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.

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.