Before every race of her historic 18-year career, Des Linden has followed the same ritual. She hand-grinds her favorite beans and makes herself a pour-over, enjoying a cup of coffee an hour before the gun goes off.

“There’s not much I’m particular about, other than the coffee,” said Linden, a two-time U.S. Olympian and 2018 Boston Marathon champion, who first tried the stimulating drink as a teenager and has grown into a bean aficionado, starting her own in 2020. “Traveling the world for running, I went to a lot of coffee shops, trying to stay off my feet before races. So, I read a lot of books and drank a lot of good coffee, and then got curious about the best beans.”

Linden is a firm believer in caffeine consumption mid- and late-race, too. “The mind will tell you that you’re out of fuel, but there’s still a ton left in your muscles. Caffeine helps you find it.”

What works for pros, however, doesn’t always translate to the rest of us. To find out if everyone should drink coffee before racing and if we all should be slurping down caffeinated gels during them, I asked an expert.

Magda Boulet has a master’s degree in exercise physiology, is an Olympic marathoner and ultra-trail running champion, and currently is the president of GU Energy Labs, one of the leading sports nutrition companies in the world. Before her current role, Boulet was the senior vice president of R&D at the lab, overseeing the development of new products for the better part of a decade. In short, she knows a thing or two about training, racing, and optimal nutrition.

“Yes, coffee is a big performance enhancer,” says Boulet, with a grin on her face and a coffee mug visible on our Zoom call. This is true across the board, she says. Caffeine can have a positive performance impact whether you’re male or female, young or old, and if you’re competing in activities ranging from a half hour to a half day or more. Specifically, research shows that caffeine from coffee, gels, and other forms provides an over placebo.

RELATED: Caffeine Can Kickstart Your Workout but Beware Its GI Impact

Numerous Possible Benefits

The benefits of caffeine while exercising include thinking clearly, a lower perceived effort, and less fatigue, thanks to its impact on our central nervous system. Continuing to take caffeine throughout a run—perhaps via caffeinated gels or a cup of flat soda at a trail running aid station—keeps you more alert, which can help you avoid tripping and falling, and to make better decisions, especially on long endurance efforts.

Boulet says that even a low dose (1 to 3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, or .5 to 1.5 mg per pound) will have a positive effect. In layman’s terms, this means drinking 1-2 cups of coffee (which average 80 to 100 mg per cup) before a distance race. A higher dose of caffeine can help with a finishing kick or a short and intense workout, as long as you don’t overdo it. Excess caffeine—the tipping point differs for each individual—can cause headaches, anxiety, and elevated blood pressure, among other issues.

Besides the amount of caffeine, Boulet says, “The timing is critical, too.” Caffeine takes about an hour to absorb into our bloodstream and has its largest impact during the first four hours. Therefore, Boulet recommends a cup of coffee an hour before a race, followed by steady and smaller doses throughout longer efforts.

During the race is where caffeinated gels, chews, and drinks come in handy, fitting easily in your pocket and designed to be used repeatedly during exercise, with carbs, sodium, and electrolytes baked in. For new runners, Boulet suggests, after starting with 3 mg/kg (1.5 mg/lb) before a run, adding 1-3 mg/kg (.5–1.5 mg/lb) per hour on longer efforts, which translates to one or two typical gels per hour for most runners.

These suggestions, however, will vary for every individual and the length of a workout or race.

“Certain genetic makeups will change how fast you metabolize caffeine, so an hour is just a starting spot,” says Boulet. “You’ll need to test for yourself. Some people will metabolize caffeine faster than others.” That said, the form of caffeine you choose to ingest—coffee, other drinks, gels, or chews—will not have a significant difference on how long it takes to kick in, Boulet says.

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Choose What You Use Wisely

To make sure athletes are able to get enough caffeine for optimal performance, Boulet and her team developed the , which has 70 mg, or double what some other gels have but still less than the average cup of coffee. Made with green tea extract, it is less bitter than anhydrous caffeine, a synthetic version that most brands use for gels and chews. When Boulet won ultramarathons—including Western States 100 and Leadville 100— she would aim to take a couple Roctane caffeinated gels per hour, especially in the latter half of the race.

The amount of caffeine in gels and energy shots commonly used by runners varies significantly, from 30mg to 200mg. Knowing how much caffeine you’re ingesting before a run will help you optimize the positive impacts and reduce any drawbacks.

Of course, there are downsides to before or during a workout, too. Common side effects from large doses include dizziness, nausea, and stomach issues, especially on longer and harder efforts, where your body is already drained and trying to manage fatigue, heat, and stress.

