200 mg a day of caffeine is a reasonable limit.

http://www.cspinet.org/new/cafchart.htm[/URL" target="_blank">

Moderation is key. I too becamwe addicted to coffee after I had children. I have about 24 oz per day in 2 cups and I'm healthy as a horse.

Sometimes after a long run I do enjoy a grande carmel latte though.

I love coffee but I also limit myself to 1-2 cups a day because I know that if I let myself I would be drinking coffee INSTEAD of water all the time, and would consequently be constantly dehydrated. I also can't stand coffee "withdrawal" symptoms on days that I happen to not have coffee for some odd reason (that nagging headache and lethargy). Obviously I also do not like to develop too much tolerance to caffeine to the point where I am dependent or addicted to it. That said, coffee definitely can help perk-up a run, regulate your bowels (this can be useful for people who have digestive problems with running) and hey, it is good for the mind--in moderation. So....although I don't know much about it as a performance issue or a health concern, perhaps....you can drink more dark teas which have caffeine but less than coffee proportionately? Or....If you are worried about it hindering recovery or performance you can do a test on yourself. Run a week drinking your usual coffee dose then cut down and run and see if YOU feel any changes, since I'm sure it also varies by person. I, for example, am extremely sensitive to caffeine which is probably a result of my never having consumed much in my life (I don't drink soda and never drank coffee until last year).

quote:<HR>Originally posted by runrevolt:
My concern is if coffee somehow hinders recovery or performance in anyway.<HR>

If you were an elite athlete I could understand, but you are posting this question on CR. Go for it.

I think I read somewhere that if you take you coffee with a bit of cream, it pretty much cancels out the calcium leaching thing.

I've given up gluten, I exercise conistently, I eat pretty cleanly (though this Halloween thing has cramped my style!!!)...I ain't giving up my coffee.

Why would I ? It's working for me. I realize it doesn't work for some - but then we aren't all the same, are we ?!?!?

assuming that you're actually curious...

the only way to know is to give it up for a while and see how your body responds. when i lived in hawaii i drank a lot of coffee, and it was good stuff too. continued when i moved back to the mainland, but i had the same questions you mention above. i decided to give it up for 3 months, to let my body adapt to the change and to see how i felt.

i never went back. now if i have anything with caffeine in it i can tell, and i don't like what it does to my body. (ps - it's amazing how many products companies decide to put caffeine into these days)

...but it's a big committment to do something like that, and you can probably list 30 very important reasons why you can't possibly try that experiment. i had the same list, but maybe i'm a weirdo. it was because i had made up so many reasons that i needed coffee that compelled me to try the test.

From what I've read, coffee before running actually improves performance modestly. That's why so many gels, etc., have caffeine in them. I'm not aware of any negative effects on recovery.

Bigapplepie is right, the current medical consensus to my knowledge is that coffee isn't much of a diuretic, although I take that finding with a grain of salt since it runs somewhat counter to my personal experience.

If you drink a lot, you'll get caffeine withdrawal if you stop (headaches, etc.), and it could in some cases give you heart palpitations, but I don't think those are actually known to be risky. Just scary.

Of course, lots of caffeine is lethal. I bet 20 shots of espresso at once would kill most people immediately. But that's neither here nor there.