Transcript of Episode 154: Running 100 Miles on Fat
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra, and Zach Bitter
Meredith:
Hello everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m your host, Meredith Dykstra, and this is Episode #154. We have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Dan Pompa, on the line, of course. Today we welcome special guest Zach Bitter. We have a treat for you guys because we’re going to delve into something that we haven’t talked a lot about on Cell TV yet. We are going to dive into the world of fat-adapted athletes. Zach has a very impressive resume here. Before we jump in, let me tell you a little bit more about Zach.
Zach Bitter is an ultramarathon runner and coach at Zach Bitter Running. Zach specialized in a variety of ultramarathon racing and coaching as well as a history of collegiate track and cross country focusing heavily on nutrition and its role in training and recovery. Personally, he has had the most success following a higher fat diet, treating macronutrient intake the same way he periodizes training.
A few of his notable accomplishments include a 12-hour world record of 101.7 miles, 100-mile American record that was 11 hours, and 40 minutes, and 55 seconds, a 200-kilometer American record, 100-kilometer track American record. He’s a three-time national champion and a three-time participant for Team USA at the World 100K Championships. He’s been in over 40 ultramarathon competitions.
Wow, Zach, very impressive. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV
Zach Bitter:
Thanks a bunch for having me on, looking forward to it.
Dr. Pompa:
Listen, I’m fascinated by you. I think my wife said last night when I was reading more about you – she said wow, you’re really impressed with this guy. I said you know, I’m impressed with anybody who does the ridiculous, that does the extraordinary. That is what you’ve done. Who runs 100 miles anyway, let alone in 11 hours and 40 minutes? I’m like is he doing this on a track? Is he doing it in the woods? Where do you run 100 miles? Is it both? I’m asking that question first.
Zach Bitter:
That’s the goofiest thing about, I guess, the sport of ultramarathon running is really any environment is fair game. It can be as dialed as a track, or it can be as wild, I guess, as mountains, and deserts, and things like that. The interesting thing to me with that is that when you’re looking at distances of that range, specificity is king in your training. To train for a track 100-mile is quite a bit different than, say, training for a mountain 100-mile in the way you’re going to go about the workouts and things like that.
Dr. Pompa:
I was reading, and I think it was 2015 you set a record, and it was around the track. Every four hours, you switched directions, right? Psychologically it helped you, but when you switched directions, it destroyed your rhythm, if you will. You slowed down. I read the whole thing. I was fascinated. Then at the end, literally the last 15 miles, you hit the wall, and you still kept going, at least what I read. I’m like that dude hit the wall. Your body was shutting down. You managed to still get the record, but the last 15 miles, you in your words said it was like an eternity. That’s unbelievable.
Zach Bitter:
Yeah, that was an interesting experience for sure. It was a little different than – I had actually done a similar attempt two years prior and had an opposite experience in terms that I felt like I was getting stronger near the end whereas this time I was starting to cramp up a little bit in my hamstrings and my posterior chain. When I finished the 100 miles, I was done.
It was interesting, though, the way it played out. In a perfect world, I would have kept going for another 20 minutes and tried to break my 12-hour world record because I would have had roughly 20 minutes to go over 1.7 miles and get that. I think I could have kept going had I had a 15-minute break and been able to get up and start going again once I got control and stuff like that, but at that point, the time had elapsed. I’ll have to try to go back and see if I can better that one at a different time.
Dr. Pompa:
Just to break it down, essentially, you’re doing four marathons. Someone do the math for me. What is your average marathon time on these runs?
Zach Bitter:
I think on that day it was right around a 3:03 marathon or somewhere in that ballpark.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, my God. Imagine running four three-hour marathons. That’s just unbelievable to me, honestly. Okay, for our viewers and our listeners’ sake – folks, he’s doing it in a fat-adapted state. I would argue that’s the best, most efficient way, right? Tell us a little bit about that. Were you doing this before non fat adapted? Now you’ve got your mitochondria used to utilizing fat, which is definitely a better fuel to go on -inaudible- evolution.
Zach Bitter:
Yeah, it’s been an interesting journey no doubt. I started ultrarunning on very much a stereotypical endurance athlete diet protocol, primarily carbohydrate. I wouldn’t say no or low-fat approach, but it was definitely one of the minority macronutrients. It was dwarfed by the carbohydrate consumption, for sure.