Boulet says there is no silver bullet, because caffeine’s impact varies with each individual—some may feel jittery with the same dosage that has little effect on another person. So, just like figuring out how your body handles fueling during a race (either by solid foods or liquid fuels), it’s important to test for yourself by experimenting during training. Like training, shoes, fuel—everything—it takes trial and error to figure out what works best for you.

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It was going to be a long night on the Appalachian Trail.

We were more than 2,000 miles into the 2,200-mile affair, a fraction of Maine’s 282-mile section away from its towering end. My little trail family—my wife, Tina, and our convivial Kentucky comrade, SpongeBob—was in a newfound hurry: If we reached a road crossing by 8 a.m. the next morning, we could catch a shuttle to mammoth-sized pancakes and one of our last chances to shower. The road wasn’t far, really, but a slow and steady and stereotypical New England rain hindered our advance up the state’s steep granite slabs. If we were going to catch the van, we were going to have to lose a little sleep.

So, as the afternoon morphed into evening, while most people back home reached for a beer, we took cover in a little wooden lean-to and pulled out a red plastic hourglass tub of hiker speed: . Tina and I shoveled the silica-like crystals into our water bottles, while SpongeBob dumped them into an old peanut butter jar—a technique he’d honed to sip and stroll without spilling. We chugged until we felt as high as , then raced up another mountain, then another. Long after hiker midnight, we finally pulled over, pitched our tents, and ate frozen burritos that had thawed atop our backpacks. The next morning, the pancakes and showers were ours—thanks, almost in full, to our racing hearts and minds, courtesy of Folgers.

If, like me, you’re either a coffee snob who’s entirely willing to pay $5 for a twice-a-day fix, or simply have functioning taste buds, you may have winced, groaned, or even hurled (sorry!) at the mention of Folgers Instant Coffee. If you’re a sommelier, you might describe the “nose” of those dehydrated flakes as pungent glue meets wet hay; if you’re a barista, you might liken the finished product to battery acid, with hints of coal ash and burnt cedar. Folgers Instant Coffee tastes kind of like coffee, but it tastes nothing like good coffee.

Still, after hiking more than 7,000 miles on long trails, and drinking or eating well over a million milligrams of caffeine on my treks, I’m ready to concede that there’s no better energetic vector than this splendid swill. It’s cheap, ubiquitous, light, and mighty—really, the most ultra-convenient form of caffeine available in most gas stations and grocery stores in the U.S. (Yes, not unlike my beloved Pop-Tarts.) But perhaps as important, Folgers Instant Coffee has—like hiking itself—humbled me by teaching me to be a little less particular. Sometimes, all you need is what you have, and you can always get more Folgers.

Name a way to consume caffeine, and I’ve tried it on a trail with fiendish zeal. I’ve chewed fancily flavored gummies, swigged matcha, and eaten protein bars infused with the stimulant. I’ve packed tallboys of Bang and iced coffee out of towns and stuffed vials of Extra Strength 5-Hour Energy into hip-belt pockets. I’ve slurped it down in chocolate-laced GUs and—yes, at least once—popped a caffeine pill.

And then, of course: Coffee. In recent years, there’s been a bloom of niche instant coffees, with some of the world’s best coffee companies trying to revitalize a market segment that ballooned after World War II but has long been associated with awful tastes. You’ve certainly seen the silver sticks of . But , , ? They’ll sell you six cups worth of instant coffee for at least $12. And if you’ve gone through the check-out line at REI and browsed their impulse offerings near the register, you’ve almost certainly wondered whether or not your weekend camping trip required packets of the instant stuff, perhaps from or . I even hiked most of the Pacific Crest Trail with tea bags full of coffee from , a fantastic company from my corner of the South. Some days, it was, as the Folgers’ tagline goes, indeed the best part of waking up: sipping legitimately good coffee from my trusty titanium cup.

But by the end of every long trail, I am back on my Folgers B.S., having caved, picked some up, dumped it into plastic bags, and stuffed it in my pack alongside the rest of my food. (Pro tip: Always double bag instant coffee. If it gets damp and loose, it stains everything it touches.) My transition back to Folgers happens for several reasons, each illustrating the untouchable virtues of this very bad but very functional coffee.

Why I Love Folgers Instant Coffee on Trail

First, there’s simply the question of access; you may have a real taste for Intelligentsia’s Instant Espresso, but they don’t stock that stuff in the reaches of northern California, which defiantly calls itself the State of Jefferson. Unless you’ve timed a refill shipment just right, so that the ostentatious beans are waiting for you at a post office, you’ll need to drink what you can buy.

