Smoothies for Runners Book

Andersen, Lars. The Smoothies for Runners Book. Atlanta: Nordic Standard Publishing, 2012.

I am super glad I didn’t pay a lot for this book (okay, I got it for free). Where do I begin? First of all, it’s supposed to be an e-book. Right in the very beginning, the “How to Use This Book” section it talks about “clickable Table of Content.” Not with print you can’t.

I was also disappointed with the contradictory nutrition information. Andersen writes, “sugar comes in many forms…fruit juices should be consumed in post-run smoothies only” and yet three different pre-run smoothies feature fruit juices (apple, orange and pineapple). Another editing issue was the misinformation about a smoothie on page 49. Andersen talks about the importance of peanut butter as a protein but the smoothie (in the “green” section) doesn’t include peanut butter.
The organization of the recipes is a little wonky. While the smoothies are in three different categories: carbohydrate, multivitamin and green, the pre and post run smoothies are jumbled together. It would have been great to have further organization of all the pre-run smoothies grouped together before the post-run smoothies.
Last complaint – all the recipes come with a black and white photo of the smoothie. That tells me nothing. I’m wondering if the e-book version was in color?

Because Andersen mentioned his other books twice I got the feeling Smoothies for Runners was just a vehicle for promoting his other work. This one just felt cheap.

There are only 36 smoothies in the book and I’ve tried a handful. The “apple, grape, apple juice and honey” smoothie was refreshing but I don’t think it energized my 13 mile run any more than a Gu.