Ring The Bolus

Sh*t Cyclist Say

2012-01-23T07:43:00.001-08:00

Couldn't resist posting, one of the funniest videos I've seen in a while...

Disgusted by Paula Deen

2012-01-19T05:41:00.000-08:00

As most of you have read by now Paula Deen will be a spokesman for Novo Nordisk to promote their type 2 diabetic drug. In my view this alliance and Paula Deen's development of the disease represents everything that is wrong with both the American health system and the obesity issue in America. Paula Deen should in no way be viewed as a role model for people with type 2 diabetes, she should rather be viewed as the poster person for EXACTLY HOW NOT TO EAT.

I took a quick look at her top recipes on foodtv.com, I've listed the high fat, high carb ingredients in the top 3 recipes:

Chicken & Rice Casserole - 1 can condensed cream of celery soup (220 calories, 13.6 g fat, 21.4 g carbohydrates), 1 cup mayonnaise (916 calories, 78.5 g fat, 56.2 g carbohydrates), for a total of 1,136 calories, 92.1 g fat and 77.6 g carbohydrates.
Lady & Sons Chicken Pot Pie - 1 quart heavy cream (3,284 calories, 352 g fat, 24 g carbohydrates), 1/3 cup butter (542 calories, 61.3 g fat, < 1 g carbohydrates), 2/3 cup all purpose flour (309 calories, < 1 g fat, 64.6 g carbohydrates), 4 sheets frozen puff pastry (1.036 calories, 71.6 g fat, 84.8 g carbohydrates) for a total of 5,171 calories, 484.9 g fat and 173.4 g carbohydrates
Chicken & Dumplings - 1 can condensed cream of celery soup (220 calories, 13.6 g fat, 21.4 g carbohydrates), 2 cups all purpose flour (910 calories, 2.4 g fat, 191 g carbohydrates) for a total of 1,130 calories, 16 g fat and 212.4 g carbohdyrates

Even in moderation the foods above should be avoided at all costs; the human body simply should not process foods that dense in calories, fat or carbohydrates. And to keep it simple I didn't break down the difference between good and bad fats above or include the level of sodium in each dish. Fat tastes good, no question about it, but after years of eating clean the mere sight of the nutritional content above makes me nausesus.

Rather than promoting someone whose cooking habits and lifestyle no doubt led to the development of a lifestyle disease shouldn't we celebrate people like Jamie Oliver or studying the glycemic index of foods like Michael Montignac suggested? Paula Deen is addressing the problem after something has happened rather than making a chance prior to the problem happening. Think about what would happen if you didn't change the oil in your car's engine until after your engine seized. That would be a tad more expensive than the $40 oil change and your local shop, right? That's exactly what Novo Nordisk is suggesting by using Paula Deen as a spokesmen. We need to get ahead of the problem and change eating habits, not address the consequences once we are too far downstream.

Ooozing Insulin

2012-01-13T04:58:00.000-08:00

So this may be my grossest blog post of all time...

Upon my return trip from Thailand (full bolus food report forthcoming) my blood sugars were unsurprisingly wacky. A 12 hour time change and 30 hours of travel to make it home can send a person's metabolism totally out of whack, even if they have no issues to speak of. So for a type 1 diabetic extensive travel often comes with some blood sugar management issues.

However, when I got back from Thailand my blood sugars were all over the map. My bs didn't want to be consistent, cropping up at weird times and staying stagnant for a short period of time after a meal until a big spike occurred. I assumed it was just my body getting used to a different eating schedule and planned to suffer through for a couple days.

On one of my last boluses before changing my infusion set I began to think something other than the time change was affecting me. The long trip had my stomach in knots and a wacky sleep pattern had me not very hungry. So for my first 2 days back in the States I was living on toast and chicken soup. For dinner on Wednesday night I had 2 pieces of whole wheat toast and a can of Campbell's Chicken & Stars soup - we're talking a total of no more than 80 grams of carbohdyrates. Even though I took in 7.5 untis of insulin for that meal my blood sugar spiked to 308 about an hour and 1/2 after my meal. I had around 7 units of insulin left in my pump so it was time for a change anyway.

When I removed my infusion set and was rewinding my pump I suddenly felt a ton of wetness on the side of my stomach. When I looked down there was something that looked like water around the injection area. I then ran my hand over it and it smelt like insulin - hmm odd I thought. I ran my finger over my infusion old infusion site and some more insulin seemed to pop out. So then like any curious person would do I squeezed the old infusion site and the hole gushed insulin - I'd say at least 10 units!

Disgusting! As I changed my infusion site insulin was freaking leaking out of my body, doesn't it know it's supposed to stay in there! I checked out the old cannula and it was crimped at the end - something that seems to be happening way more often with my Animas sets than my old Medtronic sets. At least I finally have an answer for where all the unused insulin goes when your site is crimped, it comes out the other end...

X Factors - Family Holiday Party!

2011-12-27T19:18:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays to all my readers! I hope each of you had as fantastic of a holiday as I did. Since I moved across the country family time has become increasingly more meaningful and special so this Christmas was extra amazing. Especially since I had the opportunity to meet my significant other's entire extended family.

With each holiday season I am however reminded how tough family parties can be with the D. From extra booze to your favorite Aunt's desserts bolusing is never easy. Add to that a sporadic exercise schedule and a routine far from normal and you have a recipe prime for diabetes disaster.

On Christmas Day I went to my SO Uncle's house for her family's Christmas party. Once there I was greeted with sausage rolls, roast beef on baguettes, baked bree and pigs in a blanket. In other words, a carb counter's nightmare! When I woke up Christmas morning I did some hill repeats and made up my own cross-fit routine so had gotten in about 45 minutes of exercise. For breakfast I had some greek yogurt and for brunch an omelet so I was a bit surprised that my blood sugar was 220 when I first bolused for the holiday appetizers.

After peeing no less than 5 times in an hour I wondered if my 5 unit 2 hour extended bolus wasn't enough. Upon testing I saw that my blood sugar was 295 so I gave myself another 3 units of insulin. 5 pee breaks later my blood sugar had crested to 341 and I took in 10 units of insulin. The next time I tested I was at 271 and for the most part hadn't eaten anything in the past 2 hours. I decided to give myself another 5 units of insulin and told my girlfriend to watch out for the warning signs of a low. Before leaving my blood sugar was still in the upper 200s so I took in more insulin yet again.

At that point I wondered if sausage bread really could be that bad for you or if there was any possible way I had eaten more than 700 grams of carbohydrates (or what my bolus rate would have translated to). Once back at my gf's house I took in 12 more units of insulin since I was at 221 and had a bite of cheesecake assuming that I was headed low at some point. Finally my blood sugar dropped to 150 making me worry about a nighttime low but 30 minutes later I was back at 175 so I took in another unit of insulin and had a gel and some other sugar goodies well within reach. When I woke up with a blood sugar of 281 I wondered if I was getting sick...

On the 26th I went out for a 10 mile run and finished with a blood sugar of 180 even though I had only taken in 1 gel and 2 fuel belt bottles of gatorade. I felt my infusion site and realized it was a bit sore so I removed it. Once I removed the canula I was greeted with a lovely 90 degree kink that for whatever reason didn't cause the occlusion alarm to ring!

I should have checked my infusion set far sooner than I did but I figured since the food on the table was so delicious that it must have been bad for you. Live and learn I guess...

X Factors - Red Eyes

2011-12-20T17:49:00.000-08:00

Travel is pretty much unavoidable during the holiday season; especially when you and your significant other's family lives on the opposite coast. Historically, changing time zones has been one of the most difficult variables to manage for my blood sugars. Usually heading east I'll go low and heading west I'll go high. So last night it was with great trepidation that I tried Ambien for the first time.

I'm not a good flyer, even though I flew close to 100k miles during my time at Keas, I freak out just about every time my flight takes off. Bumps make me break out in a cold sweat and god forbid the flight has more than a moderate amount of turbulence. I can tolerate flying but frequently have to close my eyes and imagine I'm on a bumpy road riding my bike. So I was excited to try anything that would take the edge off.

But taking something that makes you stay and fall asleep has its consequences. What if I encountered a low and did not wake up to the normal warning signs? What if the effects of the medicine made me go extremely high or extremely low. I'm nervous anytime I introduce a new variable into my system but was especially nervous to introduce Ambien to my system in an environment that I quite frankly hate.

So I got onto my Virgin America red eye, opened my bottle of water and swallowed the blue pill thinking of Neo. About 20 minutes later I noticed a tingly feeling in my lips, took some food and then was out for the count! For someone who hates flying this is a miracle drugs, bumps were met with the smile of a child on a roller coaster and the 5 hour flight felt like 45 minutes. I did however sleep the entire van ride to my parents house and continued to sleep for another 4 hours once I got home! But best of all my blood sugar was perfect!

When I got onto the flight my blood sugar was a slightly low 78. I ate a kashi protein bar to up that a bit before passing out and landed with a beautiful bs of 98! Upon getting to my parents house I tested again and was greeted with a 91 and haven't crested 125 all day. Traveling and especially red eyes have always been met with blood sugar difficulty, I try and eat as cleanly as possible in the days leading up to them and get a bit of extra exercise but its never easy. Good luck controlling those blood sugars as all of you travel home to your families!