At the end of around 2011, I started experimenting with using fat as my primary fuel source. Since then, I’ve been really fortunate to have guys like Dr. Volek and Dr. Phinney to bounce questions off of and stuff like that. For me, it was I’ve always been a big fan of self experimentation. I like that part of it. That’s just as intriguing as the competition itself, for me, finding what works for me and what works for my lifestyle.
One of the biggest things I’ve noticed over the last five years is that lifestyle plays a huge role in what high fat means to you. For me with peak training and then recovery, my day-to-day life doesn’t look the same every day. Finding out what windows of high fat work at what times, and when is the best time to use one approach, and when is the best time to use another approach to maximize performance is key because someone who’s taking on a high-fat or ketogenic protocol just for health purposes, or if they’re sick, or something like that – that looks a lot different than someone using it to try to run 100 miles. I always try to emphasize that because people oftentimes assume it’s a template that can just be plugged in for anyone, but a lot of other variables need to be considered.
Dr. Pompa:
For a lot of our clients, and we have a lot of doctors that watch this show, we move them in and out of ketosis. I prefer diet variation because there’s a benefit, we’ve learned, by moving in and out of different diets even seasonally, even weekly, for goodness sakes, having higher carb days to get your insulin to respond in a better direction oftentimes.
When you’re doing this as an athlete – look, I could go out and I don’t have to eat breakfast. I intermittent fast every day. I could get out. I could ride three, four hours on my bike, and I do just fine without eating and then come home and eat, right? People find that fascinating especially the higher carbers that I ride with who are eating the whole time I’m riding. That’s a three, four-hour ride. I’m fat adapted. I can go out, and ski all day, and eat dinner, and I’m fine. I don’t bonk at all.
We’re talking about 100 miles. You have to eat during this 100-mile race. What are you eating? What’s the formula, man? You still have to eat.
Zach Bitter:
Yeah, it’s been something I’ve experimented with a little bit. I’ve had coaching clients and friends do it differently than me and have success as well. For me, what I’ve found is before when I was high carb, I was eating upwards to 400 maybe even 500 calories an hour in some of these events. Admittedly, I hadn’t done any 100-milers yet at that point, so I was able to finish within a five to seven-hour window because they were more like 50-mile-type endeavors. You can hit your stomach pretty hard for that long. From what I’ve read is when most people are running into trouble from a digestive standpoint, it was in those 10th, 11th, 12th plus hour range where they’ve been hitting their stomach with gels and sugars all day long. Then all of a sudden, especially in the heat, they’d start to reject it.
As I moved towards trying out 100-mile distance stuff, I started looking at that as more of a preventative-type of move. Now I’ve gotten that down to even in some of the, I’ll say, shorter, faster ultramarathons where I’m still in a much lower carbohydrate feed than I was previously. I’ve cut that by more than half, and it’s usually between maybe 150 and 250 calories an hour.
It’s interesting because the 100-milers actually require less because I’m going at a lower intensity. If I go into that event really fat adapted, then I can rely more on fat. Even at your leanest state, the leanest athletes have enough body fat to get them through a long event like that, especially when you put into consideration whatever glycogen stores they had and anything they’re eating along the way. They’ve got plenty of body fat. The fuel tank is much larger than your glycogen reserves.
What I’ll do is I try to eat as little as possible without sacrificing performance. The reason for that is because I see eating as an extra variable. It’s another task I’m giving my body. If I can get away without eating something, then I want to do that because it’s going to require less blood diverted to my stomach for digestion, which is another reason why I really don’t eat a whole lot of fat while I’m doing these events, either. I would probably do it differently if I’m getting into the 24-hour-plus range, but I don’t – if I’m going to burn fat, I may as well burn body fat during the event because that’s bypassing the digestive tract.
That just basically leaves carbohydrates. I use them sparingly, but I do use them in events. I’ll trickle them in throughout at what I said before, that 150 to 250-calorie-per-hour range, and then just really stay on top of hydration and electrolytes. That’s the game plan heading into most of those things.
