have a place in endurance sports too. 

What to look for and how to use

• Type of Creatine: creatine monohydrate
• Dose: 3-5g a day
• Timing: any time of day (it can take around four weeks to fill your body’s stores). Habit stacking works really well here. E.g. keeping your creatine next to your kettle or coffee machine so you can take each each morning alongside your coffee. 

If you’d like to give it a go, XMiles stocks a range of creatine monohydrate products. My favourites are PILLAR Creatine Monohydrate as it is Informed Sport certified and is sourced from Creapure (a high-quality form of creatine monohydrate) or Puresport Creatine Monohydrate sachets as they are so convenient on the go.