Random Thoughts - Features that Matter

2011-12-08T14:03:00.001-08:00

When I first received my Animas pump after years with Minimed/ Medtronic I was incredibly excited to be able to program my pump from my meter. No longer did I have to awkwardly stare down under the table at dinner, contort myself in a movie theater chair or worry about lifting up my shirt just to get access to my pump for my bolus. For the first few weeks I thought programming my pump from my meter was like the greatest Christmas gift of all time. But as time wore on the bulk of the meter out weighed the cirque de solei act I perform to sometimes bolus.

That got me to thinking what features really would make managing diabetes easier. I'm not talking all out revolutions like the artificial pancreas project just simple product feature updates that would have huge value at a low cost.

Pump programming from my cell phone - Several phone and health companies have been working on incorporating a glucose meter into a cell phone. That would be a huge help but what would also be useful and perhaps a quicker win would be an insulin pump that could be programmed from an Android or Iphone app. Lets face it the interface of pumps are freaking awful; the amount of buttons I have to hit to perform a simple task makes a bolus seem like a lunar landing. Cell phone apps provide a simple elegant cheap solution to improve the UX and make programming a pump more intuitive. Plus my cell phone already has a happy place in my pocket so its not like adding another device to deal with.
Size - My favorite glucose meter is the One Touch ultra mini. Its far from the most feature rich meter on the market but what it lacks in bells and whistles it makes up for in ease of carrying. Whether exercising or wearing jeans the ultra-mini meter takes up a fraction of the space of most other meters while doing exactly what I need (and nothing more).

Readability - Although Animas markets their pump as the easiest to read because of its color screen in bright sun light its really tough to read. Further, the ultra-mini does not have a back light and several other meters are hard to turn the backlight on. One would think since loss of eye sight can be a major complication of diabetes more effort would be put into readability.

When the lights are off - to my knowledge the only meter which has a "flashlight" type feature is Freestyle. I thought that idea was GENIUS. Having to turn on the bedroom lights just to test is annoying and can disrupt our partners. Alot of the time rather than turning on the bedroom light I shuffle to the bathroom to test at night. Not only is that inconvenient its dangerous. That same thought process exists for movie theaters, or any other dark environment. We should be able to test wherever we are, not be forced to find a light to test under.

Those are just some of my thoughts on features that would be a huge help at a low cost. You guys have any others?

Wednesday Wackiness - Business Lunches

2011-11-30T06:23:00.001-08:00

One of the things that causes me some anxiety is testing for the first time with business colleagues. I'm not embarrassed or nervous to test at all, its more the anxiety that in some way testing and bolusing will become a distraction. After a business colleague knows "my deal," testing becomes routine as my office mates and peers will see me test and bolus multiple times per day. But that dynamic changes when its a one off sales meeting, interview or other business meeting.

I think my anxiety stems in part from two issues:

In a business meeting when time is a scarce resource I don't want to take 5 minutes away from the task at hand to explain what I'm doing
And this is probably the bigger one - perception

The 5 minutes (if that) taken away from the meeting is easily over come; as long as the conversation doesn't rat tail into the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes (perhaps adding to my anxiety). If that happens then 5 minutes could quickly turn into 10 if not 15 and greatly detract from anything I'm trying to accomplish in that hour.

But the bigger issue, perception. In business meetings I want to be focused, viewed as attention oriented, determined and strong. Although its a necessity for me to test and bolus prior to eating I never want to seem "distracted" during a business meeting. Due to that I feel the need to explain what I'm doing (circling back to issue 1) which in itself is a distraction from the meeting.

So there in lies the challenge - excuse myself to the bathroom, test and bolus before the meeting (taking the chance I'll eat within 20 minutes) or roll the dice and deal with the anxiety...

Monday Metrics - More Stabalization

2011-11-21T12:08:00.001-08:00

Averages

Basal - 13.9
Bolus - 23.4
TDD - 37.3
Daily High - 41.74
Ratio Bolus:Basal - 1.68

Last week my blood sugars continued to stabilize as I get used to working out a bit more and am in my third month of operating the new pump. I'm going to start tracking a ratio of avg bolus rate to avg basal rate. I have a hypothesis that I may be using my boluses to compensate for a basal rate that isn't exactly perfect. That may be why when I eat with less consistent patterns my blood sugar tends to either go high or low.

Also, the weekly high of 42 total units of insulin taken was in part due (at least I believe) to an infusion site that started to come out a bit. While I really like the interface of the Animas pump the infusion sites I'm using are god awful. I can't get the needle to bend the same way I could with the medtronic infusion set-up I was using and the insertion device was designing by a 3 year old on construction paper. Who ever designed this insertion device seriously did no user experience testing. I'm going to try and figure out a better option in the near future.

That's about it for Monday metrics, talk to you soon!

Wednesday Wackiness - When You Can't Figure It Out

2011-11-16T09:09:00.001-08:00

Some days I realize how little I or the medical community at large understands about an individuals metabolism. Sure, the mechanics of a metabolism are well understood but the exogenous variables that impact the system at large are much less easy to define. That's my nerd way of saying sometimes its impossible to figure out what the hell is going on with blood sugars.

I assume my fellow Type 1 readers have been there, after a string of great blood sugars I'll encounter a day where my blood sugars simply refuse to drop below 300. In the past this occurred alot after 100 mile bike rides as I trained for an Ironman. I understood that, my body was releasing a ton of cortisol to repair my sore and fatigue muscles but now that my long bike rides are closer to 40 miles than 100 I no longer have that explanation. Is it a change in seasons, daylight savings time or perhaps the salad I ate went on an all night carb bender?

On days where I have 1 egg on whole wheat toast, some quinoa and chicken sausage for lunch and a salad for dinner yet have to take in 3x the amount of bolus I normally would to get my bs into a safe zone I just don't get it. I know those days will pop up time and again and I know I'll probably never have an explanation for those days but that doesn't make those days any less frustrating.

Monday Metrics - Some Ups & Downs

2011-11-14T07:55:00.001-08:00

Daily Basal - 14.13 units
Daily Avg Total - 33.32
Daily Avg Bolus - 19.88
Weight - I think still 190 (I still didn't get a scale)

Was a very up and down week for my blood sugars. I started the week on a nice streak of consistent blood sugars never going much above 150 or much below 90, but by Tuesday evening things started to change. I was faced with a blood sugar that just refused to go below 300 that evening! Made all the more frustrating by my dinner choice of chicken sausage and wild rice. Normally my blood sugar would barely move after a meal like that.

Wednesday was much the same with my blood sugars hovering around 225. Even a 25 mile bike ride done at an average speed of 22 mph couldn't get those pesky blood sugars down. After a salad for lunch which saw my blood sugars spike above 400 I had, had enough and opted for a new infusion set. After the switch my blood sugars became much more managable but I encountered some viscous lows.

The highs forced me to play with my basal rate a bit; the reason why my basal rate is about .5 units higher per day this Monday than last. However, some further tweaking is necessary to really get it right as I'm trending low in the evenings and need to figure out where the extra IOB is coming from. Further, I think my butt might be done as an infusion site location for a while. I've noticed for a bit that my left cheek has been a bit less receptive to insulin than my right. Now it seems my right is not a fan of novolog either so I'm going to have to use the side of my stomach for a bit. Not a huge fan of using my stomach for a site but its better than high blood sugars!

Friday X Factors - Cross Fit

2011-11-11T08:40:00.001-08:00

Each Friday I'll post a new story about something that has made me rethink how I have to manage my blood sugars. The impact everything from eating out to exercise has on bs management can make this disease really variable. This will be what I've learned from those scenarios.

Back in August I was itching for a new athletic challenge. Due to life I didn't really have time to train as hard as I wanted for triathlon anymore and trying to fit in a century every weekend on the bike really just wasn't possible. I still wanted to bike and run as frequently as my schedule would allow but I was dying to find something new.

One of the things I really missed over the past few years was a new challenge in the weight room. From the time I was 8 years old until November of my 21st year I was a football player. I lived in the weight room and got excited to push myself to lift heavier, faster and better. To me nothing releases more stress than a good hard lift that leaves your muscles shaking. But due to two shoulder surgeries, and some other joint issues I had to greatly reduce the amount of time I spent in the gym. After 3 or 4 years away from heavy lifting I was ready to see what my body had left. This would also mark the first time since my T1 diagnosis that I'd focus on high intesnisity exercise.

I had been hearing about Cross Fit for a while; CX sessions focus on a workout of the day which includes high repetitions of an Olympic lift, a body control movement like pull ups and some anaerobic activity like air squats. The "box," as CF gyms are referred to, that I go to is LaLanne Fitness; founded by the nephew of legendary Jack LaLanne, the father of modern fitness. The big issue for me was I had no idea how my blood sugar would react to a high intensity fast twitch focused session.

My first session was quite a learning experience; I did something like 75 push presses and 50 burpees; I couldn't lift my arms for a week, literally! The blood sugars trended somewhat high during that workout but I just attributed that to nerves. The second time I went to CX the workout of the day incorporated some more short sprints and a few other cortisol producing exercises. Prior to the workout I had some muscle milk and had set my pump down to 60% of normal basal. About 1/2 way into the WOD my blood sugar had spiked to 375!!!!! I then realized this type of exercise would require a totally different protocol than long bike rides and runs.

I'm now three months into my CX experiment and while I still haven't mastered the kipping pull up my blood sugars are alot more consistent during classes. As opposed to endurance training I try and start a CX class with my blood sugar around 120 (just in case). About 25 minutes before class I'll have some muscle milk with non-fat milk and about a unit of insulin. When class starts I'll reduce my basal rate to 80% of normal as the start of class trends towards aerobic versus anaerobic. Then immediately after the workout of the day I take in 1.5 units of insulin (after checking my blood sugar) to make sure the extra cortisol in my system doesn't have any negative effects. CX takes a totally different approach to managing blood sugars than what I was used to but its a blast!

