Trials and Triumphs of T1D and Sport

Sport with diabetes is all about trial and error. What worked for you last week may not work for you today, and what worked for you today may not work for you tomorrow. And you know what, as frustrating as it can be – believe me! – it’s okay. Because we will figure it out again – just as long as we keep trying.

Documenting strategies is so important, and yet, here I am a huge culprit for not taking my own advice. Some weeks I’m great at recording what I did, whereas other weeks no matter how much I nag myself to do it, I still completely neglect it.

I am human after all πŸ˜‰

But I’m gonna work on it; want to work on it with me?

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Documenting Archives by Katie Bartel

I was scheduled for a run 1.5 hours after breakfast the other day. This amount of time between eating and running requires me to dose up with insulin; if it had been a 30-minute gap, I could have gotten away with a slice of toast and Adam’s PB and gone without any insulin at all, but on this day that wasn’t possible. If it had been 2.5-3 hours ahead of time, I could have given a full bolus and then reduced my basal before heading out.

But again, this was not possible.

And so, I had to put my best guessing hat on as to how Dear Diabetes would react.

My blood glucose at breakfast was near perfect: 6.4 mmol/L, so that helped (I would have preferred 4.0-5.4 mmol; but splitting hairs here.) I had my usual oatmeal and fixings, reduced the bolus by 40% and crossed my fingers.

However, I’ve been challenged with mornings lately. My blood sugars surge up right after breakfast for about 2 hours and then plummet so freaking fast. I haven’t changed anything about my morning routine; it’s just Dear Diabetes giving me the middle finger.

Sure enough, 1 hour after bolusing the BG was at 11.9 with a straight up arrow; 1.5 hours after, it had levelled at 11.7, so I figured it was starting its downward spiral. I still had 0.84 units insulin on board, which made me a bit extra cautious. I reduced my basal by 50%.

Halfway through the 5 km run, I scanned the Libre. A glaring 12.7 mmol stared back at me.

Frick.

I totally miscalculated.

I quickly removed the temp. basal and kept going. By the time the run was done, my BG was at 9.9 mmol with a straight down arrow. I gave myself a bolus correction, but didn’t increase the basal as I it had only been reduced for a short while.

But again, I screwed that one up massively. One hour post run, my BG was at 12.7 shooting high with the arrows.

Bloody fricken frig.

Okay, so yeah, I totally miscalculated this run, but here’s the thing, I still had a FANTASTIC and SPEEDY run. I felt amazing. The air was crisp against my face; no part of my body felt heavy; I loved being out – blood sugars be damned.

This was a learning experience for me, just like every run before it and every run to come.

Diabetes is always about the learns. We’ve just got to keep doing it and finding those exercise endorphin positives!

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Rocky Point: with scenery like this, how could I not find the positives?

How do you keep track of your exercising strategies with T1D?

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