I was out for a walk today, chatting away. We can do that now Lockdown has been eased, we can see people outside now. We came to a “hill”, as Pete would call it, it was “a slight incline”. To me it was a Hill a big hill. until recently i would have basically crawled up the hill, gasping for breath, complaining every step of the way.
Recently though I have changed tact with this sort of thing, now I’m storming up the hills ( or slight inclines depending on your view) to get to the top as quickly as possible. My reasoning is, it’s going to suck if I go fast or slow … it will suck less, but for longer if I dawdle up the hill, if I storm up it will suck more but for less time.
This got me thinking, which is the least sucky way of getting to the top of a hill. This led to a late night of google, reading lots of different articles, and papers on the subject, I didn’t really get anywhere. Untill, I found an old forum post of someone effectively saying, “dont storm up, but go as quick as you can, if you go too fast, you’re going to deplete your glycogen stores and then you’re gonna have a bad time.”
Then it clicked, one word, Glycogen. Recently I’ve started storming up hills, but before that, they sucked. BEFORE i started a keto diet it sucked. Now this isn’t a blog post about the Keto Diet, but the one line summary for people that dont know. Keto, or Ketosis is where you restrict your consumption of carbohydrates in your diet, so your body uses Ketones instead of glycogen for energy. Before i started living a keto lifestyle, i was overweight, and had zero motivation to walk up a hill. But here i am now, power walking up hills to get to the top as fast as i can.
Yes I was power walking uphill, and by this point I had long depleted any glycogen in my body, and was running on ketones made from my fat reserves (of which I have plenty). But my body has been fat adapted for over 2 years now, and very used to it, so i have no problems.
So i think the form post i found was right, but it needs an amedum. “dont storm up, but go as quick as you can. If you go too fast, you’re going to deplete your glycogen stores and then you’re going to have a bad time. Unless you’re fat adapted – in which case storm away.”