Wednesday Wackiness - The New Pump

2011-11-09T08:07:00.000-08:00

Each Wednesday I plan to share a story about those moments where I think I have T1 totally under control until I encounter a new experience that makes me realize there's still more to learn.

For a T1 a new pump is a super exciting experience. For more than 4 years every 3 days I had stuck my body with a large needle supplied by Medtronic, primed my purple pump and clipped the tubing into my infusion site. For 4+ years I relied on Medtronic to essentially keep me alive. I was able to put those infusion sites in drunk, hung over, in a rush, in the dark or when I wasn't feeling well. But I had grown a bit frustrated with my Medtronic pump, I lost trust in the machinery working properly and since I do depend so much on the pump to keep me healthy I simply had to move on.

I flirted with Animas when I first got my Medtronic pump but my first Endo whom I had an awful relationship with strong armed me away from the company. I had kept up on Animas' development, I liked the partnership with J&J, I liked that Animas integrated with Dexcom and I loved that the pump offered more flexibility in basal rates than Medtronic. But.... what I did not realize was the small things can add up, when comfort with a system turns into habit its really hard to change.

Inserting my Minimed Silhouette infusion set had become second nature to me. Much like knowing how to tie your shoes I had become so accustumed to the Silhoutte I could insert it in just about any situation. Over the 4+ years with Minimed I had inserted this set at least 400 times. I figured the Animas infusion set would be like driving a car; different make, different model but the gas is still on the right and brake on the left. I was ummm.... WRONG.

The first time I inserted my Animas set it took me 30 minutes to figure out where all the pieces went. I then went through 3 infusion sets before I figured out how to insert it properly. The second time I inserted the infusion set I couldn't figure out how to prime the pump and the god awful Animas alarm went off at least 25 times letting me know there was no insulin delivery. And the third time.... that's when the s*it hit the fan.

I was in San Diego for a wedding, after a one or two drinks too many and hours of dancing the gf and I were a bit hungry when we returned to the hotel. I had enough insulin to last me through the night but not enough to cover a meal of Wendys. I had brought 3 infusion sets with me, "just in case," knowing I hadn't had alot of success inserting the sites properly. Thank God I brought 3!

On my first attempt the infusion set fell off when I removed the needle making the set useless to me. On my second attempt the canula popped out of my skin after I inserted the infsuion set and bled kind of alot. And the third attempt that's when it really got to me.

On my third attempt I was extra careful, In inserted the infusion set and began to pull the needle out of the canula but my hand slipped and the set did not stay in place. At that moment I got pretty nervous knowing I would need insulin for the next 24 hours and knowing that I wouldn't return to my apartment until 9pm the following night. with a half used infusion set in my hand I had to thread the needle back through the canula and attempt to insert it again. With sweaty palms, a racing heartbeat and a girlfriend nervous as heck in the corner I was finally able to get the infusion set into my body.

I'm now used to inserting the Animas set; but it took a while. A seemingly easy and brainless task caused huge frustrations. Each time I had to insert a site I was nervous for the first month or two of using my new pump. The big change - I had to take the front level of tape off of the infusion site at a different step of the process than with the Minimed. A 5 second task caused all my frustrations but that's what habit causes. Sometimes you think you have this disease totally under control and then a 5 second task puts it all back in perspective.

Monday Metrics - Back in the groove

2011-11-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

Daily Basal Total - 13.92 u
Weight - 195 lbs (total guess, I need to buy a scale)

Over the past month I've successfully reduced my basal rate by about 2.5 units per day. September was a bit of a crazy month for me where I spent maybe a total of 5 days in San Francisco. 3 time zones, 3 weddings and a trip to Vegas took its toll. Once the travel was over I had a 3 day string where my blood sugar barely came below 300; you can imagine how great I felt over those 3 days. But that string of awful blood sugars was exactly what I needed to get back on track.

Upon the final return to San Francisco (post Vegas) I knew my weight was creeping ever closer to 205, that my basal rate was disgustingly high and that my aerobic fitness was a far cry from what my status quo is. I frankly had, had enough and although my A1c was an ok 6.7 I wanted to be better. With my general health as motivation I got back on the bike, upped going to Crossfit to twice a week and started running again.

My diet returned to focusing on vegetables and organic foods, I decreased my alcohol intake and upped the amount of water I was drinking. My blood sugars slowly returned to the 90 - 130 band that I like to see pre-meal and my absorption rate for boluses went way up. Having a significant other makes it a bit more difficult to go hard core diabetic diet than it was when I was a simple Ironman Bachelor. That difficulty also expands my food choices, who knew I was the only person alive willing to eat ground bison and quinoa everyday!

The goal is to get my daily basal rate back in the 12 - 13 units per day range. Historically that is when I've felt my healthiest, I'd also like to get my weight consistently below 185. Each Monday we'll see how I do with that!

Back in Silver & Black!

2011-11-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

Hello friends, miss me? My past few months away from blogging have seen me go through some tremendous life changes both diabetic and non-diabetic. I've switched pumps, left Keas, moved in with quite possibly the world's most perfect woman, got back into training and attended my sister's story book wedding. Not a bad 4 month stint!

The big diabetic news: I'm now an Animas pumper! I began to grow frustrated with the quality issues I had with my Minimed pump and simply lost trust in the machinery. When you depend on a battery and screw to stay healthy trust is a pretty important thing. Once my third pump of the year started acting funky I had had enough and made the switch. I'll have more on the transition in a future post but lets just say after 4+ years with one device the transition was anything but smooth. But I'm up the learning curve and my fancy shiny, silver & black, pump and I are getting along just fine.

The future of Ring the Bolus: My time away gave me some great perspective on what I want this blog to become. The first 2ish years of blogging was great, I felt like I shared some really relevant information with all of you and you all gave me some great feedback. The business school came, the job at Keas started and the quality of my blogging fell way off. I care deeply about the diabetic community and want to share my successes and failures with you all. So some simple ways I'm going to do that:

Mondays - I will list my weight and current daily basal amount and highlight any big trends
Wednesdays - Stories of frustration, not a week goes by without a D Event that drives me bonkers; I have more than enough to keep Wednesdays entertaining.
Fridays - Training reports; I've started doing a bunch of different training stuff and the ways my blood sugars have reacted has been crazy. Time to share the learning on all this!

Look forward to getting this conversation going again!

We only part to meet again

2011-06-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

After a few months of struggling with this decision I've decided to walk away from Ring the Bolus. I bid you adieu but will not say farewell; my desire to share my fight toward healthy blood sugar management remains strong but for the next six or seven months that focus is firmly on trying to help Keas grow.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my stories of triumph, failure and learning as much as I have enjoyed sharing them. Over the past four + years you have all given me the extra will-power needed to become a 2x Ironman finisher. And have all helped me with the most difficult obstacle of my life; my diagnosis of type 1 diabetes.

If anyone out there was even fractionally inspired to test their physical limits while fighting a chronic illness then one of my dreams has been accomplished. Thank you for letting me share my stories with you and for all the comments and inspiration you provided me. We will meet again but for now thank you and good bye.

Having a little confidence goes a long way

2011-05-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday I raced in the Berkeley Hills Road Race, my first cycling road race. The crits I did in January were fantastic and alot of fun but I'm not the most graceful individual so 4 tight turns on a course with 50 other riders isn't the most comfortable position for me to be in. I was really excited to test my legs in a road race and was enthusiastic about it all week. The big difference between the road race and my tri two weekends ago, I wasn't nervous, I wasn't anxious; I was just psyched to have the opportunity to have some fun.

The contrast could not have been more apparent between the two events than in their respective days before. For the Half Iron I made sure to have pancakes by 10am, and dinner by 6:30 pm. Dinner was quinoa and buffalo for the half iron; for the road race; a big a** Taqueria Cancun Burrito. Yes that had my blood sugars sky rocket to 345 the night before the race (never said it was a smart decision) but it showed that I knew life didn't have to be "perfect," to have fun in a cycling race. I left Katie and her visiting friends around 9:45 pm after our huge burritos and a day of drinking some wine (yes I also had some wine the day before a race!) to get into bed for my 6am wake up.

Unlike a triathlon I didn't have to pack for 3 sports; fill up 100 water bottles with my nutrition or get to the transition area at the crack of dawn to have time to prepare. I simply got to the race site about 20 minutes before the Cat 5s were to start, signed in and hung out - pretty sweet!

Cycling feels like a huge grass roots movement; there wasn't a huge speaker blasting music, race numbers are pinned on with safety pins and while everyone has a sweet bike they aren't displayed as art pieces they are a piece of athletic equipment. Although unlike triathlon where I'm pretty close to the same height as most of the athletes I was a midget once again compared to the other cyclists - these dudes are tall! After taking 10 minutes to figure out which way my race # was supposed to be pinned on I was off to find a bathroom and get to the race start.

Race instructions were given, then the race started; just like that. No diving into frigid water, no getting punched in the face, just a clip and a pedal. I was a bit nervous right at the start and it took me a bit longer to clip in, I"m pretty sure it looked like this was the first time I had ever been on a bike.

The start of the race was pretty cool we followed a car out of the state park so I felt very much like a legit cyclist. Once we made it to the main road the car turned left, we turned right and were off!

