I failed Chemistry I.
Can anyone break it down in layman's terms?
Vit C before workout - good?
Vit C after workout - bad?
Simplest advice is to keep it within the moderate range. There's really no evidenced-based reason to exceed 1g/day, however you'll always hear anecdotal evidence in favor of, or against, megadosing. Rather than searching through articles on pubmed and reading abstracts without actually looking at the statistics (sample size, alpha level, power analysis, etc.), it's much easier and more efficient to look through a systematic review database like Cochrane. Experts get paid to go through all the experiments involving say antioxidant supplementation and it's effect on X, carefully examine the statistics, and give a systematic review of the current literature. I think for most antioxidant systematic reviews, you'll find that large enough studies to produce statistically significant data yield neutral results. Typically, positive and negative results are more common in small-sample size studies here.
It's also hard to separate out what's actually effective from anecdotal evidence since most people who megadose one vitamin also take other supplements. For example, someone megadoses C (>2000mg/day) and E (>1100 units/day) and thinks his arteries are better off as a result. Well, Vitamin E can neutralize oxidized-LDL, C may have some function in regenerating E, assisting in lipid transport, functioning as a reducing agent etc., so it's all very connected, but taking it overboard isn't necessarily the answer. The problems I've seen with Vitamin C megadosing are GI distress and urine acidosis, leading to uric acid stones, but the stones aren't very common.
You probably won't see much of an effect at all in terms of muscle mass. The article referenced earlier concludes decreased cellular adaptation from mitochondrial markers, but if there is any gross effect, it will probably be seen in slow twitch adaptation to sustained stress (think stabilizing muscles that are always at work). Hypertrophy will probably not be significantly affected.
