This past weekend I made a stop by Mike’s Mix Recovery Drink
during my long ride on Saturday. I have been representing them for about 18
months and have been using their recovery drink for about 2+ years and if you
read regularly, you know I love the stuff. So while I’ve been involved with
them for a good amount of time, I’ve never gotten a chance to get to know Mike,
Melissa, and the small shop they run the business out of.
They have set up shop in a pretty small town about a 90
minute ride outside of Madison in a very neat old building just off Main Street,
in Mazomanie, WI. Mike gave me the whole run down. He bought the building and
did a nearly ground up restoration and conversion to make the building suitable
for the business. You could tell from his tone that he put in a lot of hard
work, both planning and constructing. But the result is pretty spectacular and
from what I gather is something of a dream come true for him and his family. |
| Mike and me standing in front of his personal bouldering wall |
Walking in you first see the main room, full of exercise
equipment. To help pay the bills, Mike has Mazo’s only fitness center complete
with bikes, treadmills, free weights and even a cool bouldering wall. Mike and
his wife Melissa are both huge fitness people, really big on climbing. But you
take a step through a door to the right and bam you’re in the plant. But
calling it a plant is almost misleading. It’s a pretty small operation, but he
fits everything he needs in.
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| Raw ingredients we getting low. But everything he makes starts out in bags. |
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| Ton's of empty jugs waiting for mix |
In one room he stores all the raw ingredients and the
packaging. Pallets and pallets of empty blank containers. When I visited he was
running low, so the pile of raw mix wasn’t impressive, but if you imagine those
stacks a little higher, you realize how much work just Mike and his family are
getting done. Right next to the raw ingredients room is the clean room. An
interesting fact about Mike’s Mix is that because he doesn’t add all the extra
chemicals, vitamins and minerals found in other mixes, he’s actually considered
a dairy plant because the vast majority of what he’s working with is whey
protein (which is derived from milk). Because of this classification the
standards for hygiene are way higher. So the clean room is sealed. All the air
is filtered and pumped in, and then the air is filtered and pumped out. Inside
the room is just a table and a pharmaceutical grade mixer, they do just about
everything by hand. They even fill the bags by hand.
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| The most expensive piece of equipment in the whole building is the mixer. |
Then in the final room of the building he houses all the
stock. There are 3 shelves full of their 8 lbs bags of recovery drink, flax
seed, whey protein and all the other products they sell waiting to be shipped
out. And tucked away in the corner was table, some boxes and a tape gun for
shipping out individual orders. Scattered around are various sinks, storage
rooms and work stations for applying labels and cleaning up. But all in all the
whole operation fits into the size of a medium sized house.
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| This machine handles the air cleaning |
When the tour was just about done we went back to the main
workout room and chatted. I was amazed at how much Mike knew about the body and
how it uses the fuel we give it. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but he’s
quite the nerd when it comes to it all. And I don’t think he’d be unhappy to
hear that. He’s just a well-educated guy, he doesn’t have a giant research lab
or a team of scientists. It’s clear from using the products that he knows what
he’s doing, and talking to him only deepened that belief. We chatted about some
of my experiences using primarily the recovery drink and the sports drink. I
mentioned that I had some stomach discomfort before I started using his drink
mix and he immediately explained why, and what about the sports drink he makes
keeps that from happening. Without going into too much detail he explained that
in a sports drink it’s all a big balancing act. If you add too much to the mix,
it slows absorption rate. If you add too little, there isn’t enough fuel for
your body. And even beyond that, the carbohydrates need to be the right type
and ratio to make the mix taste good and be easy to digest. Same goes for the
recovery mix. As he put it, the research tells us what we essentially already
knew. You need to get water and fuel into your body. The better that’s accomplished,
the better you will perform, and the quicker you’ll recovery. His products are
focused on just that, keeping you going and making you stronger the next day.
Just before I left, we talked a little about my racing and
riding. Mike and Melissa had a genuine interest in what I was doing. They didn’t
just want to see me race well to promote their product, but to see me succeed.
It’s pretty special to have the support of a company that is behind you like
they are behind me. This goes for all my sponsors, but it was amazing to hear
it straight from Mike’s mouth.
When it was all said and done, I hopped on my bike and took
off for the rest of my ride (with two full bottles of Mike’s sports drink of
course). It was a very cool visit, very inspiring to see how his hard work is
paying off. Mike is developing and producing products that are designed around
the established research, strictly. There isn’t any marketing department telling
Mike that “people like this or that, so put it in there”. He’s making products
that are what your body is asking for with no filler and no bull. You’re paying
for only the best. And as a young cyclist, I’m all about getting my money’s
worth.
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| They must have been making some chocolate mix! |
If you’re interested you can check out The Mike’s Mix website
to order, to get some great smoothie and other recipes, and to read up on the
research that backs his formulas (I especially love that on the research page
he cites over 70 peer reviewed articles, 70!).
Here are some helpful links if you're interest!
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