For the first 5 miles or so I hopped to the front and tried to push the pace. I'm not yet well versed in the strategy of road cycling and some people had given me advice to just jump to the front and see what happened. I figured I could find another rider willing to push the pace with me and thin out the herd. In all about 50 riders started as Cat 5s, I think we had that down to about 30 riders by the time the "real" race started.

After the first fast 5 miles we were into Berkeley's 3 bears, bringing back memories from Lake Placid. I didn't really know the course so got caught totally out of position heading up the first Bear. As people were shifting into easier gears I had a water bottle in my mouth and was taking a breather. Within the first few hundred feet of the climb I had been gaped by the lead group; any chance for a top 3 finish was out the window.

Never one to give up I punched it trying to catch as many riders as I could. This course, NOT EASY! I think there was something like 1700 feet of climbing, most of it bunched together. After 1/2 of a lap where I pretty much rode solo to catch other riders I finally caught a few guys cranking away. This is where I learned the true beauty of cycling.

As I passed this group of riders, one of them hopped on my wheel. The idea in cycling is to do as little work as possible while still going fast. Drafting requires 1/3 the effort of actually riding as the rider in front cuts the air for you. The rider from Team Moustache and I took turns pulling for 30 seconds each, we were quickly catching other riders and having a blast doing it. Awesome learning experience and one that will have me much better poised for my next race.

In all I didn't finish first and I didn't finish last; I finished my first road race and couldn't be happier. Was an incredibly fun experience; can't wait to test my legs again on June 18th down in Santa Cruz.

Race Report: Napa Valley Half Iron - The Decision

2011-05-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

I was dreading the Napa Vally Half Iron for the three weeks preceding the race. I knew that my fitness level was not as high as I'd like it to be heading into a race. I knew that my life had become busier than ever; that trying to build a business, develop a relationship and explore a new city had all taken priority over hours SBRing, and rightfully so. I knew that my passion for the sport was starting to wane and that my heart was not fully into triathlon anymore.

I proceeded like I would for any other race, I began waking up 15 minutes earlier each day starting on Tuesday. In the three days leading up to the race my sleep wouldn't cooperate and while I was waking up at 4:30 - 4:45 am I wasn't falling asleep until 11pm or later. The night before the race I had maybe 2 hours of sleep.

With blurry eyes, a splitting head ache and a pit in my stomach I drove to the race site early Saturday morning. I was silent for the entire drive, not because my intensity to do the race was peaking but because I was dreading toeing the starting line. It was becoming increasingly apparent that my heart and soul just weren't into the sport anymore.

Ever since my diagnosis of type 1 in 2007 I have fought tirelessly to prove to myself that I could accomplish whatever I wanted with a life changing disease. The way I mentally dealt with my diagnosis was signing up for an Ironman, and ultimately proving I could actually compete in an Ironman like I did at CDA. In my anniversary post I wrote that I was at peace with having diabetes, with having to test my blood sugars constantly and avoiding certain foods. I had mentally over come my diagnosis and had become 100% comfortable with everything it meant. While I still love sport and still love athletics I was realizing that triathlon was not what I loved anymore.

Once at the race venue the adrenaline kicked in a bit and for a few minutes I was excited to race. I went for my warm up run, got in my wet suit and did my warm up swim. But something weird was going on, I had one desire - to ride my bike. I did not want to swim and did not want to run I simply wanted to ride my bike, see beautiful sites, descend fast and climb hard. I stood at the starting line thinking how different it felt than starting CDA or even the start of a small race in South Carolina. Instead of feeling excitement and energy I felt dread and downtrodden.

We started in a time trial fashion, the fastest swimmer did the alleged 1.2 miles in 33 minutes (the water was brutal). My time was 42 minutes. I left the water my legs were killing me, I had cramps in my shin muscles, my feet arches and my calves. I tested and was at 118, I thought of stopping, I thought of not doing the one thing in the sport I still undoubtedly loved. My blood sugar spiked 6 minutes later to 154, I put on my cycling shoes and out I went.

From my first pedal stroke I knew this would be my last triathlon for a while. As I passed cyclist after cyclist I wondered why I didn't just focus on the one discipline that brings me almost as much joy as football did.

As I continued to ride the lack of sleep was catching up to me, my stomach was upset, I threw up a little in my mouth. I continued to ride, averaging close to 20 mph for the first 20 miles of the course, my back acted up a little bit but I pushed on. At one out and back I thought of heading back to the finish and skip miles of the race, just pull out without finishing the bike. I turned it into a training ride and kept fighting knowing I had my first road race the following weekend.

My speeds topped out at 28 on the flats, they slowed to 7 to 11 on the climbs. The course was brutal, my time 3:04, slow for me but respectful for a tough course. Not bad for a guy whose longest ride in the past 2 months was 50 miles. I can still ride, I can't still tri.

I got into transition, dismounted my bike and instead of jogging with my bike to my rack took a slow, long deliberate walk. The entire time I knew what was to come, the entire time I knew I was going to remove my timing chip the second I got to my rack.

I got to my rack, looked at Katie, smiled and asked "are you ready to drink some wine?" Her, knowing me so well smiled back and said "absolutely." She, unbeknownst to me knew for weeks that this would be my last triathlon for a while. She later told me she could see the joy in my face when I talked about cycling or went out for a ride but heard the dread in my voice when I would go for a swim or out for a run. She knew what I didn't yet realize, that I was ready to walk away.

I racked my bike, removed my helmet and tri top. I reached down, pulled apart the velcro and held my timing chip in my hand. It was as if a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders, I smiled as I knew it was time to take a break. I walked to the aid tent, and said "athlete 160 is turning in his chip." The two EMTs looked at me curiously, I responded "after doing something like 10 of these sometimes you just know it's time to walk away."

I smiled walking back to my bike. Triathlon has brought me so far, has helped me with so much has let me meet so many incredible people, has turned me into an endurance athlete. But for now, for this year I'm taking a break. I can't sacrifice what I need to, to train for tris and compete as I want anymore. Training doesn't bring the same smile to my face it once did, in a word I'm exhausted. For the next year I'll focus on what I enjoy so much. Its time to take a bit of a break; 3 days after the race I'm as happy as I was the second I turned in my chip, walking away was unquestionably the right decision.

This is going to be painful

2011-04-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

For the first time since my first triathlon I have doubts not about my blood sugars but about my fitness level heading into a race. I've prepared as well as time would allow but working for a start-up, moving to a new city, and well in general living life have greatly conflicted with triathlon training. I have real concerns about a DNF for the firs time I can remember. I don't doubt that I can cover the distance of a half-iron, I've been there, done that. What I worry is that by the time I reach the run my legs will be so fried that I won't be able to move and a 6+ hour half-iron just isn't my idea of a good time. I've proven to myself everything I could have ever asked for; I now race for fun and enjoyment - but is that possible when life has so greatly interfered with my ability to train?

I've put in between 10 and 13 hours a week of training for this race, I've gone on a few bike rides of more than 55 miles, a bunch of weekend runs of 10+ miles and have gotten in some ok swims. The last time I had the opportunity to do a brick workout was some 2+ months ago and I've maybe hit 2 or 3 double workouts in a day over the past month and 1/2. At times I've been functioning on 4 hours of sleep and poor nutrition and other times I'll forget to drink water at work. Essentially, I've transitioned from a grad school student who had it made to a guy working his butt off to make it all over again. Kudos to all of you out there who have balanced life with triathlon for so long!

I honestly don't know what to expect going into Saturday. Part of me wants to bail on the race and just drink wine. Part of me says go out in a blaze of glory and just hammer the bike. Yet still part of me says go out there and race like a rational triathlete that has fitness even if its not to the point I'd like it to be.

I drove up to Lake Bayressa to ride the course on Sunday. I cut off an 8 mile out and back and did the 40 miles in about 2 hours. Not bad for a training ride but I have no clue if I can run after. Bricks take something I don't have right now, time. I have serious doubts going into this race after leaving CDA with so much excitement and anticipation for continuing to improve in the sport. I'm 4 pounds lighter than I was at CDA; have been running faster for distance than I ever have before and have been doing great on my days on the bike. At this point I just don't know if I can put it all together on race day and if I have the fitness to even put myself in position to do well. I can hold it together and push through but I was ecstatic last year when I finally turned the corner and was able to compete, not gut it out. Saturday might be another one of those painful days that takes me a bunch of steps back instead of a step or two forward - guess we'll see.....

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure

2011-04-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

Mark Twain is the inspiration for this Triathlon and racing season. The combination of Coach E rubbing elbows with the rich and famous as he promotes Born To Run and my decision to work for a start-up post grad school has had me training myself. I'm self motivated enough to train consistently so getting out the door is never an issue. What is an issue is the ignorance I have for how important recovery is. My biggest need for a coach is to hold me back some so I'm not training till I throw up every day. But who am I to argue with Mark Twain, if ignorance and confidence are the recipe for success then this is sure to be my most successful season!

That ignorance was on full display a few weeks ago. With tired legs and a groggy mind I tried to push myself through a speed interval run. My goal was to run 6, 3 minute intervals at a sub 6:55 pace. I barely could muster the turn over to reach a 7:05 pace for those intervals and realized that my muscles were flat out fried. Since that time I've scaled back the intensity and gone for miles or just enjoyment and the results seem to be great.

