First Primal ride, and I flat out BONKED page 3

[Mr. O]

There are three schools of thought on endurance fueling. First, is the traditional sugar burner model. You can still be Paleo and do this, but you'll need to take adequate fuel before and during the ride.........Lara Bars, fruit, sweet potatoes. Second, is the full on keto-adapted athlete. It will take 2-4 weeks of being less that 50 grams of carbs a day to get here. Mark, however, says it make take a couple of months of long, slow riding/running to train your body to work on nothing but your own fat for fuel. Patience is certainly required. Third, is the train low, race high model. You need to take the 2-4 weeks of low carb to switch your body's systems over to fat burning. And you also need to do long slow rides and running. However, you then "carb up" prior to a hard training ride or event. I seems like you are on the fence about which direction you will go. I'd make a decision on what you want to be and then train for that model of fueling. Being in the middle ground is a recipe for disaster.

[TheFastCat]

Always amusing to read what people who are "eating primal" are actually eating

[clint2]

Most people believe that you need to "pick a fuel". If you are going to go with fat, The diet needs to be high in fat and pretty low(50ish) carb. This is called ketosis. Once you are there, you cannot take in carbs during exercise and stay in ketosis(with the exception of Ucan). If you are going to eat some carbs(100-300), look up Marks post about training low, racing high. If you are interested in keto-adapted athelete, check out Phinney and Volek's Book. Good luck!

[quiet_one]

Eh, now we're getting into keto versus non-keto exercise. They are different. According to some things I've read, a person in deep keto doesn't really need a huge breakfast if they have enough body fat to burn and can burn it. But I like the idea of eating a lot of high-fat food to add extra fuel to the fire, more immediately available calories for the journey's beginning. That makes more sense to me. Then you've got added carbs - bad idea if you are truly in good keto. Good idea of you ride the fence and know you'll switch easily from the carbs to burning fat instead of bonking. But you'd better be VERY confident in your body's ability to shift gears and get a lot of energy from fat. Then there's the carb-addict, who has to keep eating and eating carbs because their body cannot use fat for fuel. Nobody wants to be that guy.

Are you a fat burner only if you are in ketosis?

[DirtRoadRunner]

Thought I'd post a follow up.

I did 1 day of my 100-mile charity ride about 3 weeks ago and simply ate a lot of fruit and some very non-primal starches to finish the ride. I hadn't trained enough, and it was really windy, so the ride was miserable, but not due to bonking or nutrition issues. I took a weekend off, then the past 2 weekends I've been riding again.

My first weekend ride was about 30 miles of gravel/singletrack with some hiking up and down stuff too steep to ride on (I was on my CX bike, which is only so capable off-road). This took about 4 hours, and I brought along some almonds and dark chocolate to eat. I had plenty of energy and didn't bonk at all, but I wasn't really pushing myself that hard.

Last weekend I put a rack, panniers, and about 10 lbs of clothes/shoes on my CX bike for an afternoon of credit-card touring. The bike weighed around 35-40 lbs, or at least twice the weight of my 17 lb road bike I bonked on a month ago. I ate primal, as usual, but pigged out on a bunch of greek yogurt (with a little more honey than normal), bacon, and eggs in the morning - maybe 50% more than my normal breakfast. Snacks on the bike were mixed nuts (no peanuts), dark chocolate, and a surprisingly good gas station salad. So very low carbohydrate snacks, and no sports drinks. I rode 63 miles in about 5 hours, with no sings of bonking, and a bike twice as heavy as my normal road ride (which I really noticed). I was hungry at the end, and had homemade sweet potato chips and chicken breast, compliments of my girlfriend. Since my CX bike has a granny-gear, I was able to poke up the hills at 6-7 mph without really pushing my HR (and the ride had some hills! Around 3,500 ft of climbing).

It seems like I was able to ride the whole thing on fat. I was tired and hungry at the end, but I was having muscle fatigue rather than a lack of energy. I'm going to put a compact crankset on my road bike so I can keep poking up the hills without really raising my heart rate.

[Dirlot]

Lots of healthy carbs out there so enjoy. Cordain has a book The Paleo Diet for Athletes: A Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performance: Loren Cordain,Joe Friel: 9781594860898: Amazon.com: Books

[ptaroli2]

Dear Dirt Runner:

I am a cyclist also. 59 about 215 lbs right now and attempting to keep with the kids I ride with but losing weight and getting my power to weight in better shape. One of my fellow riders told me about Mark's Daily Apple and I started one month ago. Tomorrow is week 4. I have lost about 17 lbs so far so it is working for me. I try to ride 100+ miles a week (sadly I have to work). Since I started this diet I have kept carbs under 50 a day and I have been miserable on the bike, just awful. I only just read, thanks to your post, some of these ideas about what kinds of carbs to eat and stay close to the plan. I am curious if you have tried these approaches and if anything is working for you?

Also for everyone else out there...I keep hearing my body will "FLIP" and become a fat eating beast! I have read this multiple times... Does anyone have advice or experience on how long this typically takes and when I might expect that magic flip.

I don't feel like I am there yet and I expect my cycling times and speed to tell me when I am...

Am I going at it wrong?

Thanks for the help!