Dr. Pompa:
I would think the electrolytes play a big deal. For our viewers and listeners, when we talk about fat adapted, we really mean that our mitochondria get so efficient at using mostly fat for energy that we’re able to go longer periods without relying on our glucose stores and our glycogen stores. The body does become much more efficient. I think you said going into it, if you go into it very fat adapted then your body is just so efficient at using its body fat, which someone would look at you or me and say you don’t have body fat. We have tons of body fat, probably 50,000 calories stored of body fat on either one of us. That’s what you want to burn.
I was going to say that. I knew that you probably weren’t eating a bunch of fat during the race because that would definitely bloat you, perhaps, and would just be more effort to break down than a simple sugar. Just by eating 150, 250 calories an hour, your body’s still relying on its fat to get the majority of the energy, but you’re relying on that just to help supplement it, I guess.
Zach Bitter:
Yeah because there is a – I always look at carbohydrates the same way I would caffeine. It’s something that is definitely a performance boost, but there’s a fine line between too much and the right amount. You want to keep your body sharp. What I’ve found is by training in a state where fat is the majority of my macronutrient from a day-to-day standpoint, that gives my body the sensitivity needed to make carbohydrate work as rocket fuel so when I do take it it’s very effective.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I find the same thing. If I do use a carbohydrate like that if I’m out for very long it’s like wham. It is like rocket fuel. That was a good analogy. It’s remarkable because understanding that the human body can go that long.
I read history about the American Indians, and I had recently read about the Wyoming Indians and how they would become fat adapted. They would literally chase prey all day long. Their endurance was incredible. In the article, in the history – it was really a history piece. It was really because they were fat adapted. I would have to say this is nothing new. This has actually been used by ancient cultures. Not to take anything away from you, but nothing new.
Zach Bitter:
We definitely took a step away from it for a few decades there, and now it seems like we’re digging back into it a bit, or at least it’s out there. People have some information to go off of if they want to take on the approach.
Dr. Pompa:
Let me tell you something from a standpoint of health. The most important thing you do – look, these carbohydrate athletes that are high carbohydrate, they’re all getting – this point in their life, they start crossing over in their 50s and 60s. They’re developing autoimmune degenerative diseases, inflammatory conditions. Even though they stayed fit, they realize that it wasn’t healthy. You can burn all that sugar, but you’re really forcing your mitochondria when you’re burning sugar drives a ton of oxidative stress that really causes a lot of injury to your DNA.
There’s something called telomeres. I’m telling the people this. You probably know this. Telomeres are the only biological clock that we know of. As they shorten, you become closer and closer to death. Endurance athletes get there very quickly. We used to think it was maybe just from all the endurance. We’re really finding out it’s really from the driving from the high carbohydrate diets. It definitely shortens your telomeres and shortens your age.
You’re an exception. Now we’re getting back to these fat-adapted athletes. I say you’re going to live a normal life.
Zach Bitter:
Yeah, I hope so because I know, for me, a lot of this stuff with the ultramarathons, I very much feel like I’ve crossed the line of doing it for health standards. I’m more into the realm of performance. That’s not always good for longevity. It’s one of those things, too, about enjoying what you’re doing while you’re here rather than asking what if for an extended amount of time.
With that said, though, I want to prolong my existence as long as possible, and that’s definitely part of the reason I take the high-fat approach as opposed to a really, really high carbohydrate approach beyond the fact that I believe it’s actually a performance benefit to keep macronutrients from the fat sources at the highest part of my nutrition.
Dr. Pompa:
I believe there’s no doubt of performance benefits. For me, there’s a massive health benefit. I think it’s going to keep you alive.
Alright, Meredith, I think you might have some questions. I’m going to end up going down the training route. I want to know how you train for an ultramarathon. Before I leave this topic of fat, I know she is the fat queen. She’s going to ask you questions.
Meredith:
I’m curious, too. What were some of the differences you noticed when you switched over from relying on carbs for fuel to more so being fat adapted? What were some of the differences in the benefits you’ve noticed?
Zach Bitter:
Some of the benefits were actually more along the lines of quality day-to-day life stuff, which I think translates heavily towards training and racing because so many of those variables play a role in your preparation and your mental state leading into an event. I know when I first started doing ultramarathons and I was on a higher carb diet, I had done a block of 50-milers where I ran 3 50-mile races in about a 9-week timeframe at the end of 2011. I did that on a high-carb approach. I trained for it on a high-carb approach. I was training very high volume at the time, where my peak weeks were up above 150 miles. I was averaging well over 100 miles a week throughout the course of the year.
