Review: Nuun (Kona Cola)

One thing about me is that I like to immerse myself in whatever I'm obsessing about at any given moment. As such, I follow a number of running blogs (see my Blogroll). Recently, those bloggers ran Hood-to-Coast as a team, sponsored by Nuun. It's pronounced "noon," by the way. I didn't know that until recently.

I'm a particularly sweaty individual; if I'm not careful, I could end up in a world of hurt after a tough workout. In fact, that's happened to me before. I'm always on the lookout for ways to hydrate smartly. Gatorade G2 is great, but a little bit sweet/salty after a long run. So after seeing all these great ladies talk about/run for Nuun, I decided to give it a try.

I love & miss Coca Cola greatly, so I figured the first flavor I'd try should be Kona Cola. And this is what it looks like:

Old packaging, same product

The tube has a lot of information on it, like this:

Directions!

Nutritional Factoids

When you open the tube, the safety seal is popped. This made me feel a bit better about consuming something that had come shipped in an envelope (via Amazon.com, not Nuun):

Popped seal, for your safety!

At this point, I decided to smell inside the tube. Just to see if/what the tabs smell like. Answer? Gummi Coke Bottles... which I also love, but smelled a bit too sweet for something I was about to drink. The most important thing, though, was the tabs didn't smell gross.

Now, how to drink it? I'd read that Kona Cola Nuun + fizzy water = kinda like Coke. As a fizzy water addict, it made sense to me! I grabbed a 0.5L bottle from the fridge & went to work. Just one problem, though:

Tablet is too big for the bottle!

For other people, this might be too big a challenge to overcome. Not for me! Since there's a split right down the center, I pulled out a knife & cut the tab in two. It made a powdery mess of my countertop, but not so much that I wouldn't do it again.

The real reason I wouldn't take this course of action is this:

Kona Cola + Fizzy Water = TOTAL MESS!!

When I dropped the half-pieces into the bottle, it was a complete disaster! It fizzed over... waaaaay over, kind of like at the end of a Diet Coke/Mentos video. It doesn't sound like much, but I was super annoyed at my own stupidity. If I'd thought about it, I'd have seen that one coming.

Once it was done overflowing, I was able to finally taste Kona Cola Nuun for the first time. And you know what? It tasted like a gummi Coke bottle! Which is to say, it tasted exactly like how it smells. Mr. X tried it & freaked out; clearly not a flavor for him. I thought it was okay, but after the fizz-over, there was no carbonation left. So all I had was flat, previously-fizzy water that tasted like gummi Coke bottles. Is that bad? No, not at all. But it wasn't quite what I expected. In truth, the Kona Cola is a bit sweet for me... which is saying a lot because I love sweets.

I've got more Nuun on the way, so I'll have the opportunity to try out different flavors... with less fizz-over. I'm particularly looking forward to trying Strawberry Lemonade. I've got a 16-miler on Sunday, which'll be my real test: me vs. Nuun for (re)hydration. I'll keep you posted!