Top NZ Back Yard Ultra runner explains how CurraNZ came to be essential to his kit

This week, we hear from Simon McLean, one of New Zealand’s leading Backyard Ultra athletes and recent winner of the Faultline 100 Mile in Wellington.

For Simon, choosing a product to support his training and racing comes down to three simple words: enhance, perform, recover. After first using CurraNZ following a Backyard Ultra, he found it became a regular part of his routine, helping him manage high-mileage training blocks, race-day demands, recovery, and the everyday fatigue that comes with work, family life, and endurance sport.

In his own words, Simon shares how CurraNZ has supported his journey across backyard ultras, marathons, and 100-mile racing:

Enhance, Perform, Recover - these are the three areas I use to evaluate whenever I choose a product to consume, partner with, and make a regular staple in my routine.

That’s why when I started taking CurraNZ after my first Backyard Ultra I knew I had found a product that was to stay part of my regular regime.

My journey with CurraNZ has been exciting and an opportunity to understand what my body benefits from, needs and enjoys. It's also been a chance to experiment with how it feels during big training blocks of high mileage weeks, plus lack of sleep from family life, with three young kids and a full-time job.

This understanding of my fuelling is where I start to consider “Enhance”.

The age-old question is, does it work? Over the last four years I have been able to experience the effect CurraNZ has, both in day-to-day activities right up to lab-tested v02 max results.

In terms of dosing, when to take them - chronically or just when required - that’s your own journey.

Then comes my second consideration “Perform”. As an amateur athlete I look for the small wins.

A performance can be dictated by many things outside of our control and the simple reality is there are more aspects outside of our control on race day than in our control.

But the CurraNZ capsules make it a simple task that can be controlled easily.

Throughout all of training, backyard ultras, marathons, and ultra marathons including my recent win at the Faultline Ultra 100-mile endurance run, there they are, accounted for, planned out and ready to be consumed right on cue.

The benefits are real, give the body what it wants, and it will reward you in return.

Finally, “Recover”. Ironically this is the part of CurraNZ that links back to understanding weather or not it has “performed”.

One of the most underrated wins you can achieve is the ability to keep showing up, step after step. That begins not at the starting gun of the race but in early hours and late nights over months of training and the biggest and most under-rated part of that aspect is the recovery.

Alongside sleep (which I don’t honestly get enough of), CurraNZ has been a key ingredient to my recovery routine.

Now think about this: We have gone full circle, race performance is measured by goals and targets, CurraNZ is by measured by enhancing the body and we see that through event performance, and the best part yet, that good feeling of shorter recovery times.

CurraNZ has a high antioxidant capacity, they increase vascular health, allowing athletes of all calibres to perform better. They reduce our lactate threshold, which helps combat fatigue and for me personally, I've observed a notable reduction in inflammation.

Before using the purple pills at the end of hard intervals, long races and high effort marathons, I would have notable inflammation in my feet, however now I see next to no signs of that - which means I can keep going day after day.

So, I have been smart enough to experiment with my CurraNZ journey - why not start yours?