The Tank Tracks - Fuelled by Fat

About 2 miles from my home is a rather odd path up a hill with no name. There’s a grand view from the top. Locals refer to this path as The Tank Tracks. This is a reference to the fact that it was created and graded by the army during the second world war.

The path runs for one kilometre in a mostly straight line up an even sloped hill. The grading is largely crumbled away now but most of the path is still firm all year round and this makes it the easiest local path by which to ascend to the ridge of the South Downs.

Two views from almost the same spot taken 66 years apart.

Perhaps it is the quirky name, or possibly its ease of use but this path has become an attraction for runners near and far.  Local running groups meet at the bottom or jog out from the nearby villages of Hassocks, Keymer and Ditchling and use it for a lung-busting hill climb. The route is especially popular with the local group "We Run! Hassocks" and many local runners have experienced their first proper hill run here.

It can take a novice 10 to 15 minutes to climb the 130 vertical meters from the gate at the bottom to the signpost at the top. Elite runners have been attracted to the route as well; the current record of 5 minutes and 6 seconds is held by Maximilian Nicholls from Tonbridge Athletics Club who also holds Strava records for climbing Snowdon!

Before I took up hill running I used to stand on the platform at Hassocks Station and look up at the local hills and think “I should be able to run up there”. You can see the line taken by the Tank Tracks from the platform.  So I took up running and sure enough after a few weeks I was running up there. And I have been running up there for 12 years now and I’ve probably run this path over 100 times since then. It was particularly useful in the winters of 2008 and 2011 when I was training for the 

3 Peaks Fell Run as it allowed me to build up my stamina for mountain running no matter what the state of the countryside. I put down a respectable PB of 7:10 back then.

There are nicer paths by which to reach the South Downs Way, and there are certainly harder ones; the best is probably the path from Clayton Rec to Jack and Jill Windmills, and the hardest is probably the direct route up Ditchling Beacon from the lower car park. However the great appeal of the Tank Tracks is its reliability in all seasons. I’ve run up there in deep snow, in the dark, in torrential rain and in a howling gale and I’ve never had a trip or fall.  This means that it can be used as a marker of how fit you are. Run up the path as fast as you can and compare it to your best, or your worst, or your average.  Many folks are not the least bit concerned by such things and that is fine, but I often am. When considering a target time for a hilly race I will always have a run up the Tank Tracks to judge how strong I am.

I have lost count of the number of times that friends have exclaimed about the wonderful view from the top of the hill by the signpost. You can see for 40 miles in most directions on a good day. It reveals just how wonderful our local countryside is, and it’s only 2 miles from home.

I am certainly not one of the fastest up the Tank Tracks. In fact I am nearly 2 minutes slower than the record holder. But I might have one claim to Tank Tracks fame; I think I might be the only person to have run it twelve times in one morning, and I am sure that I’m the only one to have done this on a zero carb diet..   

And lastly, having mentioned the diet, I am very pleased to say that last week I beat my PB on the Tank Tracks; for good measure I did it on another local hill as well this week.  

Lots of fitness experts suggest that it is not possible to perform at your best in short distance threshold training or racing when burning fat rather than carbs. I like to think when it comes to 2nd rate runners like myself, I may have proved them wrong.

An update on my 50@50 challenges

You may recal that 10 months ago I set myself a goal to complete 50 "challenges" before my 50th birthday in October. These challenges might be personal, with family or with friends. The first was to complete the Beachy Head Marathon on my 49th birthday and the last will be to run the same race the day before my 50th.

Well things have been going reasonably well and I have now completed 34 challenges. Here is a brief summary:          

In November I built a training studio for my wife's personal training busines, Aspire Fitness Solutions. She and her team are now using it for training clients every day.
 

In December I completed the "All you can eat sausage challenge" with my son Cam. Between us we ate 33 Tesco's Finest Cumberland sausages.

I also coaxed over 50 people to join in the annual Boxing Day Run for our running club We Run! Hassocks.

In January I hit 50 consecutive backetball shots with Cam.

In February I ran my first Mud Run. This was hard work and I'm pleased with the result but I paid a lot of money to run around some muddy woods which I can do for free outside my front door; or better still pay £3 to run a traditional XC race and get covered in cowshit.