I was definitely putting my body through the gauntlet. I started to notice, especially when I factored in work – I was a full-time teacher at the time. When I factored in work and stuff like that, it became incredibly difficult to sleep through the night. I would notice a lot more water retention in my ankles and swelling in my legs after hard efforts that took a lot longer to go away. Post race, it would take me a lot longer to feel like I had that pop back in my legs. Some things that weren’t necessarily ideal from either a performance or a health standpoint. I saw myself at a crossroads where I needed to either revisit what I was doing from an athletic standpoint and whether that was worth the potential health risk or look at changing some of the stuff I was doing in order to make what I was trying to do more sustainable.
The first thing I came upon was the higher fat approach. I went through some basic processes with that where I – in the early stages, I just flipped my macronutrients on their head. If I had been doing 60 to 65% carbohydrate, I instead did 60 to 65% fat. Then if I had been doing 10 to 20% fat, I flipped the carbohydrates towards that. When I did that, I noticed right away that I was sleeping better. Inflammation and swelling was going away almost immediately. That didn’t take a transition at all. That all happened almost immediately.
They talk about the transition phase, and how it can be very difficult, and it’s one of the reasons people bail on the program. I very much did have a transition period where I wasn’t able to do fast workouts or anything like that. For me, I was more – rather than being continuous for three or four weeks, I’d have a handful of days in the week where I felt really groggy and then a couple days where I felt good. Then after about three, four weeks of that, it started. The switch flipped, and I felt really strong all the time. I was able to ramp up intensity a bit in my training to go along with some of those health benefits that I was seeing along the way, too.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome. Who won the Western States 100? Did you do that one this year?
Zach Bitter:
Western States was my first 100-miler that I did. I did it in 2012. I haven’t done it since then, but I am going back this year.
Dr. Pompa:
You won in 2012, didn’t you?
Zach Bitter:
No, I didn’t. In 2012, I was 14th place at Western States. It was very much a learning experience, though. I actually got in five weeks before the event by winning what they call a golden ticket race where if you finish in the top two, you get an automatic bid. I really had no ambition of doing the 100 miles at the time, but everyone told me you don’t pass up on a chance to run Western States. I jumped at that opportunity, and went into it, and learned a lot, no doubt.
Dr. Pompa:
Who is the guy, he’s won a few of them, fat adapted, as well, isn’t he?
Zach Bitter:
You’re thinking of Tim Olson. Tim Olson won it in 2012 and 2013 and set the course record in 2012. He did it in a fat-adapted program, as well. He’s got an interesting story where the year before he won it, actually, I think he was, I believe, it was sixth place. He got sixth place there, and I think in the last 20, 25 miles, he probably stopped that many times to use the bathroom because his body was just rejecting the fuel he was putting in. I think that was the catalyst for him switching. He was looking at a way to make that – in his mind, he’s like if I can eliminate all of these unnecessary stops, I could win this thing. He did, and he ended up winning it twice.
Dr. Pompa:
Have you ever gone up against Tim Olson? Have you guys ever –
Zach Bitter:
I raced him in 2012, and he kicked my butt at Western States. I’d raced him at Ice Age 50 mile earlier that year where I had beaten him. Yeah, I think those are the only two times I’ve raced him. Tim is very much a mountain runner, and the last couple years, I’ve been doing a lot more flatter, track, road-type stuff. Like I was saying before, there’s such a huge emphasis on the specificity of the training where you could have guys who are both super fit, and if one’s training the mountains, one’s training on the roads – if you race on the roads, the guy training on the roads is going to have a huge advantage where if you run in the mountains, then the guy training in the mountains is going to have a huge advantage, especially as the sport’s gotten more competitive. The last couple of years, there’s been a lot of talent come into the sport. That’s resulted in that much more emphasis in specifying on the course you’re planning on trying to nail.
Meredith:
I’m just so fascinated by all of this. I’m wondering, Zach, if you could take us through a day, or I don’t know if you have a typical day, but what that looks like as far as what you’re eating, and your training, and just how it all goes, if you could give us an overview of what it’s like, a day in the life.
