With a few rides and reviews coming up I thought I best start knuckling down and getting myself back to being more productive on the blog front; and so, for your second dose of Roly Rouleur in a week (you lucky things) here are my first musings on the awesome TrueStart coffee.

Only first?

Yep, just so we are clear from the off, I will be revisiting this review in the coming months once I have had more of a chance to use this product before big training blocks and events but as this weekend saw my first use, I thought why not share my initial thoughts and introduce the brand.

It was a few months ago that I first heard about TrueStart coffee, and the concept certainly intrigued me. The world’s first performance coffee is a statement/tagline that can’t help but grab your attention.

But what did it mean, how does it work and why is it better than any other generic coffee?

Quite simply, whilst training for an Ironman 70.3 triathlon (to those unfamiliar with what this is, take my word for it , it is a seriously hardcore undertaking!!) Helena Hills (aka Driver) was noticing that her reaction to the coffee she was drinking pre-training was varying from day to day. Husband and co-founder Simon (aka Navigator, love these nicknames BTW!) had a brainwave; according to the website he is ‘the technical wizard’, so it’s no surprise really.

The ‘Eureka’ moment…..How much caffeine were they getting in their morning coffee?

And it turns out the answer was pretty simple, who knows!!

As cyclists we already pay close attention to the amount of electrolytes and carbohydrates we consume during a long ride, so why shouldn’t we also do the same for the caffeine we put in pre-ride?

ALOT of research later it was clear that major fluctuations in the amount of coffee in your mug occurred. Not a problem for your every day morning pick me up, but for individuals or  highly tuned athlete’s such as myself (haha even I had to laugh at that one) wanting to experience the known performance benefits of caffeine, this is a problem.

This is the gap that TrueStart aimed to fill, and boy do they seem to have delivered. Following the clear and simple directions (Mrs Rouleur are you listening?, but more of that later!) you are able to make yourself a cuppa with a controlled level of caffeine that widely accepted research suggests is optimum for sports performance (something that other coffees just can’t offer!)

Do you know what else, its all natural, with no synthetics used in its making and the beans are responsibly sourced from Colombia where 90% of the coffee farms are under 2 acres of land and owned by individual famers. Now that’s not bad in supporting the ‘small guys’, something that really appeals to me.

All that being said then, I couldn’t help but order it! Now being a bit late to the party the sample packs were all out of stock at the time, so instead I stumped up some hard earned cash for one of their 100g jars (now replaced by packets as below).

And so enough of the concept and on to the coffee.

Now I drink quite a bit of coffee, too much if I’m honest, but I am not a coffee snob in the slightest (Mrs Rouleur on the other hand…..) so I have no problem how it comes;  beans, filter, instant, pods, I don’t mind, just as long as its strong and sans milk!!

I can honestly say that TrueStart is one of the best tasting instant’s I have had, and I would be more than happy just drinking it irrespective of its performance credentials. Great colour, great smell, convenient and all natural, what more do you want?!

Well given all my ramblings about the concept, we want the performance benefits too, right? So did it perform?

At first simply put, No, BUT WAIT, HUGE CAVEAT, Mrs Rouleur made me my first cup before I went out with my so called ‘friend’ in to the surrey hills this weekend (you can read about the brutal route she bullied me in to here) and I had neglected to mention the Modos opernadi of TrueStart and that I needed more than one little scoop (lets not go in to how many scoops I need for my body weight, it would be too embarrassing!)

Attempt two the next day, the right number of scoops used (not actually that many BTW), consumed just before heading out for my ride with a few Twitter mates, the impact was more noticeable.

I felt great for the first 10-15 miles of my ride and was able to keep a good pace going despite not having ridden much recently! Yes, as some of you will know, I found this ride hard and frankly painful in the end, but I am pretty sure that without my TrueStart to the day I would perhaps have struggled a lot more.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a review in progress, I can’t give a full opinion on this product until a few months of using it. But if first impressions are anything to go by then TrueStart coffee will have a permanent place on my shopping list!

PS Check out their Cycle Jerseys too, they look fantastic!!

All images (including banner image) have been taken directly from http://www.truestartcoffee.com except the Jar and Mug picture.