Is it okay to eat bread products and sugar within 30 min of running, or will this mess up the atkins diet? I usually run at about 7:30 mile pace for 40-50 minutes, and i can't seem to do this without any immediate Carb energy. When i run will i get rid of the carbs so there is no damage done, or will the rise in insulin mess up the diet? Today I had half a whole wheat bagel + cream cheese before running 6-7 miles. What's the verdict?

It depends on your goal. If your goal is to run an under 40 min 10 k in the NEXT 3-4 weeks, there is nothing wrong to keep the carbs.

If your goal is losing weight, simply SLOW down from 7:30 pace to 8:30-9 pace. Cut back your daily milage from 5 to 3. Your body need time to learn to utilize fat instead of carb. It takes time - around 4-6 weeks. After this tranisition time you can speed up again. You will be MUCH FASTER than now.

Your body have enough stored glycogen in your muscles to run 60 min without ANY pre run carbs. (There is a "AM cardio on emtpy stomach thread" you might read it.)

Thanks!! great info. One question, you said it takes 4-5 weeks for my body to learn to burn fat rather than carbs and once it does i will be much faster. Does that mean, faster than i am now wihtout carbs (which is really slow!!) or faster than i am now with carbs? What happened to you?

Faster than with carbs.....

I saw remarkable new personal records on remarkable low carb. (Despite of aging...) My husband and two sons (24, 26 years old) saw similar fast improvement.

This is not only our experience. The program I follow (Slow Burn) was created by an ultramarthoner /trainer - decade long experience behind him. He tried both ways - high carb and low carb.
Beside this guy many other running trainers recommend the same thing for both starters, restarters: slowing down, learning to run on fat.

Check the posts of climbergrl, who swtiched from carb to fat after decade long running. She describes very well this process. (Her age is much closer to yours than mine, so maybe you can relate more.)

Something important: all these experiences refer to long distance running performance - 5k, 10k, half-marathon, marathon etc. I neither have own experience nor ever done much reading about LC sprint performances. (When you sprint you use only glycogen, regardless of your diet.)

INteresting. THanks. By the way, I just did some really successful 3 mile speed intervals, even though I've been on low-carb for only a few days, I ran them much faster than I was running it before i started. Its especially surprising since thats a length that normally just draws on glycogen. I don't know, but I felt great! Maybe i was able to adapt faster than normal or something?