Zach Bitter:
The mapping of my training and the mapping of my diet actually work hand in hand in the sense that when I explain it to people, I explain them with the same concept where it’s like a periodization. My training operates on a periodized-type of schedule where when I pick a race I want to really nail, I start with a base block where I’m doing a lot of what we’d call zone one, zone two work where it’s just building miles, building volume, getting that aerobic base developed. Then I’ll start adding some workouts, usually more tempo, progression based where I’m still – I’m not hitting that anaerobic zone quite yet, but I’m definitely pushing my body a little harder than I would in a base-building phase. Then I’ll drop in some speed workouts like what you’d traditionally see on 400 repeats on a track, or 200 repeats on a track, or something like that. Depending on where I’m at in training will depend a lot on what I’m doing.
To match that with the nutrition, the way I do it is when I’m recovering is when I utilize a ketogenic approach. That’s when I’m trying to get my body to completely reset, recover, and just completely remind it that fat is definitely its primary fuel source. Those are the days where, if you looked at my nutrition plan, it would look very ketogenic. It would look like something right out of the textbook from Dr. Volek or Dr. Phinney.
Then as I start building up my base miles, and stuff, and getting more volume, I’ll start to reintroduce a little more carbohydrate -inaudible- during base phase because I’m not doing anything super intense. I’m still metabolizing such a high level of fat at that point, there’s just not as much of a need to replace the carbohydrate. When I do get into the higher volume plus intensity phases, and a lot of times that means a two-a-day workout, that’s when I’ll start bringing carbs back at the highest level they’ll be in my training. Usually that fits within a window of around 15 to at the most probably 30% of my intake, so it’s still a minority in my macronutrient profile. I’m still taking in easily 60 to 65% of my calories from fat even in those peak training blocks.
What I find is when I enter those high-intensity, high-volume phases in a very fat-adapted state, I can get all the performance benefits I need from that 15 to 30% carbohydrate window whereas someone who’s carb dependent is probably going to need to ramp that way up to 65 ,70. You read about some guys even go on 80% carbohydrate to meet those energy demands.
Dr. Pompa:
Wow, that’s incredible. Basically you’re doing something that we teach. You’re diet variation. There’s time where you’re utilizing higher carbs, times you’re using the lower carbs. We do that to get sick people well. You’re doing it for performance, ironically enough.
Zach Bitter:
It’s all about matching lifestyle with nutrition, I think. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned it’s that there’s tons of different “healthy” nutritional approaches. No matter which one you pick, there’s going to be some study or some educated individual promoting it. Really, it’s about keeping an open mind and being willing to try for yourself. If things aren’t working, that’s not the time to be bullheaded. That’s the time to experiment. Find something different. Change some things and see if you can make improvements.
For me, that’s been very much following a higher fat approach throughout my training. Then, like I said before, the recovery phases are where I’ll use what people call a ketogenic diet. Then high-intensity, high-volume training is where – I call it higher fat just because it’s confusing to some people, I think. If I run a good race, the folks who are very, very into the ketogenic approach, they’re striving to point to someone as look, it works. Look, it works. Then the folks who are on a high-carb approach, they’ll want to argue because they’ll say well, he’s not following 50 grams or less a day. You get in this gray area, I guess, and it’s hard to define.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s ridiculous because when you’re putting in that many miles, I have athletes, including myself – when I’m doing a lot of cycling and training, I can be in ketosis at 75 and 100 grams of carbs. It completely changes from winter to summer for me. I can get away with a lot more carbohydrates in the summer. I couldn’t agree more. It’s just remarkable what the body can do, the efficiency because your body’s carrying that efficiency over. Like you said, when you’re entering in even to eating higher carbs or whatever, it’s still low carb but higher carb, your body’s still carrying that efficiency of fat burning into that time. That’s what makes it work.
Zach Bitter:
The key is, too, I can’t stay at my peak. I can only get to my peak a couple times a year without burning myself out. When I get to the peak and I’m using more carbohydrates, that’s a limited timeframe. As soon as that timeframe is over and it’s time to recover and reset, that’s when I can remind my body and go back to that ketogenic mapping type approach.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. If you look at the American Indians, in the summer they would go on a higher carbohydrate diet. They would eat more berries and root vegetables. Again, in the wintertime, they were back in ketosis. How many hours a day do you have to train to train for a 100-mile race? I know it changes. I know the base phase is longer, but give us an idea.
