Run It. Ride It. Lift It. Do It All Again Tomorrow.

You know the move. One hand on the rail, sideways, one step at a time. The ride felt great right up to the first climb of day two. Leg day was Tuesday, and sitting down is still a project on Thursday. The trail went up for three hours, and your quads only remember the way down.

• Stairs taken sideways the morning after the long run
• Heavy legs on day two of the ride weekend
• Lowering onto a chair two days after leg day
• Quads that remember every switchback of the descent

Nobody wants to train less. You'd just like the rest of the week back.

Ask around a training room and you'll hear about tart cherry. Northumbria University, home to some of the early cherry research, reports that Montmorency cherry juice is widely used by Premiership football and Rugby Union teams, and by teams in the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball as part of their recovery routines. Mostly as juice.

Then researchers tested the freeze-dried powder.

• Endurance athletes: in a 10-day study at Texas A&M, 27 endurance-trained athletes took 480 mg a day of freeze-dried CherryPURE tart cherry powder around a half marathon. The cherry group reported 34% less quad soreness before the race than the placebo group. (Levers et al., 2016; funded by the ingredient's supplier.)
• Lifters: in a second 10-day study, 23 resistance-trained men took the same powder and did 10 sets of 10 back squats. They reported significantly less quad soreness 24 hours later than the placebo group. (Levers et al., 2015; the ingredient's supplier provided the powder.)

Orchard Tart Cherry is made with that same CherryPURE powder, 750 mg per serving. Teams mostly pour the juice. We went with the freeze-dried cherry the researchers tested, in two capsules a day.

A tart cherry keeps its deep red color in the skin, the same way a blueberry does. So that's where we start.

• Skin first: CherryPURE powder is made from USA-grown Montmorency tart cherry skins, the pigment-rich part of the fruit.
• Freeze-dried: the cherries are gently freeze-dried, and heat never touches them. It takes about 50 pounds of cherries to make one pound of powder.
• The real amount on the label: 750 mg of cherry skin powder in every two-capsule serving. Lots of cherry bottles print a huge "equivalent to" number that counts the whole fruit, pulp and pits included. Ours is the actual amount in your capsules. The studies above used 480 mg a day.

Rounding out the Lumberjack Strength Blend: 50 mg of organic celery seed, traditionally paired with tart cherry, and 10 mg of organic bilberry.

Most of the big tart cherry recovery research used juice. Tart cherry juice studies with marathoners and distance runners found faster strength recovery and less post-race soreness, usually on a glass or two a day.

Juice is a fine habit if you love it. It's also sugary, it needs the fridge, and twice a day gets old. The two powder studies are why we went with capsules: Montmorency tart cherry, freeze-dried, two capsules, zero sugar. It fits in a daypack as easily as a gym bag.

If this sounds like your week, we made it with you in mind

• Runners with a Sunday long run on the calendar
• Riders who sign up for both days of the weekend
• Lifters who still never skip leg day
• Hikers who'd rather spend Sunday on the trail than on the couch
• Tart cherry juice fans who'd like it without the sugar