A Passion for Running

Welcome to the home of Mark aka The Running Blogfather – a 40 year-old dad, husband and marathon runner who's beaten injury and is on the comeback trail!

switchin’ to fat burning

passion for running category: running on Tuesday, June 19 2007

Related to today’s post, you may want to check out the debate Steve Runner and I have going on about fueling at CRN.
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Today marked the first day of “the big switch”. While training for the Red Deer Marathon, most of my running was done as a commute from work to home (I was bussing to work).

But, as cold as Edmonton winters get, we get equally hot summers. There’s no way I’m doing 70+ miles a week in mid-day heat so I’m switching things around – as of this morning, I’ve started running to work and bussing home.

There are advantages and disadvantages:

Disadvantages:

  1. I have to wake up earlier.
  2. I’ve never felt very good running in the morning (unless I’ve been up for 3 hours before I start)

Advantages:

  1. My run is done early in the day
  2. Running has even less impact on my family
  3. Assuming I don’t get up three hours early and eat breakfast, it will teach my body to burn fat more efficiently

As I said, this morning was my first morning run and, as expected, I did not feel very good doing it. It was clear to me that I started the run low on glyogen. That’s good. That’s what I want. But it sure wasn’t easy.

It was the slowest I’ve run those nine miles in quite some time – about an 8:45 min/mile pace. It’ll be interesting to see how much I can improve my body’s ability to burn fat.

I’m looking forward to getting Andrew’s instructions – I’m about to start training for Regina!




8 Comments »

77515

Comment by Lei

Tuesday June 19, 2007 @

I also run first thing in the morning, for convenience. However I’m also interested in losing fat. What concerns me is, I’ve heard that muscle is lost too when you ‘run on empty’. What’s your take on this?

77519

Comment by Mark

Tuesday June 19, 2007 @

Lei,

I think that certainly can happen. However, there are two strategies you
can use to reduce/eliminate the possibility.

1. run slow. when you run at a low heart rate, your body automatically
moves into fat-burning mode. If you run too fast for your level of
fitness, you will burn off protein – i.e. metabolize protein (which comes
from muscles).

2. adopt the strategy slowly and increase low/no fuel mileage slowly. You
can do a couple of things around this. One thing you can do is alternate
between fueling days and non-fueling days so your body learns to burn fat.
Another thing you can do is gradually reduce the fueling you do. And
third, you can start with low mileage and no fuel and gradually increase
the distance.

Does that help?

77524

Comment by 21stCenturyMom

Tuesday June 19, 2007 @

I like to workout in the morning because if I don’t something else in the day is sure to take my time. If I run or swim or cycle first thing I win!

77532

Comment by Bella

Tuesday June 19, 2007 @

I luv morning runs, but can’t always seem to drag myself out of bed. I’m going to have soon b/c I don’t like putting up with the heat blast too.

77589

Comment by Bruce

Wednesday June 20, 2007 @

I hate early starts too. Good luck with adapting to the switch.

77590

Comment by jank

Wednesday June 20, 2007 @

Ah, long and slow. It’s what I should do, as I’m trying another weight loss year, since there was NO progress last year. No gain, but no loss.

It’s just that running FAST is soo much fun!

77611

Comment by Susan

Wednesday June 20, 2007 @

I’m a morning runner too . . . but a slow one.

I’m doing some videos this week of me running . . . I’ll send them along soon for your professional analysis.

77758

Comment by Lei

Saturday June 23, 2007 @

Mark,

Thanks for your reply. What you say (point 1) is interesting, i.e. that low-intensity exercise favours fat loss, and high-intensity exercise favours muscle loss. But what about (as an extreme example) fasting for a day and doing no exercise? Essentially, that’s very-low-intensity exercise that lasts for a long time. Yet we all know that fasting is a brilliant way of losing muscle tone. So I’m not sure that fat-burning is due to exercise intensity.

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