Zach Bitter:
It’s interesting, and it’s hard to put an exact number because for me, if I enter a high training block, I don’t necessarily try to match my energy demands within that block. I go into it assuming I’m going to run a calorie deficit. What that ends up doing is I end up leading out a bit during that phase. Then when I’m in a recovery block, I can put some of that back on if I want to. Sometimes the numbers don’t range quite as much as they could if I would match energy demands for the exact expenditure of that day.
With that said, there’s workouts I’ll do that demand 5,000 or 6,000 calories of energy expenditure. I’m in a training block at the moment where I’m going to hit pretty close to 140 miles this week with some intensity in there. There’ll be days this week where I’ll easily burn 5,000 calories. I probably won’t quite eat that many on that day, but then if I take a recovery day the following day, I’ll eat a little more than what I would need typically on a day like that.
I find that really intriguing because a lot of folks are – they’re working out for health. They’re working out to feel good or because someone told them to. For folks like that, they pretty much want to end up in a window of nutrients in order to maintain a healthy body weight and stuff like that. They can stick to a little more of an equivalent day-to-day approach.
I feel like I’ve gotten to the point, too, where I don’t really count calories too much. I’ll count in the sense where I know this is the window of carbohydrate I need. I’ll make sure I get that in. Then everything after that, I just go by feel. If I’m hungry, I’ll eat. If I’m not, I’m not going to force it.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s what I do.
Zach Bitter:
When you get really dialed in and you find what works for you, your body is very good at telling you what you need. I try to do that. If I have a couple of really good training days and all of a sudden I feel flat the next day, that could be my body telling me that I need to start catching up a bit on some of my energy demands. I’ll take a slightly easier day and make sure I get some really good meals in that day. Usually the next day, I’ve got that high energy back again. Your body definitely does a good job of mapping it if you let it. It’s the way I like it, too. I’d rather have that than have to meticulously count everything and plan everything out like that.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s your hours a day working out? Do you cross train? Do you do some lifting? You have to. You would have to.
Zach Bitter:
Yeah, I’ve done a decent amount of cross training, I guess, from the strength standpoint or the mobility side of things, more so recently with the mobility stuff. I’ve always been a fan of weightlifting just because I’ve enjoyed it. More recently, I’ve tried to structure that to be more specific towards what I am doing. I’ll do a lot of posterior chain work, like deadlifting and kettlebell swing type stuff for weightlifting, a lot of core strengthening stuff to keep form and posture in a good spot.
Then I’ll do a lot of mobility sessions. I use a program called MAPS Prime. It’s a full on mobility. You identify where your weaknesses are from head to toe. Then once you identify your weaknesses, you put a little extra work into those. Your strengths, you do some stuff to maintain it. It just really keeps everything humming and everything in place. People think of those mobility structures sometimes as just not a strength training thing. I’ll tell you, the first time I went through the MAPS Prime program, I was sore the next day. I was laughing to myself. I was like well, here I am able to run 100 to sometimes 150 miles in a week and not get that sore doing it, and then I do this stretching routine, which is what -inaudible- would define it, and I’m sore from it. There’s definitely benefits to it from both mobility and just an adaptation type of thing, too.
In terms of hours, I probably put in – when I’m peak training, I probably put in close to 20 hours a week when you add up all the running hours, and the maintenance hours, and the cross training type stuff all together.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I guess I would expect that. Maybe I expected more. Are you married? Do you have children?
Zach Bitter:
The thing is I’m very consistent about it, though. I come from the camp where the consistency, consistency over a long period of time is going to provide the biggest bang for its buck. For me, every year I’ll run over 5,000 miles, so even when I’m in low training mode, I’m still moving a lot. I’m still running. It’s just the intensity changes quite a bit. Sometimes the strength training will become a higher emphasis and require more time or the mobility with become a higher emphasis and require more time. Throughout the course of the year, I’m always up in that – I’m moving a lot. I’m real fortunate that my employer, Ultra Footwear, they are really flexible about the way I plan my own schedule, so I can set things up the way I need to to prioritize those type of stuff.
