[Discussion] Fat adaption: ran my last marathon of the season a week ago taking in ~100 calories
I went paleo more than a year ago to help with endurance running. I believed I was struggling with “bonking” after the 2-3 hour point in my runs (and bike rides back when that was my main sport). I’d heard reducing my carb intake and training my body to prefer fat-as-fuel could work.
I learned something I didn’t expect as a result: my main enemy to endurance may not have been bonking at all. Instead, I seem to have been suffering hyponatremia. To save you a click it just means having too much water and not enough salt/electrolytes in your system.
I was guzzling water. That can be seriously dangerous and some argue worse so than dehydration for endurance events. I ran three marathon+ distances this summer: a 50K trail run, a 27 mile trail run and a 26.2 mile city marathon. For each event my general intake of food and liquid has gone down. I estimate I took in about 1,500 calories, 1,000 calories and 100 calories for each event respectively. That last count was me testing a theory: was I taking in calories mindlessly in the previous two events? Was I just following the “take X amount of calories per mile” advice when I didn’t need to?
What I can say is even on only 100 calories ingested during the event (between a few gulps of watered-down sports drink, a handfull of grapes and a single orange slice) I never experienced the bonk. I already started feeling the benefits of drinking in moderatio and hyponatremia is no longer a problem so this was the final test on what effect calories has.
It’s really fascinating to me: the body has an amazing ability to use stored body fat as fuel even when running for 4 ½ hours. My actual performance in the race ended up being not what I’d hoped but that’s more to do with pushing myself too hard the last two months. I was nursing a bit of a twinge in my achilles heel and during the race I think I pulled something in my quad in that same leg. That meant having to walk the last two miles despite having plenty of energy and being on-pace for a personal best for most of the way before that. Argh! Oh well, next year.
For more information on what food I did take in before the race: I had two helpings of my own personal beef-with-broccoli recipie on two big servings of rice the night before. That morning I just had 3 eggs fried in olive oil then a cup of coffee with heavy whipping cream. From all that I’ve read my body will be able to, maximum, store enough carbs for maybe the first ½ of that 4 ½ hour run I did. The other ½ was all fat burning. Never felt weak, hungry or tired. Just frustrated! (leg is recovering nicely).
Just some info for anybody out there curious about fat adaption and low carb for endurance. It does, indeed, seem to work.
Edit: I will say that my next experiments will be with taking in more calories and seeing what kinds of positive impacts that has on performance. All this test was to prove to myself was I didn’t expicitly need ingested calories during the race to save off bonking.
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