Marathon? What are you thinking?!?!

I debated whether to post this but here goes; I'm training for the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon. I know what you are thinking, "Marathon training is contrary to bodybuilding! What are you doing?" I disagree and here's why.

First the timing of when you do your long distance training. If you are bulking up it is contrary to what you are doing to burn many calories. You want to have excess calories and lift heavy and often. I'm now in my cutting phase and cardio is very important. I want to be in caloric deficit. I want to drop to 4% body fat and that takes diet discipline and plenty of fat burning. I think the average per week miles add up to 25 miles. This is only 3 1/2 miles a day average. Even on the most miles in a week the total is 40 miles or 5.7 miles a day. The average man burns 124 calories per mile. That is 434 calories a day during an average day of training or 706.8 calories for the longest week. If I only lose fat (at 3,500 calories a pound) that means if just doing the running and no diet changes on the longest week I only drop 1 lb. of fat every 5 days on the longest mileage week or during an average week 1 lb. of fat every 8 days. What about losing muscle? Read the next paragraph about nutrition.

The number one statement I hear that bodybuilders should not run (at least not very much) is "You'll lose muscle because your body will convert protein (muscle) to glycogen as your blood reserves get low." That may be true if all you do is run but a bodybuilder is also lifting (heavy) weights. Lifting progressively heavier weights triggers your body to try to build muscle by creating more muscle cells and storing more energy, Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), in those cells. Look at the two types of cells we are concerned about here muscle and fat. Muscle is for action, movement of some kind. Fat is for storing excess glycogen in the form of lipids or long-chain fatty acids for use later as energy when breakdown of those lipids by lipolysis. Which will your body most prefer to use for energy when you are running? It seems obvious to me.

Now what a bodybuilder should be prepared for is the time between his brain realizing it is low on blood glycogen and his body converting fat to glycogen. Because muscle does have ready stores of glycogen your body will grab a bit of that first until the fat reserves start releasing stored glycogen. However, muscle cells lack the enzyme glucose-6-phosphatase, which is required to pass glucose into the blood, so the glycogen they store is destined for internal use and is not shared with other cells. How do we keep as much glycogen in the muscle cells? What I have found is before you run eat a slower release carbohydrate, which is a carbohydrate that does not contain many sugar grams. I will often use a low fat granola bar such as Quaker Chocolate Chip Chewy Granola Bars. At 17g carbs and 7g sugar I'll eat a half every 4 miles. That way I'm still at a big deficit calorically speaking but my body has a release of glycogen that only needs to be supplemented by fat glycogen release which a healthy body is very efficient at doing.

Properly timing your training with your phase of bodybuilding and adhering to a good nutrition plan a natural bodybuilder can be a marathoner too!