Pickle Juice

We should always trust the wisdom from fellow Sal's runner Father Time. For years Pete has promoted the use of pickle juice as the fluid replacement drink of choice during long runs or races. Now there is scientific proof to back up Father Time's homespun knowledge. An article in the New York Times summed up the results of a study:

"Pickle juice had “relieved a cramp 45 percent faster” than drinking no fluids and about 37 percent faster than water.
The pickle juice did not have time” to leave the men’s stomachs during the experiment, Mr. Miller points out. So the liquid itself could not have been replenishing lost fluids and salt in the affected muscles. Instead some other mechanism must have initiated the cramps and been stymied by the pickle juice.
Something in the acidic juice, perhaps even a specific molecule of some kind, may be lighting up specialized nervous-system receptors in the throat or stomach, he says, which, in turn, send out nerve signals that somehow disrupt the reflex melee in the muscles. Mr. Miller suspects that, ultimately, it’s the vinegar in the pickle juice that activates the receptors."

This ultimately means that we need to be diligent about saving the juice from our pickle jars and having pickle stops during our long runs on the canal path.