In March Jane and I skied Les Deux Alpes from top to bottom in one go. We have been wanting to try this for years.
    

In April I ran the Brighton marathon. On LCHF of course. With little training I ran a good race and finished fast and strong. Next year as a V50 this will my target race and I hope to get close to 3 hours again.

In May I took my family to see Tom Paxton. I grew up listening to this man sing and it was wonderful to hear him again in his 50th and last year of touring in the UK. The kids were bored senesless!

In June I hit my target of 30 concurrent Strava course records. Some of them were cheaply won but some I am very proud of.  Jane and I also gave a public talk on the LCHF diet, with me gassing on happily for far too long on my favorite subject of Cholesterol.

In July I went to a music festival for the first time in my life. We saw Hugh Masekela and Van Morisson at Love Supreme in Glynde. A very pleasant evening with good friends.

In August we took the kids on a 3-Week road trip in California. We visited Malibu, San Francisco, Yosemite, Vegas, Grand Canyon, Big Bear Lake and Santa Monica.

A wonderful experience for all 4 of us. I took Molly shopping in Vegas (yes that was a challenge!) and I also snuck in a fabulous run named "50 Switchbacks to the South Rim", an 800 meter climb in Grand Canyon.  

We also spent two days with Jane's cousin Adrian and his wife Karen at their home in Modesto. Ados was one of the early pioneers of ultra distance running. In 1983 he ran the length of the Himalayas in 100 days with his brother Dick. He was also an early "winner" of The Badwater Marathon (his route caused some contraversy though, as he neglected to use the road and short-cutted across the salt flats on skis!). I took a brief run in Death Valley and concluded that anyone trying that particular challenge must be made of different stuff entirely.

I seem to have got my climbing legs back as I followed my Grand Canyon run today with "The Tank Tracks Challenge", 12 repeats of our local hill, amounting to 1500 meters of ascent fuelled by fat. This is the most climbing I have done since the 3 peaks 4 years ago.

There is a lot more to come in the next 2 months and I'll do well to complete the full 50. But even if I do not, I have had a lot of fun along the way.

April

Surprisingly the LCHF diet is easy enough to follow in the longer term. I had expected to get bored of the same meals being repeated, but I didn't. Perhaps the reason is that we are eating the same things as before, only slightly modified.

Where we used to have pasta or rice we will now have a fried mixture of vegetables or some steamed shredded cabbage, or crumbled cauliflower or just a pile of wilted spinach. Perhaps the biggest surprise is how we and the children are all enjoying vegetables so much more, now that we are free to smother them in butter. It's not surprising how serious cooks use so much butter, it tastes great.

I’ll be honest and say that I do sometimes crave a peanut butter sandwich, but not often. I think we are helped partly by the fact that Jane and I love cooking.  Jane is starting to compile a recipe book of our LCHF meals. Notable entries include pork scratchings (a treat that I have refused to east all of my life up until now), roasted chicken skins, and fatballs (you will have to wait for the book to learn what they contain but the clue is in the title). We save the fat from grilled bacon and sausages to fry with and our current favourite pudding is a mixture of Greek Yogurt and Full Cream with a chopped mix of hazelnuts and a bit of preserved ginger. You spotted the sugar there I am sure but there is not much and we are allowed some carbs after all!

I had been looking forward to the London Marathon enormously. I grew up in London and have always watched and wondered what it would be like to run this one. But I picked up a knee injury running the marathon for Sport Relief and it had not gone away. It hurt after just 1-2 miles of steady flat running.  I tried several things but what my knee needed was some rest. So reluctantly I pulled out of London. I want to run consistently this summer and not be injured like I was last year. So I watched it on the telly again.

Now it is the end of April and things are steadily improving. For some reason I was able to run up and down hills if not on the flat. I’ve run the Tank Tracks (a local 140 meter hill) more times than I like to admit and things are now improving on the flat. I’ve also been to several kettlebell sessions (see http://www.aspirefitnesssolutions.co.uk/kettlebell-classes.html for details of the best kettlebell training in Mid-Sussex) and my core strength is improving quickly. 

My diet and training are now both firmly fixed on the Beachy Head Marathon. 
http://www.visiteastbourne.com/events/BeachyHeadMarathon.aspx