playing around with fasted training, and a right pain in the achilles

Right, lets get the achilles out of the way first.  Never had this one before, but of course it comes out of the blue 5 weeks before my major race of the season.  Thinking about it, there were a few signs but I thought it was pointing more calfwards.

After the success of the Yomp, I was on a bit of a high, and was carrying on with the next training progression, longs runs were planned to start drawing down and tempo, hills and speedwork staying in ready for the HM in september. 

So I went and did some hard hill reps (by hill I mean slope, in the Fens) pushing the pace if not the elevation.  I was feeling a twinge in the lower calf, attributing it, correctly to the slope and speed, but not understanding the importance.  Yoga the next day really helped, so I ran again, this time on quite a hilly golf course while I was on a training course, learning to be kidnapped.   Same again, this time extending into the achilles, usual thing, massage and mobilisation exercise, no runing the next day (tuesday as no time).

Back home on the Wednesday, easy 10km planned, got about 2km into it, felt a twinge, by 3.5km it was very painful, ran another 500m and stopped completely.  Only problem, I'm now 4km from home with a duff achilles.  What to do?  Turn roudn and run home again.

Result, inability to walk on Thursday - given a pain scale of 1-10, I was on about 11 or 12.  5 weeks and 1 day to a 40 mile race - oh fcuk.

Quickly try and arrange a visit to my sports injury therapist on the Monday, handily he's relocated to London and I was flying from City that evening and had reasons to be in London that afternoon.  Start aggrissive rehab on my own as well, lots of stretching and eccentric calf raises and leg massages.   Superb therapist, £40 for an hour and 20 mins of excrutiating pain, took it from about 5 to about 3 on the pain scale, gave me some great rehab advice and more importantly some hope that I might be able to stand on the start line on 1st August and get round. 

Having religiously followed the rehab programme, I'm now up to 3 x 15 each side x 3 per day calf raises and some single leg squats, yoga is also helping massively.  Cycling is OK, fitness still good and even managed a 1.8km run.  So now, 13 days later, 3 and a bit weeks to go, I've had two almost pain free days (soon rectified by more calf raises) and am starting to think positively.

Off to Austria next week, no running but I'm planning to hire a bike for at least a couple of days, get up in the hills.

Now for the fasted training bit.

I'm sure there are plenty of you type 1's out there that share my experience of blood sugar dropping off a cliff any time you exercise with just the merest hint of bolus insulin on board.  In my case even though they say the duration of effect is 3 hours, I've crashed this way 5 or 6 hours later when just going out for a quick 10km or so. 

The other aspect of this is of course the need to feed that drop with carbs, adn if you are using carbs, then there's something else you're not utilising and that's fat.  So fasted training.

Essentially training with no bolus at all, pre breakfast, just the merest hint of basal to keeep blood sugar movement in the right direction (you also need a bit of carb metabolism to make the fat burn work) and maximise the fat burn.  Remember after all that in a non pancreatically-challenged individual, your normal metabolism would be heading towards ketosis overnight and allow you to do this easily.  Unless you are in full dietary ketosis however, you're best sticking to steady state stuff early in the morning.

Three tries at this so far, twice on the bike and one on the run, all worked well.

Bike 1
60km in just over 2 hours, pre breakfast
1U basal, waking 4.6,
fig roll 12g  up to 6.2 pre ride;
45min 4.9 10g another fig roll;
90min 4.2 23g;
120min 5.4;
breakfast, reduced bolus
So two hours of exercise on just 45g carbs

Bike 2
only a short one this time 47km in 1 hr 37,
1 unit basal, no breakfast
No carbs at all during the ride
Bolus afterwards reduced by 1/3 again.
Sorry, didn't record any more details this time

Run 21km in 1hr 54min, approx 27min per 5km split

BG at begining of split / carbs
6.7 / 15
5.8 / 8
5.9 / 8
4.7 / 10
4.8 / 10

Total carbs abou 50g in two hours vs the normal recommendation of 60g /hr, also allowed me to reduce bolus at the next meal by about 35%.

It may not work for you, and needs the discipline to get up early and do it, but you may find that it has great benefits