Second, nearly every type of instant coffee I’ve mentioned thus far is prohibitively expensive. An ounce of Partners or Verve costs $16, Starbucks Via about half that. If you spend more than $9 for eight entire ounces of Folgers Instant, you’re probably in a remote convenience store that really doesn’t mind making you pay for the convenience. A broken budget can kill a thru-hike. But, by trail’s end, Folgers will keep you trucking toward the terminus for pennies per day.

And Why I (Maybe?) Hate Folgers Instant Coffee in General

There’s also much to say for how and why Folgers sucks. The taste like little nuggets of salted caramel or chocolate wonder; each one is equivalent to a cup of coffee. are actually less extreme, packing half the punch, but they’re incredibly delicious, and hard to stop eating. (Ever eaten weed candy that’s dangerously good, so good in fact that you keep munching until you go full white-out? That’s a little how those treats can work.)

But you know when you drink a cup of Folgers Instant Coffee, because it takes effort to get it down, especially when you’ve gone beyond the recommended serving size of “a rounded teaspoon.” It burns and stings and sours, becoming both catalyst for activity and inhibitor of overindulgence. You’ll stop yourself from drinking too much, because it’s too difficult to truly enjoy. You get just buzzed enough, then carry on.

On that rainy afternoon when we huddled inside that Appalachian Trail shelter, I was only a recent Folgers convert, a relative neophyte when it came to these dehydrated flakes. The least pretentious and particular of my crew, SpongeBob was the first to indulge in inexpensive instant coffee excess. (And, while I’m telling secrets, he also developed that unseemly thawed-burrito trick, too.) He would pick on me for picking up the pricey stuff at every outfitter we could find, while I would lampoon his bad taste and the fact that his choice coffee surely paid its farmers less to grow and wash the beans. I took my trail coffee black, with a sidecar of sanctimony.

But as I recently learned, I wasn’t necessarily right. Kim Elena Ionescu is an officer of the , a global trade network that is trying to bolster the international coffee industry, from the pay of producers to the sustainability of supply chains. Her group specializes in, as the name says, “specialty coffee”—that is, the side of the market that is not Folgers or Maxwell House but is instead most . She told me she was not an apologist for big brands, collectively called “commodity coffee,” but that the smaller ones weren’t always better when it came to environmental issues or fair wages, either.

“The idea that commodity coffee comes along with bad labor conditions and environmental degradations, while specialty coffee comes along with good labor conditions and environmental benefits is just not true,” Ionescu says. “I wouldn’t know if I could vouch for a specific product, even from my favorite roaster, without looking into it. You need more information.”

Being humbled is a primary reason I love thru-hiking. Every day, you’re navigating something so much bigger than you, hoping to make it far enough to keep going. And so often, it teaches you that your assumptions—about the landscape, about your strengths, about the people around you—are wrong; that many of your beliefs are just pretenses, or stories you tell yourself to feel justified in your choices. Hiking shakes it out of you. It’s good to have standards, and it’s good to be able to let them go. Folgers Instant Coffee, frozen burritos, and the Appalachian Trail reminded me what we should all remember every day: We’re rarely right about most things.

That said, off trail, I’ll still pay $5 per cup twice a day. All the acrid Folgers in the world can’t stop me.

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Making coffee is perhaps the most sacred camping ritual. This simple luxury adds magic to your already special backcountry morning. There’s nothing like sitting back, watching the sunrise, and inhaling the crisp morning air with a mug of fresh brew.

That said, too often, I have lugged my Aeropress—a brilliant concept and product—into the wild, only to stare at it with brewing contempt as I foresee the faff that awaits me if I’m to get my caffeine hit. After fiddling with my stove in the cold and finding a comfy-ish spot to stoop, I just want my fingers to be warmed and my heart rate to accelerate without any unnecessary admin. And so, forsaking the Aeropress in my pack to allow for precious gnocchi/wine real estate, I’ve become an instant coffee* convert. So far, I’ve been relying exclusively on Starbucks Via (don’t judge me), once a dominant force in the instant category. However, as boutiquey outlets are taking instant coffee to the next level, I’m delighted to say that is no longer the case.

