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Can losing weight make you faster??
runnerbeen
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As a 5ft 10 ins, 40ish male runner, I have started training and running competitively again after a gap of more than 20 years.I have lost 2 stone in the process but am still nearly 2 stone heavier than my racing weight of 11 stone in my teens. (I ran 4-20ish for a 1500m when I was 15)My 10k time now is about 48 minutes.I am wondering what sort of times I could achieve if I wasn't carrying my excess baggage around? Anyone out there improve their times considerably-- mainly by losing a stone or two?
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Bob Glover reports that for every 1 per cent reduction in body weight, there is a 1 per cent increase in running speed capacity. Yeah, absolutely - the less you have to carry, the faster you can become and even the odd pound or two can make a difference.
The bad news is you've still got to do the training to get faster, but the good news is that the faster you get the more weight you'll lose. On which subject, don't believe the fiction going around that you lose more fat at slower running speeds - yes, you do burn a higher percentage of fat (as opposed to glycogen), but you burn far less of it than if you ran faster, so the maths don't add up. (Actually, of course, you burn the highest percentage of fat just sitting still but you won't lose weight that way either!)
Don't forget the other factor though - which is building lean muscle can actually make you weigh more (!) because it's heavier than the fat you've burned off, so don't overdo the weight training (if you are doing it?).
Sure those extra 2 stone will go in no time. Best of luck. s.
Does anyone have any personal success stories, re losing weight actually dramatically improving their race times?
BUT
The equation only works up to a point. What you DON'T want to do is lose muscle. That won't do your performance one scrap of good. So make sure your muscles are kept full of glycogen and your long runs get you into the aerobic, fat-burning zone so that your body isn't tempted to delve into your muscle protein for fuel. This also means not cutting down your food intake too drastically. If you're a sprinter, muscle conservation is even more important.
It's certainly a dilemma I face - I'm not running at your level (if I ever break an hour for 10K I shall be over the moon), but I run faster when I'm unaesthetically scrawny than I do at "normal" weight. Scarily, Seb Coe was 20% below the official healthy minimum BMI when he was setting his records.
Sue
Glycogen is a glucose (sugar) complex which we store in our muscles and livers and use as easily accessible fuel during exercise - it's easy for the body to break down glycogen to make ATP, which (as you probably remember from your training) is the meaning of life. Unfortunately, glycogen is too cumbersome for our bodies to use for all our energy stores, and that's why we have fat, which can be broken down by a slower, more complicate process to make lots more ATP per gram that glycogen does.
With training, we can store more glycogen, and runners use all sorts of tricks to try to get their muscles as full of glycogen as possible before races (hence "carbo-loading"). Training our bodies to use fat earlier in a run also conserves glycogen.
Hope that helps. If you have a wander around the articles on the site, you'll probably find a much clearer explanation among them.
Just one question and it's one that has puzzled me for some time.
How do we 'train' our bodies to use fat earlier, thereby conserving glycogen. My logic tells me that the body would go for the most easily accessible form of energy - hence glycogen.
I'd love to be able to get to the fat first!!!
All the best,
RB
I've lost 2 stones since I started running in January. When I first started I'd run 5k in 45 minutes, now I can manage 25 minutes on a good day.
However, I wouldn't like to say whether this is down to my loss of weight or the intervals and fartlek that I've done to try and improve. Surely, it must be a combination of the two?
I too have wondered about this. If you were to magically lose 2 stone what improvement would you see. I can't answer this question directly but unfortunately I have performed the experiment in reverse. I put on 1 1/2 st through a combination of injury and lack of motivation but this summer I have got back into running. I have lost a few pounds but I am still a stone heavier than this time last year but over short distances I am running very similar times. I just completed a 5k in around 21' 35" (the official times are not up yet) this is almost exactly the same time as I ran last year. My resting pulse is below 45/min which is similar to a year ago. I can do intervals on a track (8 times 400m in 90secs) and these feel no harder than a year ago. My problem is that I am finding it difficult to run for more than an hour whereas this time last year I could step up to run a 1:45 half marathon.
This seems paradoxical as if I were to put on a 14lb rucksac a year ago it would have brought me to a standstill (ok I know it doesn't work like that but you get my point). I hope to reverse the experiment but I am not expecting drastic increases in speed but hopefully I will be able to maintain a slow speed for longer.
My personal experience is as follows:
- now aged 40, previous running experience as a youth, with similar sorts of times to your own;
- started running again about two years ago to lose weight (which was then around 15 stone, against a racing weight when young of under 9.5 stone);
- ran my first 10k in September 2000, still weighing more than 13 stone - finished in 43'40";
- continued losing weight, and improved performance, training quite hard: approx. 60 miles per week;
- current weight = 10.5 stone (height = 5'10"). PBs are 34'57" for 10k and 2-45 for the marathon.
I am certain that the weight loss has helped significantly, but in parallel a properly structured training programme is essential. You will probably find (as I did) that your body will be able to tolerate hard training more easily as you lose weight.
Good luck!
Daniel
last year i was touching 14 st and ran my first 10k in 52.05, a year on with eating sensibly(still drinking)and training 4-5 times a week(20-30 miles)my weight has come down to a shade under 12 stone and my 10k time is down to 43.20 with more to come.so my opinion is lose weight and you will want to train more which brings better performance.
disco-(approaching 40)
But to recap...
If you want to get straight to the fat, bypassing your muscle glycogen, then you need to exercise slo-o-o-o-o-wly. At less than 50% of VO2max (don't ask - it's the middle of the night and my brain is scrambled from being the Suitcase Fairy prior to hols) you'll burn very little glycogen and almost all fat. Problem is, you'll be going too slow to burn much of anything.
