Bit of a pickle

 I spent last weekend in the Haliburton Forest.

Which was quite misty at first light on Saturday

I got to check out the High Falls of Vankoughnet

Which weren't exactly what I expected, but were a beautiful 5min detour

..and paddle on Clear Lake on a gorgeous evening.

Such a magical spot

Wish we'd had more time, but grateful to have the chance at all.

The wind dropped at sunset, leaving the lake like glass.

(I may have experimented a little with the camera settings on Tank's new phone)

Come Saturday morning, it was deeper into the forest to help finish the setup and man Aid Station 2 (in the same place as prior years' AS5, but on a newly designed course) until early Sunday afternoon.

We were lucky to have (mostly) lovely weather

As runners came through - especially as the day warmed - pickles were one of the most popular things on offer. Dill pickles, and their juice: the salty, vinegary brine from the jar. We poured endless dixie cups of pickle juice for runners experiencing cramps, some of whom had heard of it and requested it, others who simply had to take us at our word that it would help.

Unrelated photo from the Marsh Lake Rd bridge

Cramping in endurance sport is really quite poorly understood - there have been multiple theories advanced, but the most recent is that it's actually a neuromuscular control issue. Rather than dehydration or electrolyte imbalance, it's your brain making you cramp.

Especially when you have spent more than a day climbing hills on rugged trails

For more than 20 years now, pickle juice has been used to alleviate muscle cramps. While it was once theorized that the sodium in the brine helped electrolyte balance, the short timeframe from ingestion to the dissipation of the cramp - approximately 85sec - was far too short for any of the chemical composition of the pickle juice to enter the athletes' bloodstream.

It'll stop that cramp faster than you can get your bottle filled and grab some snacks at an aid station!

More recent research indicates that the mechanism by which pickle juice works actually supports the theory of neuromuscular control dysfunction being the cause of muscle cramping. The best idea we have so far is that pickle juice is so powerful a flavour that it literally overloads your brain enough to force it to forget about making your muscles cramp. 

I know of someone who uses mustard packs for the same effect, which may be more palatable to some

You could probably use anything with a sufficiently overwhelming taste, like a swig of Italian dressing - it just has to be strong enough to send your brain for a loop, so it essentially forgets to maintain that painful knot in your calf (or quad or whatever).

AS2 rockin' all night long!

This also explains why attempts to create a prophylactic anti-cramp substance have largely failed. Until your neurons have created the cramp, you can't actually apply the "cure" for said cramp. At least, no-one has yet been successful in creating anything that can stop your brain from making your muscles seize...except boring things like "adequate training" or "not working to exhaustion".

You can't buy those in a bottle.

I was thinking about this the other day, and wondered whether or not it might have other applications for neurological dysfunction. Is it possible that someone having a panic attack might be able to alleviate it with a shot of pickle juice to help re-regulate their brain function? What about someone with ADHD using it to re-focus when they've drifted from a task they wish to complete?

I'm not a neurologist, so I have no idea if there's even a shot

If anyone knows of any current (or past) studies that look at the impact of flavour on neural regulation, I'd be most obliged if you could point me in their direction, because I'd love to know if my whacked-out theory might hold any water.

Or pickle juice, for that matter.

In any case, I'm off to the woods for a bit - I'll be back to blather at you again in a couple of weeks!