Day8 - Week1 is in The Books

Week1 is in the books and I made it through the week (including the weekend) without beer, alcohol, and consuming many carbs. I managed to get in a little over 6 hours of saddle time (more on this in a minute.) The toughest part of the week was getting over two huge hurdles. 1. How am I ever going to force myself to eat this much fat  2. I'm not okay with my bike performance suffering for a bit. Once I got over those two things I was at ease with the decision to go high fat low carb (HFLC.) 

After week one I'm down to 235 this morning. Most of this is supposed to be water weight. That's 8lbs, seems to go along with everything I read about the first week. Measuring around the center of my equator (waist at the belly button) I went from 41.5" last Monday to 40" this morning. I can feel a difference in my work pants already, there's no micro-muffin top this morning. 

Energy wise and side effect wise, I'm still getting small headaches but these are easily fixed with some water and electrolytes.  (I'm using Elete for this.)  This is reported normal as your body makes the switch from carbage to ketones. I'm hopeful I adapted this week but it could take 2-3 weeks. From what I read, unfortunately, the more athletic you are the longer it can take. At the same time, the lower carb eater you normally are, the faster it can happen. I'm athletic but also eat lower carbs typically. Today I have energy (less than what I had two weeks ago) though I do find myself laying around more. I'm not sure if this is because my energy is down or because I'm just bored with not being able to drink or cram food in my face? All in all, I'm not struggling with energy or the side effects, my transition seems mild compared to others.

Riding this last week has been disappointing though when I look at the numbers from the workout, it hasn't been that bad. Everything I've read and talked with others says my performance is going to go down until I adapt and then it could still be down a little while after that. This is the hardest thing for me to accept. I rode in my typical tues/thurs pre-ride last week and I could feel I wasn't right. Tues a thurderstorm forced us to go home early before the group met up. Thurs I opted to ride solo because I could feel I just didn't have that punch I'd need to ride normally. My HR was a little higher at endurance and tempo paces. It was through the roof at threshold and above. This is not normal for me. Also I didn't have that ability to stay on the gas like I used to have, at least I didn't feel like I did. 

I say I didn't feel like I did BUT when I was on the trainer in the lab on two different occasions I said "lets just hold it wide open" and I was able to hold 450 watts for 2 minutes. On all my rides I averaged 230-250 for the ride so it wasn't that bad. I'm not sure what's going on here, is this real or placebo because I read that my performance would drop? I really don't know. I will say I feel really different now when I'm on the bike. 

Different in that my breathing is different. Even at 170-180bpm, my breathing is noticeably slower and deeper. I'm probably breathing half as many breaths as before - maybe not half but it's noticeably less. It'll be interesting to see how this continues. I read that a lot of the hard breathing athletes do when they're working is from the lactate their body is producing and trying to get rid of. It says the breath is where some lactate is expelled. I haven't confirmed that but it could explain why my breathing has changed. I'll dig in to this later in the week.

I seem to sweat a lot more right now when riding. Not sure why but sitting in the lab I was puddling up the floor with endurance and light tempo work. Turning it up to zone6 made streams of sweat come off of me. Going to have to look in to this one too.

I was going to write-off Track Regionals this weekend but based off reviewing my training logs for the week, I may go just to see if I am indeed powerless or what. I'll decide later this week. 

A lot of the info on the web about HFLC and endurance is not based on racing cyclist but rather triathlon, runners, and t-shirt ride cyclist. It's hard to take information from someone who rides but doesn't race (the two are completely different) so I don't know how much of these things I'm reading hold truth. Because of that, I will document my findings so maybe someone can benefit.

A week with out beer wasn't too bad. After taking some time away and paying attention to my habit or desire to have one, I think the desire to drink may just be a bad habit that I've programmed in to my everyday. I really don't crave a beer, I just go for it as a habit. When I notice I want a beer it's not so much that I "want a beer" but rather it's just something that I do at that time or because nothing else is going on. I'm working to unprogram that response and surprisingly it's a pretty easy one to get away from. 

Week1 in the books. Bike performance not to degraded but definitely different. Carbo-flu hasn't hit me to hard. Eating fat wasn't near as bad as I thought and it's quite filling. Not having beer is not life ending. Week one was a little better than I expected.