A Big LCHF PB in the Beachy Head Marathon

Nearly two years ago I made a big change to my life. I adopted a diet that had me fuelling my life and my running with fat, not carbohydrates. The low carb high fat diet is hugely beneficial for treating type 2 diabetes but it also has benefits for the distance runner.

There have been positives and negatives along the way but the positives, particularly with regard to my health have now made the diet a permanent change.

There was a big challenge too. Could I prove that it is possible to run just as fast fuelled by fat as I could when fuelled by carbs?

I thought I had reached a peak in performance a few years back. I ran a 3:06 flat marathon, I ran a sub 4-hour 3 Peaks and I ran the Beachy Head Marathon in 3:36:30  5 years ago. That last race was amazing, I was on top form and I came 24^th. I was very proud of that achievement and I thought at the time that I would never better it.

But I’d heard a lot about how the low-carb high-fat diet can enable you to perform better and better the longer you stick with it. The science here is simple enough, we adapt to oxidize fat as a fuel source more efficiently over time, to the point where we can perform at perhaps 80% of our VO2 Max burning mostly fat. I knew that If I could do that then perhaps I could still get close to that Beachy Head time.

Well today I did just that. I’ve had an almost injury-free year that has enabled me to prepare perfectly for today. I ran a PB in a tough 20 miler a fortnight ago. I had a scare a week ago when I couldn’t run at all because of an odd knee problem but I rested up and this morning I felt great. The weather was perfect and so were the conditions.

I won’t bore you with a big description of the race, I wrote a long post about it last year. But for the record, today I knocked 6 minutes off my unbeatable PB!  I came 21^st in 3:30:39.

Tomorrow I will be 50 years old and I am entering my fifties knowing that I am fitter and faster than ever before. 

RUN ON FAT - The Movie

So after investing in the production of the new Cereal Killers film RUN ON FAT it was with great anticipation that we watched the film for the first time last night (a few hours ahead of the world premier in San Francisco).

We were not disappointed. The film closely followed Sami Inkinen and Meridith Loring during their preparations for and performing the Fat Chance Row, a 2400 mile row from San Francisco to Hawaii, powered primarily by burning fat. Sami is a world Ironman champion and adopted the LCHF diet when he realised he was becoming a diabetic.

Interspersed with this account was expert commentary from Shephen Phinney and Tim Noakes, both world experts on sports nutrition. Further comment was provided by several elite athletes who have switched to fat burning primarily for health reasons.

One big message from the film was that elite performance has only been measured in terms of race performance, never in terms of health outcomes. Being fit does not prevent you from getting diabetes, in fact the risk is raised by high consumption of carbohydrates.

While the documentary concentrated primarily on elite performance there were enough references to public health to remind us that the big issue at stake here is not whether we can break a PB running on fat but whether we can reverse the catastrophic failure in dietary advice that has led to millions of people suffering unnecessarily with obesity, diabetes cancer and other diseases.

After a year on LCHF I can vouch for the significant improvement in my health (see my earlier post on ulcers), I am enjoying excellent food, training as hard as I ever did and enjoying the challenge of what lies ahead.

Along with the first Cereal Killers movie this is an inspiring pair of films and I would urge anyone with an interest in public health and running to watch them.

And if you want to come to the UK Premier of the film then we are hosting it, in Hassocks on Wednesday 4th February.