*In case you’ve been living under a rock, instant coffee is basically dehydrated or freeze-dried coffee that’s “reactivated” by water. It’s the perfect enabler for those of us suffering caffeine addiction in an age where convenience is king.Ěý

While warming up for a summer of backcountry adventures, I tried a variety of instant coffee offerings to determine which ones are the tastiest, and those that might have you running to the outhouse. For consistency, I made each with 10 ounces of water and tested them all without milk, cream, or sugar. Despite instant coffee’s predisposition to be terrible (after all, its production process usually involves cheap beans, mass brewing, and bulk dehydration), gone are the days when instant grounds were merely a means to a caffeinated end. I’m happy to report that I’ve found six standouts that are here to be enjoyed, not endured.

First Place

, $19.99 for a pack of 8

This bright and brilliant coffee is made by a specialty coffee roaster in the Rocky Mountains and it is the clear winner. This is shockingly good instant coffee with excellent strength and no bitterness. It felt full-bodied on the tongue and tasted like a true cup of joe—I’d drink this over my French Press at home any day. Even more impressive was the lack of telltale silty residue in the bottom of my cup. First Ascent’s coffee is freeze dried in the same facility the beans are roasted, ground, and brewed. Its only real limitation is price and availability—it’s not as widely available as the others (and not yet available in Canada for our friends up north).Ěý

Runner-Up

$11.99 for a pack of 8

I was immediately impressed with the variety from Waka Coffee. Of the five available (ranging from a medium roast Papua New Guinean to a dark Ethiopian), my favorite ended up being the Colombian medium blend. Other than First Ascent, Waka was the only other brand that truly didn’t taste like instant coffee, rather it tasted like excellent diner drip coffee (which I love). This coffee would stand up well to milk, cream, and sugar, but is also excellent black. Even if you don’t care about which instant coffee you’re drinking, Waka donates 4% of its profits towards providing clean drinking to more than 26 countries.

Honorable Mentions

, $18 for a pack of 6Ěý

In the Venn diagram between instant coffee and the real thing, Verve’s Wilder blend sits firmly in the middle. While I wouldn’t say that the “bright and juicy notes of pomelo are balanced with a sweet sipping experience reminiscent of peach tea,” as the packaging promises, my cup offered richness and an excellent coffee drinking experience. Wilder will resonate well with those who crave knock-your-socks-off style coffee—and even so, there’s an impressive lack of bitterness. This coffee would be perfectly complemented with cream, milk, or sugar but hits all the right notes black, too.Ěý

, $9.99 for a pack of 8

This was a solid, smooth, and well balanced cup of coffee. Alpine Start’s Original had good strength, and while it had no notable flavor profiles, it also didn’t offer any astringency. If you’re someone who consumes coffee as fuel and cares less for complex tasting notes, this is the cup for you. I was also a fan of the instant Dirty Chai Latte, though I would have preferred it a bit sweeter, and those packets are about double the size and weight of the Original Blend packets.Ěý

, $15 for a pack of 10

Although Four Sigmatic was the weakest of all the instant coffees I tested, it boasted a tasty, earthy, flavor profile that I enjoyed. It’s the perfect blend if you want to consume cup after cup without risking a sprint for the outhouse. As a bonus, the ingredient list includes functional mushrooms like lion’s mane and chaga for enhanced mental focus.

, $1.99 for a pack of 10

As with most things TJ’s does, the grocery chain also does instant coffee well. This cuppa is not only well priced, it’s also great for when you want something a little naughty on the trail. These 3-in-1 packets of cream, sugar, and coffee are a smooth and delicious treat for your camp mornings. They don’t pack the same caffeinated punch as the other instants in this category, but they are a pleasure nonetheless.Ěý

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According to research and new innovations in fabric design, coffee can now speed you up two ways—with pre-run sips and mid-run wicks.Ěý

We’ve known that caffeine has long been heralded as a performance enhancer by those who desire a high level of focus, and recent studies show that caffeine helps those on the move by stimulating muscle fibers and mitigating fatigue.Ěý

But with roughly 1 billion people drinking coffee every day—which results in about 2 billion cups consumed daily—the weight of these coffee beans totals roughly 22 billion pounds per year. Unfortunately, most spent coffee grounds end up in landfills, where they release methane, a harmful greenhouse gas.Ěý by incorporating coffee grounds and charcoal into running apparel, for environmental and microbial benefit. But how does it work, exactly?ĚýĚý

Drinking Coffee, Sure. But Wearing Coffee?