My weight is down 4 pounds from IMCDA, I'm running faster for distance than I ever have and my bike continues to get stronger. Consistency in training has been a huge issue so I'm not sure how fit I'll be for my first half iron next week but I know my ability to perform is there. Working at least 75 hours a week really puts a dent in the consistency to train so I've had to be creative about what I can get in. This Sunday I'm headed up to the Napa Valley Half Iron course to check out the bike leg and see what I can reasonably expect on race day.

I signed up for this race with the intent of placing in the top 10, full discloser and the pressure is on. Had I continued working with Eric with the same consistency we had going into IMCDA there isn't a doubt in my mind a sub 5:15 half iron was within my grasp. Now I'm not sure, part of me is just praying I can go sub 5:30 again but part of me wants to push as hard as I can go to see what I can accomplish.

My blood sugars have been rock solid in training. The work I did to figure out how to train with blood sugars below 170 has paid huge dividends. I'm feeling much more awake, aware and consistent during longer days and my body is recovering a bit more quickly. The need for lower carbohydrate intake also helps me avoid some GI distress which I encountered in the past. Not entirely sure what to expect on the bs front on race day so time will tell.

So with that I have the confidence that I can perform and complete ignorance when it comes to my level of fitness for the start of this season. April 30th may be an incredibly painful day but I'm going into it with the same goals I had when I signed up for the race. The following week I'll race in my first road classic, 33 miles in the hills of Berkeley. I know I'll have fun in the races and I know I'll be racing for a cause, with the two most important things deeply ingrained in the reasons I do endurance sports its now time to translate that into some results.

I have become what I swore never to be....

2011-04-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

A proud owner of a Cervelo!!!!

After two years lusting over sweet road bikes I finally bit the bullet and joined the legion of espresso drinkers. No longer will I be jealous of those on sweet carbon frames happily descending down Mt. Tam. No longer will I be terrified I'm going to be jilted off El Bastardo gripping my brakes for dear life as I fly down the descent to Stinson Beach. I now can go on bike shop group rides, happily shave my legs (too far?) and interject words like cobles, hammerhead and preem into my daily vocabulary. If Ksfka were writing today the Metamorphosis would not be about turning into a beetle, it would be about turning into a Roadie!

I still have had the opportunity to ride my beautiful new Cervelo R3 yet, that will come in Paso Robles this weekend. For now the yet to be named new steed is in a separate room from El Bastardo, I can't have the old guy getting jealous of his new brother.

Time to have some fun!

Riding the Queen K

2011-04-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Few times in life an athlete has the opportunity to compete in or train on the most famous venue their sport has to offer. Baseball had the old Yankee Stadium, Basketball Madison Square Garden, Tennis has Wimbledon, runners have Boston and triathletes have Kona. The Queen K represents the storied history of triathlon, it represents countless hours of sacrifice for those who have qualified. One stretch of highway signifies the thousands of stories that Iron distance races capture from Rudy Garcia to Dave Scott to dozens of others whose stories that only family and friends know. Yes, it was only a training ride, but the fact that I was incredibly lucky to train on such hollowed grounds was not lost on me.

I was in Kona for my girlfriend's first triathlon. Nemo crushed the race and did outstandingly well. Her main goal was to not crash on the bike; with the help of Bike Works in Kona I was able to rig together a make shift water bottle holder for her stem. Nemo still isn't comfortable reaching down while riding so not having to move her hands too much gave her a ton more confidence on the bike. With how hot it is out in Kona water was key. Without going into too much further detail she had a fantastic first race that surely won't be her last.

We arrived to Kona on Thursday night and I picked up my bike Friday. Giddy like a school-girl I walked into Bike Works to pick up my Cervelo S1 that I had rented for the weekend. I'm in the market for a new road bike and the Cervelo R3 is high on my list; so testing out an S1 on the road would give me a good idea of fit and feel.

Saturday I woke early, donned the Spandex and was ready to ride. On tap for the day was 65 miles of the 112 mile Ironman Course leaving from Waikoloa and heading north to Hawi for an out and back. The first 5 miles or so were spent adjusting the saddle height and forward position once I felt kind of dialed in it was time to just flat out ride.

My first impression of the Queen K is that it is a deceptively hard ride. There aren't any steep climbs, the roads are really smooth and one would be hard pressed to find a technical turn. What makes this course brutally difficult is the wind, heat and lack of change in landscape. Riding through the lava fields is like riding on the moon, the landscape is like nothing I have ever seen and the wind blows through it without challenge. In the distance you can see Maui, but the vision looks like a mirage, its simply a beautiful backdrop that never seems to get bigger or smaller.

Once through the town of Kawaihae the ride became brutally difficult. I was greeted by a wall of wind that had me struggling to keep a pace above 15 mph. Determined to make it to the turn around point I pushed on. About 5 miles from the town of Hawi I was greeted by a friendly face tearing down the other side of the Queen K. Matt, the husband of a TNT teammate of Nemo was doing the same ride as me. He thankfully added 5 miles to his ride and rode into Hawi with me - I was struggling at that point.

At the turn-around I grabbed a coffee, an apple banana, a smoothie and some extra water before hoping back on for the rest of the ride. On the 30ish miles out to Hawi both Matt and I had a spartan 2 water bottles, 10 miles into the return trip we had gone through that amount of water! Once the wind was at our backs the pavement heated up. I could barely get in enough water to keep my focus and to stay hydrated. In total I went through 8 water bottles on the return 30 miles - 4 times the amount of water I needed on the way out; weather makes this course difficult, and weather is something a rider has no control over.

On the way back I did my fastest mile ever - 1:22, on a flat or slightly downhill portion of the course with the wind at my back. The way out took me 2+ hours, the way back took me less than an hour and 1/2. The Queen K let me realize how truly special those pro-triathletes are. The Queen K is not friendly, the course is unpredictable and demands you be prepared for the toughest obstacles a rider can face; heat and wind. After 60 miles I have a whole new respect for those who have qualified for and competed at Kona.

Another Year, Another Apirl 2nd, More Lessons & Memories

2011-04-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

It has now been four years since the April 2nd I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Each passing year has brought new perspective, new lessons, new moments of fright and new moments of triumph. As I reflect back on this past year I'm not sure I could have asked to accomplish anything more, with or without the big D. Graduation from a prestigious MBA program, gaining a job with a start-up in a field I was dying to break into, moving to the West Coast, accomplishing my goals at Ironman CDA, becoming more involved in Triabetes and meeting a fantastic and wonderful woman. The difference with this past year from each of the previous, in no way were any of my accomplishments "over coming" diabetes, I simply succeeded while having the disease.

After four long years of struggling with this disease, analyzing every blood sugar reading, every carbohydrate I've taken in I've reached a place where I embrace the disease. It is an incredible juxtaposition to say I've "embraced a disease," but I know how food will affect me, know what my body can accomplish at a given blood sugar and know what symptoms predict what my blood sugar will be. As I gaze out my window in Kona I think perhaps I've reached diabetic enlightenment.

"Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence." ~ Buddha

I've soaked in every lesson I could about the management of diabetes, asked as many questions as possible and put myself through nutrition experiment after nutrition experiment. Each opportunity to learn something new about blood sugar management has made me more comfortable with the disease. It has since turned from a fight to a relationship. I've become comfortable with the ebb and flow and know that at no time will my management of this disease be perfect.

After four long years I thank this disease for the world it opened my eyes to, I thank this disease for every opportunity it has presented. In no small way this disease changed me; and while my life has been fundamentally altered I would like to think I took the negatives this disease presented, embraced them and found a way to help them make me a better person. Now on my 4th anniversary of my diagnosis I'm hoping on a bike and riding into the blazing sun on the Queen K in Kona not worried about nutrition, not worried about the heat; simply thrilled that I have the opportunity to ride a stretch of pavement that all triathletes sacrifice so much for, even if its just a training ride for the day.

How to break into road racing?

2011-03-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

For the past few months I've been trying to find out how to break into road racing in Norther California. The scene is super active out here but unlike alot of triathlon clubs there aren't meet and greets, happy hours or kick off meetings. Pretty much people show up at a local bike shop, begin ridding together and then eventually land on a team, or so I think. Problem is my work schedule is so crazy that it is next to impossible for me to commit to a Saturday shop ride and further I only have the Cannondale I built to ride on. So a day on the Cannondale means a day where I can't go aero on El Bastardo. A new road bike would greatly help this problem but for now I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.

A few weeks back I was fortunate enough to meet up with a guy on Team Roaring Mouse as I was trying to find the entrance to the GG Bridge. Brian and I had a great ride together, I e-mailed the President of the team and thought I was all set to meet some great people. The following week was the team's once quarterly meeting but sadly I was stuck at work until 10pm. I've since joined the team's message boards but honestly have no clue how to hook up with some riders to go to a race with.

I'm utterly baffled by what happens at a road race and have no clue what the strategy is like so I'd really like to go to my first one with someone with some experience. Knowing me as soon as the gun goes off I'm going to hammer away but I know that isn't what I should do at all. So some experiential wisdom would greatly help me in this pursuit. Alot of the teams out here say come meet us at a race to network with us - problem is I have no idea how to even register for these races. Plus I'm not sure what category I should race, with only 3 crits under my belt I'm assuming I start as a Cat 5 but haven't a clue.

So if there is anyone out there who wants to throw a triathlete a bone I promise to show you that I have handling skills, won't bring an aero bottle and know to leave the aero helmet at home. I'll even wear shoes that ratchet closed, bib shorts and if it's cold even have a pair of knickers to toss on. Really I just need someone in NorCal to show me the ropes so I can start racing. My goal was to race in the Regaldo/ Warnerville road race this Sunday if anyone who reads this is headed out that way. I might be on an old Cannondale with a bunch of mis-matched parts but everyone's got to start somewhere.

