Marathon training on a Keto Diet?

No, no, and no. Fat is terribly inefficient at being converted to glycogen for fuel for your body. If you are training for a marathon you will need those carbs for energy, and you will use up every bit of them.

You can do it but you will probably be miserable.

joehempel wrote: »

No, no, and no. Fat is terribly inefficient at being converted to glycogen for fuel for your body. If you are training for a marathon you will need those carbs for energy, and you will use up every bit of them.

You can do it but you will probably be miserable.

This.

I disagree. You CAN'T train for a marathon like this. Endurance athletes are not on a keto diet. Don't even consider it.

Congrats on your weight loss!

Note that 6.2 miles is nowhere NEAR 26.2. While 10k is endurance to an extent, its nowhere near a full marathon.

That being said, if this is your FIRST marathon, or you've not gotten at least a solid base of a year or more running long distances with this diet under your belt, don't even try it. You didn't really say above what you did to lose the weight.

Even looking at those websites above the amount of people running the marathon

Hi Meagan,

I'm curious about training for a marathon while on a ketogenic diet as well. I have a little bit of experience and ran a half marathon in 2012 while on a ketogenic diet. I had previously ran a 10K and then signed up for the half marathon with my niece. I was 37 at the time and my niece was 17 and a member of her cross-country track team.

Let me preface this by saying I'm not a natural runner. I grew up as a severe asthmatic and was never able to participate in sports. I started a keto diet a few years ago and lost 50 pounds and when I ran the race I was still overweight at 170 pounds. I got an app and started running around my local park to train a bit. About a month before the race I experienced a devastating loss and stopped training completely. I didn't think I'd be able to do the race, but in the end I decided to give it a go and finish it even if I had to walk a lot of it. So the day of the race I decided to just go slow and steady and run/jog as much as I could. I had a breakfast of full fat cottage cheese and almonds and was in ketosis. My niece ran her own race and I didn't see her until mile 7 when I jogged up next to the poor thing who was green from nausea. I barely recognized her. She is a fit 17 year old runner who hit the wall at mile 7! I walked with her for a mile and then, when she was okay to continue on her own, I started jogging again. I ended up finishing in 2 hours 35 minutes. I never once ran out of energy and was able to finish without stopping. The only thing that happened was that my legs were super tired, most likely because I had only trained up to a 6 mile run before the race. But I finished with a smile on my face and I was so happy to reach a huge goal of mine! My poor niece came across the finish line 20 minutes after me, still green and exhausted.

We are living in a time when more and more endurance athletes are reaping the benefits of low-carb training, and more and more research is becoming available to us. I'm always reading articles about even Olympic athletes finding success in changing to low-carb training. One of my favorite examples is Tim Olson. He runs ultramarathons (100 miles!). He recently won and set a record, knocking 21 minutes off a course record! Amazing stuff. 21 minutes!!!!

Also of note is Professor Tim Noakes (One of the co-creators of the original marathon GU.) He is also the author of "Lore of Running." Check out this recent program that aired on Australian TV. Around minute 7:50 they interview Noakes, who was one of the original doctors to come of up with the theory of carb-loading for endurance sports. In the video he says he was so wrong and apologizes for that notion! He is now seeing evidence that his theories were completely wrong! He now advocates low-carb training for any endurance sport that last more than 2-3 hours, which your goal of running a marathon would certainly be. Here is the link to the video. I hope you can watch the whole thing as it is really interesting. http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/lowcarb/default.htm#

Best of luck and I hope that you are able to find more info to help you with your training. But as long as you are fat adapted, I think you'll find your body is an amazing machine that will happily burn fat for as long as you need it to without the ups and downs of sugar crashes.