The Great Aerobic Ketogenic Experiment: Week Two

Wow, two weeks into the great aerobic ketogenic experiment! The entire process as been extremely informative. Other than sore fingers from the constant glucose monitoring, the testing is going well. Preliminary results are gonging the way of my hypothesis. I’m getting faster and becoming more ketogenic. There have been a few abnormal results in my test, not sure it it’s just an anomaly or if there is more to it. We shall find out in time perhaps.

It’s great to have a week where you hit all your marks, and this week was no exception. While diet and sleep could have been slightly better, the training was on point.

Training

The training plan for week two was; Monday swim 2700 yards and run one hour, Tuesday brick run/bike 1 hour each, Wednesday Bike 2 hours, Thursday Run 90 minutes, Friday swim 2700 yards, Saturday run 20 miles, Sunday swim clinic. I also threw in an extra bike on Sunday since I was feeling so good after my run.

All went as planned. It was actually a great week of workouts. I felt good, and made great strides towards my goals.

I had incredible improvements in swimming this week. Shaving nearly 10 seconds off my 100/yd time. I attribute this to the swim clinic that I’m taking. I was really impressed to see these time increase so dramatically.

I didn’t get a lot of cycling in this week, but was able to get outside twice, which is a nice change of pace. I feel the trainer is more disciplined, but I enjoy the rides so much more when the are outdoors.

It was a great week of running. I improved my MAF pace on all my runs and felt great out there. I completed a 20 mile run on Saturday and felt great during and after the run. While my overall speed did not increase on this long run, I think it is helping me make great progress on the endurance aspect. In 3 weeks I’ll push myself out to 22 miles. It will a real test to see how my body does.

Diet

I was very happy with my diet this week. Friday, though, was another story. I had planed a great high fat day, but ended up going off the rails a little. I’ve been treating myself to a heavy cream latte at Starbucks on Fridays. Unfortunately, this week they got my order wrong. I’m not sure if it was half and half or whole milk, but it was not heavy cream. I was really disappointed, that’s at least 15 grams of carbs. I did manage to stay in ketosis though. I was very hungry all day though, not sure if it was the lactose from the latte, or perhaps from the swim. I always seem to be extra hungry after a swim. I think it might have to do with being cold in the water.

My ketones dropped a lot over the weekend. I think much of this has to do with a higher carb intake. Some of which can be attributed to UCAN SuperStarch. My plan is to really focus on diet again next week to make sure I can continue the nutritional ketosis trend.

Progress

The numbers are working in my favor. While the MAF pace chart is not a direct downward trend I can see the progress is going the way I want it to go. Obviously I slow down with longer runs, which is to be expected.

I had struggled a little with ketosis towards the end of the week though. My numbers seemed to be going down a bit, and my blood glucose was going up. I found this slightly odd. I had been getting very good readings earlier in the week. I didn’t see a significant change in my diet so I’m not exactly sure what to attribute the change to.

Next week starts a micro intensity period which will last two weeks. Durning this time I’ll not be using MAF exclusively. I will do HIIT and strength training. I’ll continue to stay in Ketosis, but it will be very interesting to see how intensity effects all of this. I will also be doing some testing to establish my Critical Power for running and my FTP in cycling. I’ve not tested CP before, but I hope to see a major improvement in my FTP. I will also be competing in two 5k’s where I hope to set a new PR. It’s all going to be great to see if this is possible with this type of diet and training.