Small Changes - Big Results

2011-03-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of my most recent training cycle I decided to conduct a little experiment on my blood sugars. The goal of the experiment was to identify what happens to my blood sugars if I cut out processed or refined foods (with the exception of clif bars) from my diet while ramping up cardio exercise. The results after a week have been astounding!

I eat pretty healthily as is; normally my breakfast is a cup of store bought greek yogurt with fruit or ezikuel cinnamon raisin toast with almond butter, a clif mojo bar as a mid-morning snack, a salad or something similar for lunch, fruit in the afternoon then dinner which ranges from quinoa with chicken sausage to black beans to an evening out. I was growing frustrated with some higher than I would like blood sugars in the morning and after lunch while my evening blood sugars remained pretty stable. I knew the main difference between dinner and my other meals was that I was controlling everything that went into the meal so could cut any extraneous blood sugar demons.

So I made some slight changes in the morning instead of store bought greek fruit yogurt I'm mixing in fresh berries to plain greek yogurt with some chia seeds and almond slices. For snacks I'm having almost exclusively organic fruit (awesomely provided by Keas) and for lunch I'm baking a sweet potato each evening and heating it up the following day and for dinner I'm sticking with quinoa and a lean protein like chicken sausage, turkey meatballs or ground buffalo with peas and avocado. Thus far the results have been awesome.

The highest blood sugar I've had has been 235 and that's after a meal, most of the time my blood sugar has ranged between 75 and 135, and I'm running into far more lows than highs. Any residual effects of high blood sugars are just about gone, no stomach aches, no head aches and my vision is greatly improved. Plus I feel more myself with a ton more energy. And my basal rate has dropped 1.5 units of insulin per day over the past 10 days!

It has taken me about 3 years of refining my diet to get to the point of actually really enjoying a totally clean way of eating. Although I still crave (and sometimes eat) french fries after a long ride the days of eating fast food have been long behind me. Small incremental changes over a period of three years has let me get to this point and if eating like this 90% of the time keeps the ill effects of crappy blood sugars away I'm all for it. Will keep you all updated on how this progresses but if my blood sugars continue to stabilize I might have to write a diet book!

If you ride your bike enough....

2011-02-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

If you ride someone rides a bike almost everyday they are going to encounter all sorts of things during their travels. Some of the things encountered will be awesome and some of them terrifying or death defying. The wide range of scenery one can see during a bike ride and the different terrain faced are aspects of cycling that make it so awesome. But over the past few weeks I have had way too many of those death defying experiences; today was perhaps the worst of them.

My string of crazy things happening on a bike without crashing started a few weeks ago during the second early bird crit. They continued when I did the Geyser ride up in Healdsburg, CA. During the fast and wet descent I came across a cattle grate that was hidden by the fog. Crossing the grate at 40+ mph had my front end slide out and I was lucky enough to be relaxed to coax my bike back to control. Sadly, that was the easiest and least scary of my string of weird luck.

Two weeks ago I was descending from Mt. Tam/ Muir woods with great control and comfort on my bike when all of a sudden.... my rear wheel popped out of the drops!!!!! My rear wheel did nothing to balance my bike at that point as it was flopping like a fish out of water while still stuck in the chain. I shifted my weight forward, didn't panic and gently feathered the front brake. While my bike was skidding down the steep hill I was able to unclip and safely skid to a stop. 3 bikers behind me stopped and said "holly f*ck what just happened, are you ok?" and then said "I cannot believe you stayed up." Apparently my uni-cycle skills are top notch.

Then this morning after weeks of staying up in situations where I almost certainly should have gone down it happened.... I finally went down. No this wasn't during a morning training ride or even an all out hammer fest with a cycling club, it was on my freaking commute. Nothing makes crashing worse than doing it on a crowded street looking like a turtle on its back as you try and stay up. I'm fighting off a bit of a cold so my mental focus isn't as sharp as usual. Normally I try and avoid Market Street at all costs as I think it is one of the most dangerous streets to bike on in the world (although the hundreds of bikers who take it daily may disagree).

One of the things that makes Market so dangerous are the trolly tracks in the middle of the street - which oh by the way are the exact width of a 700c road bike wheel (smart city planning). I've succesfully avoided said tracks for my 5 months living in San Francisco but today was a different story. As I looped around a bus pulling to the curb my mind forgot about the tracks for a moment, next thing I know my rear wheel is being grabbed by the iron from hell and I'm gyrating my body to try and set it free. Next thing I know I shoulder check the bus I was trying to get around, bang my knee and do a side roll that would have gotten negative points from the Russian judge to avoid flipping my bike over. As I go to pick my bike up and wheel it to the curb it won't move. Once safely on the sidewalk I realized I had totally bent my wheel's rim!

So not only do I have a bruised knee and just crashed into a bus I had to load my bike onto my shoulder and carry it for a 1/4 mile to my office! Not the best way to start off a Wednesday; thankfully was able to find a replacement rear wheel for $40 online for my single speed. As I sit here with a bruised knee and elbow which could have been far worse I ponder how I crash on a commute but can stay up when my rear wheel pops out going down a steep descent. The mysterious of biking continue.

Representing InsulinDependence at TCOYD

2011-02-14T07:52:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning I had the privilege of representing InsulinDependence and Triabetes at the Taking Charge of Your Diabetes (TCOYD) event in Santa Rosa. Given my recent schedule I haven't been as active with Triabetes as I would like. I had to bail on the Carlsbad Half-Marathon weekend because of work and haven't been able to advice the 2011 captains to the degree I would have hoped for. When Nate contacted me to man the table at the conference I was 100% game. Plus it was a way for me to work on my BD skills without a suit on!

I introduced ID to each person who walked by the booth with a smile and the simple statement, "we're a national non-profit that promotes active lifestyles for people with diabetes." What was really special about the event was the number of people who had a light bulb go off with that simple sentence. Whether they were diabetics themselves or parents of diabetics the knowledge that there is a social network of people who face the same challenges made their daily struggles seem somehow less ardent. Through my role at Keas I'm learning how important social networks can be in behavior change. Diabetics know how important it is to live a healthy lifestyle but sometimes there isn't a ton of guidance on what a healthy lifestyle is when you're working with artificial insulin. The things that work for Joe Smith down the street may be entirely different for Debbie Diabetes. The collective wisdom in ID and on Phrendo makes it a bit easier to figure out what will work and what might not.

One particular story made the hour drive more than worth it. I met a woman whose 11-year-old son was diagnosed with type 1 sometime in December. Her son as she described him was a "super tough kid," with an untamable adventurous spirit who would be the "first to jump out of a plane," on a skydiving trip. Her eyes totally lit up when I told her about the triabuddies program and the support network that is so important to ID. In speaking with her I was reminded 1,000 times over how incredible the non-profit I'm a part of is and how influential Peter's vision is in the diabetic community. As always I'm just psyched to be a small part of the mission and the growth of the organization.

These legs were made for climbing

2011-02-01T09:46:00.000-08:00

One of the things I did not fully appreciate before moving to California was how incredible the cycling would be. Sure I had heard that Marin County was a cyclist playground but I assumed that just meant a quick spin over the Golden Gate Bridge would let one ride any number of routes. I failed to understand that any one of those routes could be the best ride a given cyclist had ever been on.

It is almost becoming a cliché that after each long ride I do from my new home I finish and say, “that was the best ride I’ve ever been on.” Saturday, may truly take the cake; I can’t say my Saturday ride was the most fun I have ever had on a ride but was by far the most challenging, zone 5 inducing, suffer fest I have ever had the privilege of testing myself on.

Poised for a day of cycling and wine tasting my new partner in triathlon crime, Little Nemo, and I left SF for Healdsburg around 7:45 am. After a quick stop at Philz coffee we were on the road and excited for the days pavement. Once at the parking lot of the Healdsberg City Hall we headed our separate ways; she was off to tackle the flats and I was off, like my normal idiotic self, finding the hardest ride I could in the general area.

Prior to heading up for the weekend I had come across the Sanata Rossa Cycling Clubs website which boasted the 10 greatest rides on their websites. I was up for that Pepsi Challenge and of course had to go with one of the 3 rides that was listed as extremely challenging. It just happened that the ride they described as the “quintessential Sonoma ride,” also left from the Healdsberg Court House, so I was sold.

The Geyser ride was unlike any I had ever done before. My trials and tribulations on Afton Mountain and the Blue Ridge parkway came early in the ride. After the first 20 to 30 miles training in Virginia I’d reach easier terrain so I was freshest when the going was hardest. Tackling the 7 sisters provided outlets of relief throughout the climbs and was met with some of the most majestic views I had ever seen. The Geyser Ride was a different story entirely.

Geysers starts off through a beautiful path in wine country. I passed by vineyard after vineyard, pig farms, wild turkeys and gorgeous rolling terrain. I averaged just about 20 mph for the first 20 miles and was feeling strong. After mile 20ish I entered River Rd and the terrain took a dramatic turn. While still beautiful I felt like I was scaling Caradhras trying to save Middle Earth.

I climbed deeper starring down into a beautiful valley pushing my quads as hard as they could go. About 3 miles into the 12 mile climb I felt a bit woozy, checked the blood sugar and grabbed a snickers bar. After a 5 minute pause my blood sugar started to climb and I was off again. The next few miles rolled along gradually enough as I averaged about 14 mph (between 11 and 18 mph) for 6ish miles.

