The Great Aerobic Ketogenic Experiment: Week Six

The Great Aerobic Ketogenic Experiment, Week Six is in the books! This will be the final week I evaluate the experiment in such detail. I plan to continue tacking my progress daily, and will start providing monthly updates. It’s a lot of work to track all of these stats, and now that I have a strong baseline, I can watch trends to see how it’s effecting my training.

Training

The training plan for week three was; Monday swim 3350 yards and MAF run for an hour, Tuesday Brick, 1 hour run and 1 hour bike, Wednesday 90 minute MAF bike, Thursday 90 minute MAF run, Friday swim 3350 yards, Saturday long run 24 miles, Sunday bike ride around 3 hours.

This was a good week of workouts, however it didn’t go to plan exactly. Some workouts were short, some were long. I’m okay with this though.

Because of the weather I flopped my weekend activities and ended up riding 80 some miles. It was a great ride and checked out the new bikeway that takes you all the way to Boulder. I was definitely not use to being on the bike for 6 hours, so I know I’m going to have to get more long rides in to get my body used to that time.

My running didn’t seem to increase in speed much this week, however I think I’m still on the right track. I imagine I can pick up some additional speed with intervals that I’ll be doing durning my intensity period.

Diet

I did pretty good with my diet this week. I kept the carbs really low other than on the weekend. It did seem hard to stay in ketosis though. It’s interesting as I’m hovering around ketosis, but sometimes I’m just not dropping in. I’m curious about this, I also wonder if I’m taking in too many calories. While my weight does seem to be going down slightly my body fat seems to remain stable. It’s time to get to race weight, so I need to loose just a little bit of body fat to give me a competitive edge. I might need to reduce my consumption a bit to get me there.

I also had some stomach issues this week. I’m not sure what caused them. It was nothing major, but lasted about 3-4 days.

I mixed up my fuel a little for my long run. I think the new combo worked out well. I took a Vespa before the run, then carried bottle with UCAN SuperStarch, some essential amino acids, electrolytes and Iskiate Endurance (is a unique blend of superfoods and organic ingredients to help provide you with sustained energy during your workouts. This intra-workout will nutritionally support intense physical endurance and help delay muscle fatigue so you can train harder and longer.  Let’s be honest: nothing is worse than running out of gas before the finish line.  Drinking Iskiate Endurance before you get there will help your mind and body stay completely fueled and operating at peak efficiency… no matter what you throw at it.). I really liked the mix and think I’ll continue to use it to fuel efforts over 2-3 hours.

Progress

Sleep was a bit of an issue this week. I was just really busy and unable to get to bed early enough to get enough. I wasn’t extra tired throughout the week, but I know I would have felt better with those extra hours.

Overall I’m happy with how this week turned out even if it didn’t go exactly to plan. I didn’t seem to have steady level of ketosis, but I’m sure my body had stayed in fat burning mode. I felt great other than not getting as much sleep as I would have liked.

One interesting note, is my HRV is getting better and better. I’m not sure what to attribute this to. Doing the right amount of training, and getting adequate rest in conjunction with a clean diet must help. I hope this trend continues as I feel that my HRV numbers should be higher anyway.

I was sore after the long weekend of training, but not so bad I can’t move. I’m excited to see how I’ll perform with the triathlon coming up. Look forward to a full race report.