I've let my oldest try a sip of my coffee once or twice, but I took the easy route and had him sip from it when I had a mocha and the whipped cream on top was still plentiful and fresh. I'm probably giving him a mistaken impression of coffee really tastes like.

For me, the distaste for coffee changed in my late teens. I attribute it to one too many long weekends working at a scouting event at a camp, with late nights, early mornings, hard work, and a lounge full of old scouters sipping coffee during breaks from the young scouts.

In time, I joined that elite little club. Both in desiring the breaks, and in the appreciation of the acquired taste for coffee.

Since then, I've been a pretty rabid coffee drinker. Depending on where I am - home or on the road - I'll have anywhere from one to five or so cups of coffee a day. Sometimes it's just simple brewed. Sometimes it's espresso. Sometimes it's a more fancy espresso-based drink. But I certainly drink my fair share.

So I was more than pleased to see some worthwhile research coming out of the University of Illinois. (Via Primer: Coffee Can Provide a Better Workout.)

From the Primer article:

"We are all familiar with the fact that coffee is a wonderful way to start your day, but it may have even more health benefits when it comes to exercise. A health professor at the University of Illinois found through first-hand experience that caffeine offered him an edge as a competitive cyclist. Prof. Robert Motl discovered that the caffeine in coffee provided the ability for himself and his fellow cyclists to train even harder when competing.

"Through extensive research, he began to find that caffeine had the ability to block adenosine in the body, which can directly reduce pain and soreness related to a hard workout. Through a number of related studies, the conclusion was found that caffeine in coffee can help to increase intensity in exercise and reduce post workout muscle soreness."

So that explains the correlation between the serious bicyclists in Edwardsville and the clientèle at Sacred Grounds.

The data suggests that drinking about 2 cups of coffee prior to your workout will reduce pain and soreness by nearly 50%, allowing you to work out harder and longer, since you'll be less sore.

Further, the article points out that recent data also suggests coffee has much higher antioxidant content than once thought, so it even holds its own against much-praised green tea for protecting your body against free radical damage.

Add to that the fact that "coffee is suspected to have the potential to prevent Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, colon cancer, and cirrhosis of the liver," and coffee starts to look like more and more beneficial of an elixer.

I'm pretty thankful that those old scouters got me into coffee when they did.