As I climbed and climbed I could see what I thought was a smoke stack in the distance. I later found out that there is an actual Geyser on Geyser road in Geyserville and that the Geyser provides geo-thermal energy to the region, pretty cool. Once I finally got even with the geo-thermal smoke I thought I had reached the apex of my climb, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Taking a right hand turn at the end of River Rd. onto Geyser Rd, I was hit smack in the face with the steepest, hardest, most grueling climb I have ever encountered. Over the next 3 miles I climbed a net of 890 feet, declining just 52 feet over that same stretch. I averaged 3.6, 8.6 and 13.1 mph in those 3 miles and had never felt as deep a burn in my quads as I did during that stretch. I had to stop twice for fear my heart was going to explode out of my chest and could do nothing but collapse on my aero bars as I tried to muster the leg strength to continue.

To make matters worse I picked up a new pair of training wheels for El Bastardo. I put my old Mavics on the bike I’m using for crits and found a great deal on a Mavic Kysirium Elite on Craig’s List with a cassette. Problem is the cassette’s largest rear sprockete was a 25, on my old wheels I had a 28. With a 43 small ring up front my old gear ratio meant my bike was advancing 1.12 times for every pedal stroke in 43 x 28, with the new 43 x 25 gearing my bike advanced 1.72 times. The best comparison is taking steps up a hill, it’s a lot easier to take little steps up a huge hill than lunge forward; essentially the new gearing made the climb 35% harder than what I was used to!

Regardless, I pushed forward and finally reached the top and was rewarded with a screaming descent through heavy fog and a light drizzle. The road would break apart at times into loose gravel and I’d frequently be met with cattle grates. Over one particular cattle grate that I didn’t see until I was on top of it I nearly lost total control of my bike as the front tire skidded to the side as I glided over it. Thankfully the handseling skills learned at the early birds paid off as I was able to regain control and safely continue on. Crashing at about 35 mph would not have been fun!

Finally I was done with the most hilariously satisfying ride of my life. Each time I ride out here I’m reminded of how badly El Bastardo needs a step-brother. Sadly those sponsors still haven’t knocked down my door so I’m going to continue to be the crazy guy doing climbs no sane person would do on a tri bike. The rest of the weekend was spent tasting some fantastic cabs, points and petite sirahs; but for 50 miles I was reminded of why few things in the world bring me as much joy as mile after mile on my bike. I had some diabetic issues on the ride, felt pain like I had never felt before and pushed over the hardest climb I’ve ever encountered – not a bad way to remind yourself that no matter where you live the simplest things can bring the greatest joy.

First Totally New D-Experience In A While

2011-01-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

Over the past few days my blood sugar has been reacting pretty weirdly. Since Sunday I have frequently had blood sugars in the 300s but have had symptoms of lows, not highs. I received my new order of Dexcom sensors yesterday so should be able to zero in on any basal rate adjustments; but my big worry is that my body is not processing insulin as quickly as it should be around lunch time. Since my diagnosis I have struggled with my blood sugars between 2pm and 5pm. Historically my blood sugars have spiked about an hour and 1/2 after lunch, causing me to perform a correction bolus. That correction normally leads to a nasty low sometime between 4:30 pm and 6 pm - this only happens during the work week, not on the weekends.

Originally I had thought that the correction was necessary so began letting the blood sugar come down naturally, much to my dismay I was still encountering lows. In fact it has seemed that no matter the meal (salad, sandwich, or whatever) and regardless the level of meal time bolus my blood sugar will still raise north of 250 and come crashing down sometime later. I've been trying to figure out this pattern for nearly 4 years but still haven't had any success.

Yesterday I attended a conference for work in San Francisco and decided to go swimming after it. Much like many other days my blood sugar was almost 300 around 3:30 pm but I felt like I was trending very low. I reduced my basal rate and by 4:25 pm was walking to the pool. After about a mile walk my blood sugar was 89 even though I hadn't given a bolus correction and had eaten a 35 gram nutrition bar while I started my walk. I downed a Gatorade and hopped into the pool - probably not the best idea.

I swam well enough but then experienced severe leg cramps after 45ish minutes of swimming (about 1500 meters) and decided that was enough for the day and hopped out of the pool. In the shower I had near debilitating leg cramps and came close to falling to a heap on the floor. After some time at my locker the cramps loosened and I was able to make it to the subway feeling pretty "weird". I tested my blood sugar and was at 65 so I just reduced my basal rate in an attempt to naturally bring my blood sugars back up.

As I commuted home I began to feel even more weird and eventually felt my heart racing a bit. I checked my blood sugar again and was at 31 - yikes! I downed a clif bar as quickly as I could, made it to my apartment and held onto my bed until the world stopped spinning. My blood sugar climbed to 109 by the time I had dinner and I felt much more like myself again. Then this morning even though I had been waking up with a blood sugar of 220ish (its been off in the morning for whatever reason) I woke up with a bs of 77. So either a ton of insulin decided to hang out in my butt cheek instead of going through my system or there was a complete 180 of environmental factors. Hoping not to experience anything like those cramps or a racing heart anytime in the near future though - that was a new one that I'd rather not repeat.

Finished A Crit!!!!

2011-01-24T09:51:00.000-08:00

What a weekend in San Francisco! Having spent my entire life battling the bitter cold of the Northeast, 70 degree temperatures on a January weekend is like a trip to the tropics. On Friday I had a conference call with a peer in Nebraska and couldn't help but smile when he said it was 5 degrees there as I looked out my window to beautiful rays of sunshine. When the fog is gone from San Francisco and the Bay Area warms up this place is pretty close to perfect. Sadly I had to choose not to join the Insulindependence crew in Carlsbad for the half/ full marathon. In between training I worked all weekend as we have a high profile at a few up coming conferences and are working on all the stuff related to that - life at a start up, never dull. But, CONGRATULATIONS! to Peter for putting on such an incredible weekend in Carlsbad - from the Facebook posts it sounds like it was Insulindepenence's biggest and best weekend yet. The organization continues to grow and I'm continually to be proud to be even a small part of helping the growth of the organization. Way to go all who volunteered, and raced.

Training is back in full effect and last week I hit close to 10 hours of workouts. I signed up for the Napa Valley Half Iron on the last weekend of April and need to get ready for what I hope to be an awesome triathlon season. This year I'm starting off my early season training doing things a bit differently and incorporating a ton more variety. A big part of my success this season will be trusting my body both from a blood sugar and endurance perspective to know I can push through the pain barrier to get faster.

To spice things up I headed to Fairfax on Saturday and hit up the Pine Mountain trails. The drive was rewarded with 8 miles of glorious running and I felt fantastic. The Pine Mountain trails offer some kick a** hills to test yourself on and some of the most amazing views anywhere. I held back on the first 5 miles and then began to open it up on the last 8; my last mile, a pretty steep downhill, was run in under 7 minutes - was just a perfect run. After the run we decided to hit up Sonoma where I joined the Medlock Ames wine club. I'm not telling you about the vineyard as an Oenophile but rather as someone who really believes in sustainability. I was sold on the vineyards use of sheep as lawn mowers, nature preserve built into their lands and overall organic and eco-friendly way of farming. It's pretty neat to be able to support a local business that believes in the same methods of capitalism that you do so I was happy to support them anyway I could - plus the tasting room has an after hours speakeasy so I was sold!

Now onto the early bird # 3 on Sunday. I woke Sunday pretty anxious to get down to Fremont, the focus of the day's clinic was on sprinting. If you take one look at me its pretty apparent what my body is meant for - short, intense efforts; in the words of Bill Parcels, "it's what you lift all dem weights for." Much to my chgrin the sprinting clinic was focused on rpms at 43 x 17 instead of rpms at 54 x 11 (the different ratios for bike gears). During a sprint I can get my rpms up to 100 to 110 in my 54 x 11 gear on a flat for a short duration, using smaller gearing had me spinning like a lunatic to get up to speed.

The clinic was organized by Dan Smith of Sportvello, a legend in the Norcal cycling community and one of the best cycling coaches around. He had an awesome approach and enthusiasm to coaching a large group and while I wish I had the opportunity to get clocked in my biggest gears I still learned a ton about sprinting positioning, dynamics and effort. After an hour of tremendous coaching it was time to race, I couldn't wait.

After last week's crash fest the race organizers decided to split the field down the middle so that each race group had a mix of aggressive and passive riders. Last week we were split into riders who had raced more than 5 races and those who had raced less than 5 races. The big crash was with the newbies, not surprising since we're all trying to figure out what taking leadership during a crit really means. This way the more experienced riders could control the flow of the race and the new guys could feel what an experienced race was like.

My goal for the race was to stay with the pack, finish but also push myself as hard as I could and be in the sprint at the end. At the start I felt fantastic, my blood sugar was a stable 215 and I was hanging right in the middle of the paceline - probably rider 20 of 48. Through the first few laps I held my position and was not feeling like I had to sprint all that often to catch the group after a turn. My cornering was much improved but I still need a ton of work on it - losing those triathlete habits isn't easy!