You’ll see other folks who’ll do it differently. They’ll take a big chunk of time of downtime where they’re doing very little. They’ll do these big blocks where they’re hitting 30+ hours a week, especially triathletes. When it comes to running, there’s so much impact with running. There’s almost a point at which you’re doing too much damage than good.
Usually when I’m in my peak phases, too, when I’m running the most miles, I’m getting pretty fit at that point. A lot of my miles will come in at a low six to mid six-minute mile range. I can go out for a two-and-a-half-hour run and have almost 22, 23, even close to 25 miles in already at that point. Some of it is that, too. If you look at time spent and distance covered, it can range quite a bit throughout your training and throughout your fitness levels.
Dr. Pompa:
I just find it hard. You can never train 100 miles. You can’t just run 100 miles. Then all of a sudden you’re out running 100 miles. How do you train for 100 miles if you can’t run 100 miles? There’s a disconnect.
Zach Bitter:
There’s definitely your very peak week. I’m always careful to use that as the focal point just because then people assume that that’s what you’re doing every week. There are certainly weeks where if I enter a 50-miler as a training run and I don’t taper for it, I’m probably going to hit close to 30 hours of training that week. It balances itself out then because the next week I’m probably going to be going a little lower on the lower side of things when I’m coming back from that. It’s an interesting lifestyle, no doubt.
Meredith:
I’m amazed that you run 5,000 miles a year. That is just still in my head. I’m wondering did you ever use exogenous ketones or any special support supplement to maintain?
Zach Bitter:
No, not really. I helped out a company with some information with an exogenous ketone supplement, but I haven’t done any regular training or racing with any of that. Some of that’s just – ketosis isn’t my goal. My goal is performance. I don’t necessarily feel like whether knowing where I’m at in ketosis is all that important.
Meredith:
-inaudible- or anything like that for your blood sugar?
Zach Bitter:
I’ll get tested every once in a while more often than not because of a study or something like that or like I was saying before if I’m testing something, but not often enough to know regular values. One interesting thing that we noticed when – I was part of the FASTER study that Dr. Volek put on at the University of Connecticut. That was, I guess, almost two years ago at this point. A lot of information has more recently been released or approved.
I suspect that training like I am or any of those subjects that were training at that study – when you look at their millimoles of ketones, I suspect it’s different. I suspect that there’s different things occurring that are causing those numbers not to mean the same thing as if you would measure someone who is much more sedentary just eating at a really low carbohydrate diet.
With that said, I’ve tested myself often enough to know that I do enter ketosis periodically throughout my training. I’ve tested it enough to know that I’m not in it all the time either. For me, it’s more if I’m feeling good and training’s going well – the way I’ll gauge it is if I can go out for a long run in a fasted state or at a very low-nutrient state and feel strong the whole time or finish strong, I know I’m fat adapted enough to have that advantage be there.
Some of that happens, too – when I train, I do the bulk of my work in the morning. I’ll wake up in the morning, and I’ll have some coffee with maybe a little bit of coconut or almond milk, maybe a very little bit of raw honey. Really, it’s more often than not probably 20 to 30 grams of energy at most. Then I’ll go out, and I’ll train hard for a couple hours, sometimes over three hours. At that point, if I slept eight, nine, ten hours the night before and ate dinner at a normal time, by the time I could get back, I’ve metabolized enough calories to almost put together a fast of over 24 hours. I think just by that lifestyle, you get really fat adapted.
A lot of people do a 16-hour fast on a more daily or a 14-hour fast on a more daily routine. I guess I kind of fit in that window where I eat the bulk of my calories probably, especially in the winter, within an eight-hour period of time. Then I’m sleeping a huge chunk of that 16 hours, and then I’m training another huge chunk of that 16 hours. That’s really just the window that I have.
Like I was saying before, I don’t like to eat when I’m training. I don’t even like to drink when I’m training if I don’t have to. That’s why I love winter running sometimes because it’s cool enough where I can get away with that. For me, I would just prefer to head out with an empty stomach and keep it that way throughout the workout. Then when I get back, prepare some food.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m the same as you. I prefer to drink a bunch of water when I’m done. Go in hydrated and finish afterward. I’m not a big – I go out, and these guys are drinking, drinking, fluid, fluid, fluid. For me it’s just making my body work somewhere else. I want the energy in my muscles. It’s not like I’m going to dehydrate that quickly. If I’m on a very long ride, I sip water. Like you, I try to minimize it. I eat when I’m done.