With training (in our case, lots and lots of running), the relevant muscles become able to use fat more effectively at an earlier stage of a run. This is because you grow extra capillaries so you can get more oxygen and fat (as free fatty acids) into your muscles via the blood, and the concentration of the enzymes needed to release ATP from fat in your muscles increases.
For some reason that has lots of circles and arrows in it (memorising biochemical pathways was never my favourite activity), you need glucose to burn fat, so the more glycogen you have left (or the better you are at digesting Lucozade Sport on the hoof) when you reach fat-burning mode, the better.
And it remains true that ultimately the best way to burn fat is to cover lots of miles, whatever speed you do them at.
Cheers, V-rap.
I found Daniel ODonoghue's posting very interesting ; that he had done similar times to myself as a youth and was now running extremely good times; 35 minutes for a 10k wow!! -- congratulations! I feel inspired to try to attempt similar times over the next year or two!
Thanks. Plus one other suggestion - join a club - it should provide ready access to good coaching advice, opportunities for competition (for example, cross country during the winter), and the company of other lean looking runners should keep you motivated to keep losing weight!
Cheers
Daniel
I've just started working on improving my speed but my endurance went up and I could keep going for longer at my usual pace. In fact it felt as if my partners were running slow, which they were not, I was just finding it easier. Hills on the route were not much trouble.
Joining a club helps, pick one with a good coaching system, I'm finding that helpful.
One other thing I've noticed is that I'm not as tired and don't get achy muscles after a run, regardless of the length and if I've run more that usual during the week. I do stretch after running, but have always done that.
I definitely got faster when losing weight. What really shifted the fat was long runs (thats only 10 miles for me)at a modest pace, and cutting back hard on the animal fats in the diet. Still eat a modest ammount of vegatable oils - you need those to help burn your own fat.
Don't get obsessed with the scales - it's the body fat you want to lose, if you try and reach some magic target weight you may start to burn muscle as well! I've done that through ignorance (cutting food too much while over training) and thats's worse than being slightly fat beleive me.
Once the flab stops bouncing around while your running you wont be too far out whatever the scales say. As someone said earlier in this thread, muscle is denser than fat and hopefully you're replacing some of the fat with muscle.
Good luck!
Just think if I can shed a few stones I could turn in to Pontefract's answer to Paula 'Godess' Radcliffe!
Zandra
Here to Fight the Force of Evil!
My weight loss and running has been pretty static for the last few weeks. A couple of injuries; a periostitis of my upper fibula, a strained calf muscle and then to cap it all; a virus flu type infection resulting in a chesty cough for over 2 weeks!
I am planning to hopefully lose another stone and a half over the next couple of months when my running takes off again.I hope to get my 10k time down from 49 minutes to the low 40's at the same time.
i was the reverse of the talented teenage athlete. i was about 60kg (about 9 and a half stone i think) or more when i was 15, and i'm only 157cm. my 800m pb was 3.11. now, at age 24, it's 2.23!
in 1995 i decided i wanted to run seriously. i took up jogging and lose a stone within a few months. i then began racing, and was a lot faster than when i was heavy.
in 1997-8 i set a load of Pbs which i am now re-writing after a few years off from competition. and, again i've lost weight, i'm about 45kg now, with 11% body fat; and i'm convinced that this is the answer to fast times for me. i'd say the bodyfat test is so valuable, because you can then see if you really need to lose weight or not.
for me, a strict diet is no big deal as i am well disciplined and enjoy any of the permitted foods. i am vegan, also, which means i avoid many of the fattening things in most diets. however, if it spoils your life, i wouldnt recommend a strict diet, because running is about imporving your quality of life!
anyway, i can say yes, loosing weight and maintaining low body fat has been, and hopefully will continue to be successful for me! your 10k time at the moment is a respectable time that some never achieve, and i think once you can run 48 mins you should try a 7 minute mile here and there in training and see how that goes... or try going for a 23 minute 5k....
best of luck
Yes I should do the body fat %test. However at 5!10" medium build I should be at least a stone and a half lighter.I do eat rubbishy food quite often and I need to be more disciplined to lose more weight.Each time in the last few months that I have attempted speed work I have become injured.My current thinking is to concentrate on long steady runs, dieting sensibly and then to attempt speed work again when I am a bit lighter; hopefully avoiding injury.I feel I do still have some good basic speed left; At the end of nearly all my races over the last few months I have sprinted the last 200-400 metres and usually overtaken a couple of people.I might try a 5k or even some 1500m track races next year.
This URL is quite interesting - gives how far under the average weight for height a number of top athletes were and discusses how weight affects running. Click on the home page link and it has loads of articles on just about everything to do with running performance and any other sport you care to mention!
It's the discipline thats hard. In the summer when I fancy a beer I can make that feeling go away with a run but with the dark nights I tend to try and do my running in day time.
I definitely run faster with less weight. At the start of the year I was a little over 13 stone and with the loss of about 9 pounds I have had a pb at every distance this year (except 10 miles - I just haven't done one this year - yet). Most of that weight loss has been due to long slowish runs with a weekly interval speed sesh and a weekly tempo run.
However, may I suggest that you have a look at my artical on page 11 of Sean Fishpools HR etc. There are things there that I am sure you will find of interest as it tells you how many calories you need per lb of body weight at a given running pace. It also goes into how to actually lose weight under controlled conditions and much more.
It should be obvious to all runners that if you lose weight you may run faster. Not just because of the obvious, but by careful management of only eating the calories you need relative to the exercise performed. That way your body, providing it has been trained and able to do so, will have more calories to convert to running pace rather than just lifting you off the ground.
ZANDRA. if that's really you in the photo ( I think I know you if it is ??) then Paula has nothing on you in the Goddess stakes. But as far as running goes, well!! not sure. If you want to try to match her suggest you also look through my thread.
Anyhow, have a look and good luck. Ron.