First, it turns out that wearing coffee can actually help you stink less, as roasted coffee is a natural deodorizer. Caffeine contains nitrogen, Ěý

, one of the leading companies creating coffee-infused fabrics today, first came to the idea when the founder’s wife noticed a coffee shop customer picking up recycled grounds at a cafĂ©, and jokingly told her husband he should put coffee in his clothes, so he wouldn’t smell so bad. After four years of research and development, they created ł§.°ä˛ą´ÚĂ© fabrics.Ěý

The process is relatively simple: When coffee is brewed, roughly 0.2 percent of the bean, by weight, is used. ł§.°ä˛ą´ÚĂ© takes the other 99.8 percent of the grounds and, using a low-temperature, high-pressure process, combines the grounds into the yarn surface of a polyester filament. This turns the yarn that had previously been 100 percent synthetic into a blended fiber, thereby reducing overall polyester in the production chain. In addition to odor absorption, ł§.°ä˛ą´Úé’s coffee-infused apparel has other performance benefits, including the ability to dry out almost twice as fast as cotton, while offering natural UV protection.Ěý

Companies Incorporating CoffeeĚý

Several performance brands have begun experimenting with coffee-infused fabrics. Ministry of Supply, , uses 4 percent ł§.°ä˛ą´ÚĂ© fabric in the liner of its . Their , while not specifically a running sock, benefits from ł§.°ä˛ą´ÚĂ©, with 40 percent coffee-infused recycled polyester paired with cushioning and ventilation that perform admirably on the trail.Ěý

RELATED: Can’t Stand Black Coffee? Adding Milk May Decrease Inflammation.

La Sportiva, the Italian brand known for its extensive array of alpine footwear, has partnered with ł§.°ä˛ą´ÚĂ©, and they recently introduced coffee fabric in its . Jake Burgart, an Associate Product Manager at La Sportiva, noted that customers have begun to demand more sustainability-forward apparel, and they’ve been excited to lean into recycled and low-impact products. When a fabric innovation increases both performance and sustainability, it becomes kind of a no-brainer.Ěý

“You don’t get the shiny plastic bag feel that you can sometimes experience with a pure polyester t-shirt,” noted Burgart. “Polyester is great in the sense that it can wick really quick and keep you dry, but if you get wet, you get that sneaky lamina layer because the fiber, at a base level, is plastic. What I found with the ł§.°ä˛ą´ÚĂ© shirt is that I can’t sweat it out too much.”

Another company that sources fabric from ł§.°ä˛ą´ÚĂ© is (the coffee-infused is one of Trail Runner Editor in Chief ZoĂ« Rom’s ). Co-founder Monica DeVreese explained that the impetus behind this decision was the company’s desire to use more sustainable materials in its products and reduce its environmental impact. (She also noted that having coffee aficionados on staff didn’t hurt.) “Our team members are passionate coffee lovers, and incorporating this beloved beverage into our apparel just seemed like a natural fit,” said DeVreese.Ěý

Coffee CharcoalĚý

Brice Partouche, founder and creative director of the French running apparel brand , realized the potential for coffee-infused fabrics in 2017.Ěý

“At the time, we were already big advocates for the use of natural materials, such as organic cotton and pure merino wool, in the performance space,” said Partouche. “The lean towards coffee charcoal happened when we were looking for a more sustainable and natural approach for our baselayer systems. Through a lot of testing and experimentation CoffeeThermal was born.”

Satisfy partnered with the Israeli nylon company to develop CoffeeThermal. Leftover coffee charcoal, made from recycled coffee bean residue, is integrated into the yarn.

“This multidimensional stretch fabric provides compression and is knitted with coffee-charcoal infused fibers making it naturally heat-retentive, bacterial, and odor resistant. NILIT®-HEAT Coffee Thermal uses waste product from coffee production,” says the website for Satisfy’s CoffeeThermal base layer.Ěý

RELATED: SixĚýCoffees that Are Supercharged for Athletes

In order to maximize sustainability, Partouche noted that the fabrics developed with this technology are made in France and Italy, keeping them as close to the overall production and operations chain as possible. The fabric is also unbleached and undyed, to maintain its unique coffee color.Ěý

“I think natural and sustainable technologies are the next big thing in the running and outdoor spaces,” Partouche said, pointing to Satisfy’s line of . “Runners have been told for decades that they can’t run in cotton and have to wash their running gear after every run. We can’t disagree more.”Ěý

As with Ministry of Supply, La Sportiva, and rabbit, the pivot towards coffee-infused apparel is as much about sustainability as it is functionality and performance. To that end, I asked DeVreese if drinking coffee and then wearing coffee will actually make you faster. Her response, though admittedly not backed by any research, perfectly captured why coffee may indeed be the next big thing in running performance apparel. “Well, duh!”

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