I eat at a window, just like you. Days I work out a lot my window broadens a little bit. I eat a little sooner. Days I don’t work out or like this morning, I worked out but it wasn’t that hard. I haven’t eaten yet today, and it’s 3:30 my time almost. If I did a bike ride, I would have eaten by now. It would have been maybe a shorter window, maybe a 14, 15-hour window. It’s amazing. We’re doing it for different reasons. I’m doing it for health reasons. You’re doing it for performance reasons. I do it probably for performance, too. I’m just not competitive like you are.
Zach Bitter:
The really intriguing thing to me is – because a lot of people will go into it and they’ll very much plan it out. They draw this line in the sand where I’m not going to eat before this time, and I’m going to stop eating at this time. For me, it just happens that way. I’m not trying to go for a 16-hour fast. I’ve done intentional fasts in the past, more so during recovery than during hard training. That’s just the way that I feel the most dialed in. It just works itself out that way. That’s the key for me. When things are happening just naturally like that and I’m not trying to do anything contrived is when I feel like things are working, and my body’s working for me and not against me.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s less stressful. Listen, I probably three times a week will fast dinner to dinner, 24 hours. It’s never planned, Zach. Never. It’s on my busy days. I get busy going, going, going, going. All of a sudden I realize it’s six o’clock. I haven’t eaten. I just fasted. It happened yesterday. I didn’t plan on fasting all day. I just did. I never got hungry. I’m fat adapted, so I just went all day. Sure enough, I feasted at about six o’clock. That’s the way I am, too.
Meredith:
It is the most natural way, but there of course is that time period at the beginning as well when you’re not fat adapted that it can be really uncomfortable. You need to just – you go through that period, too, while you’re training your cells to burn your own fat for energy to get to that place where you can really trust your intuition and just eating when you’re hungry. I think it’s important to note that there is that period where maybe you can’t always totally trust your cravings or when to eat until you become fat adapted. Then your hunger signals are just much more regulated and more natural.
Zach Bitter:
Yeah, definitely.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you. I appreciate every bit of information. I know our viewers and our listeners are just absorbing because we have many that watch and listen that do what you do, not to run 100 miles. I still find that absolutely fascinating. I find fascinating why anyone would want to run 100 miles. That’s incredible. I mean, that’s like oh, my gosh. I’m a cyclist. Running five miles to me is like drudgery. Cycling at least there’s some speed and some action. Anyway, not to take away from what you’re doing because I love what you do. I love extraordinary people that do extraordinary things, and man, that’s you. I take my hat off to you, no doubt.
Zach Bitter:
Silly as it sounds, I think running 100 miles happens accidentally. I remember when I was a sophomore in college, and I had decided to try out for the cross country team. I was talking to the coach. He outlined what most of the guys were doing throughout the course of their collegiate career. It basically started out with freshmen would do about 50 miles a week, and seniors would get up to 90 sometimes 100-mile weeks when they were base training. I remember thinking, distinctly, I will never run 90 miles in a week in my life. Here we are today, and I’m doing that stuff in a day. It’s weird how it grows on you. You get curious, and you try another. You end up running 100 miles.
Meredith:
You just end up running 100 miles. I don’t know if many can say that, but, hey, hats off to you for sure, Zach. You’re definitely an inspiration.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s your website?
Zach Bitter:
My website is zachbitter.com. That’s Zach with a C-H, Z-A-C-H-B-I-T-T-E-R. That’s where most of my contact info and stuff is, social media, as well. I’m fairly active on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Folks that have questions or want to connect in any way, those are good spots to reach out.
Dr. Pompa:
Great, thank you, Zach.
Meredith:
Hey, thanks so much, Zach. Thank you, Dr. Pompa. Dr. Jeff Volek was mentioned in this episode, as well. We interviewed him in Episode 104 if you guys want to check that out. That was a great interview, as well. I wanted to add that in. Thanks again, Zach. You guys should definitely connect with him on social media. Check out his website. Thanks for watching, everybody. We’ll see you next time. Have a great weekend.