Once we hit lap 5 I decided to test myself, left the paceline around the sweeping 4th turn and jumped to the front. Another rider clad in white and blue joined me and we led for the majority of the 5th lap. Sadly I haven't figured out how to maintain my position in the paceline, a larger group of riders was on our wheel and swallowed us up, since I don't know how to merge back into the line I had to float back to the end of that group and lost the solid position I was in. I made another move with 2 laps to go and was up near the front again but got crowded out coming around a turn, I knew if I wanted to have a chance at the sprint I'd have to really crush it on the last lap. After turn 1 I started to move up the pack working like a dog - I was out of the paceline so couldn't draft any of the riders. I made it through turn 2 safely, moved to the inside and hammered to try and beat the pack to turn 3 (rookie move). I was about 5 riders too slow and had to slam my brakes because I took turn 3 way too tight, like a new rider to crits or like a triathlete (take your pick) and at that point was 100 yards off the front riders and wouldn't be able to contest the sprint.

I however, DID FINISH! In the first crit I lost the pack when trying to learn how to corner with the mentors and last week my mechanical issues from the crash didn't allow me to finish. This week I finished and was in near position to contest the sprint so couldn't be happier. I did make a bone head move at the end but am learning a ton about handling each time I go to the clinic. Here are the quick items I learned:

I have the engine to chase down the pack even without drafting but need to learn how to draft to maintain position at the front of the pack
Don't be an idiot - if I 100% know I can't get to the front I need to stay on the outside of a turn
If courses were straight I'd be pretty good at this (that's my positive spin on holy crap I am awful at cornering)

At the end of the race I finished up with the mentors and one of them pulled alongside me and asked "are you a weight lifter," I laughed and said "no, I'm a triathlete," with a smile, then explained to him that I was a football player turned triathlete and now trying to learn how to be a cyclist. He gave me some great positive words on my sprinting ability - can't wait to get out there again. Also, I found out about a track clinic on Saturday mornings; I'll be hitting those up starting early February.

ps - if any riders who live in the San Francisco area stumble upon this blog and want to commute down to the crit or grab a ride sometime, or know of any teams looking to develop riders please post a comment, I'm all ears.

Crits, Crashes & More

2011-01-19T07:36:00.000-08:00

The rainy season has finally ended here in San Francisco and the weather is unbelievable. Sorry Mom, enjoy the 9" of snow in the backyard as I'm running in shorts and a t-shirt in beautiful 60 degree temperatures. With the weather making it far more welcoming to exercise outside at this time of year I'm able to log some incredible base miles for the up comming tri season. It also makes attending the Early Bird Crit series that much more easy.

Sunday was the 2nd EBC clinic/ race but the tone was much different than the first. The second I arrived I saw a racer from the under 25 crew who was bandaged like a Vietnam War vet. The young rider apparently had his front wheel clipped going around a turn, causing him to tumble face first onto the pavement, he was pretty banged up but hopefully only had cosmetic damage. The women's race had 4 crashes which sent a couple riders to the hospital and right before the men 30+ cat 5 race one of the instructors fell over (we've all done it, but not fun to see before a race!)

This week's clinic was on cornering. Apparently you're supposed to exit and enter wide so you don't get caught in the corners with other riders, can use the apex of the turn to your advantage and get more of a draft. In week 1 my cornering skills were atrocious and I basically had to do a speed interval after each turn to even come close to the pack. This week, I was able to stay right in the thick of things and maintain contact with the pack the entire time.

With 4 laps to go I was really happy with my position, I was right in the front of the middle of the pack, felt fresh and began moving up the field slowly. My goal for this crit was to work on maintaining contact with the pack, corner well and then have enough left in the tank on the final lap to give the sprint a go. All seemed to be working as I had hoped until we exited turn 2 of the 4th lap.

After turn 2 the pack began to bunch a bit and one rider along the narrower straight away came off his line and locked handle bars with a rider to his right. Both riders tensed up, lost control of their bikes and went down hard; all in about 10 riders hit the deck, I was maybe 8 riders behind the crash and was lucky enough to see what was going on, squeezed my brakes and wrenched my handle bars. Thankfully I was able to stop just before slamming into one of the riders who had hit the pavement.

In all my years of playing football I had never seen such a scene. Wheels were broken, bikes were smashed and riders were down on the pavement or laying in the grass in obvious pain. The entire field was neutralized after this and I realized that I was riding on a bike whose handle bars were perpendicular to the front wheel. Apparently I had wrenched my handle bars so hard to make my bike stop that I turned the stem sideways.

The great thing about crits is that it forces you to focus on form, concentration and riding well. It's just a matter of time before a crash happens but this one was pretty bad. Thankfully I was able to escape without going down and my heart felt get wells go out to the riders who weren't so fortunate. More to come on blood sugar analysis, signing up for the Napa Valley Vintage Triathlon and other tid-bits from the West Coast.

Getting Back To Form Is Painful!

2011-01-13T09:33:00.000-08:00

During my transition to life in California and getting acclimated to a new job that slams me with hours of work my workouts have been inconsistent at best. While I totally love what I'm doing I long for the days when I could hit the Charlottesville roads for hours on end and still have time to fit in everything I needed to. I've stayed in "ok" shape but fell out of "race shape" and am trying to get ready for the pending tri and cycling season. For the past couple weeks I've been incredibly consistent in my workouts, upped the intensity and focused on what I need to get better at - speed stamina not strength stamina.

My god is this painful! The crit on Sunday, day off on Monday, lift and 2,000 meter swim on Tuesday and 4 miles last night including a 4 x 400 on the track is not easy for this old man! At the same time I'm also trying to cut my weight down to 175 so am forced to be really vigilant about my blood sugars. In the past I was so worried about a sugar crash I think I had a tendency to over eat. This year instead of filling 100s of fuel belts for a 6 mile run I'm trying to start my runs as my blood sugar is climbing. Thus far it seems to work and I've been able to greatly cut my calorie intake. We'll see what happens as I continue to up the duration of my workouts but its a pattern I'd like to continue.

My First Crit!

2011-01-10T09:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I raced in the Early Bird Criterium series hosted by Velo Promo and Golden Chain Cyclists and OH MY GOD WAS IT FUN!!!! The series is totally welcoming; Velo and Golden Chain have a clinic for each gender and category in the hour or so before the given race. Yesterday's clinic was on pace lines (my first time ever in one) and just general information about a crit. Unlike the first time I showed up to a triathlon where I felt like a babe in the woods, people at the crit made it super easy to figure out where to go and what to do - instructions were loud and clear and the mentors were flat out awesome.

After driving around Fremont, CA for about 15 minutes to find an ATM I finally made my way to Dumbarton Circle to check in, pay my $20 race and license fee and figure out what the heck was going on. The first thing that I noticed was there were no racks for bikes, no transition areas and no compression socks; it was already a different world from the one I was used to! I found a tree to toss my bag next to and then joined the group of close to 100 riders to listen to the pre-clinic instructions.

We then broke into small packs of about 15 to 20 riders each for some pace line practice. The day before the clinic/ race I had put my road bike back together, normally I'm on my tri bike all the time which gets some inquisitive looks on the climbs of Marin. However, in pace lines a tri bike is recipe for disaster; you have much less control over the direction of the bike because of its aggressive geometry and your hands are always a movement away from the brakes or the gears. For pace lines a road bike is pretty much necessary. So rather than riding my trusty steed, El Bastardo, I was on my far less glamorous Haley - the red and gold clad frame with the cheapest components money can buy! Nashbar groupo anyone?

I learned a ton in the 45 minute clinic; apparently I had a tendency to let the gap widen too much when I was about to take over the front of the pace line and then accelerate the pace a bit too much which causes an accordion effect. The surges and slows of a pace line were really hard for me to get comfortable with. I'm so used to riding at my own cadence and pace for miles upon miles that working in unison with so many different riders was totally foreign to me. Also, going through turns without grasping for oh sh*t brakes was a novelty for me. But in the end I improved on each lap of the clinic, learned to coast to the back of the pace line and learned how to maintain the pace when I got to the front. All in all not bad for a dude in mountain bike shoes and pedals (purchased for my ambitions of doing cross)

The clinic was over and it was time to race! I checked my blood sugar and was a bit high at 285 but figured that would be fine for the 40 minute all out effort. Crits are done on a short course (not sure if the distance is universal). This course is a 2.2 km flat road with 4 90 degree turns and one turn that kind of banks around. At the starting line we were broke up into 2 race groups, Cat 5 races can't have more than 50 people in them for safety. I was in the front line of the 2nd group, based solely on the position of where I was standing, this race was just to learn how to do it and for fun.

The gun went off and so did I! In typical Ed fashion I figured I could ride at the front and use my power to stay at the lead of the race. I was in front for the first 2 corners and nearly had a heart attack. Soon I was swallowed up by a group of 5 riders working in a pace line that had no problem blowing by me. I'm not sure if I was at the lead of that pace line around the first 2 turns or if they just caught me b/c of my gold awful cornering ability. Had I been more aware of how to race I would have sucked onto one of those 5 riders wheels and kept the pace with them. As it was, I was still working solo like a triathlete, not like a cyclist.

I would catch the pack on the straights, work my way back up to the front and then get spit out on the corners. This pattern lasted for the first 80% of the race (I guess about 18 laps, I think we did 20ish laps in all). The mentors would see me trying to maintain contact with the pack and would often give me a wheel to hang onto as I sprinted back to the pack. I'd kind of make contact and then fall back out of the pack since I didn't understand how close I should be to maintain the draft. I'd often feel like the pack would slow so then I'd try and go to the side of it to move to the front but then would get shot out of the back end around the next turn.

Eventually a mentor saw my obvious monkey on crack skills for racing crits and then helped me to learn how to go into the turns low and exit high, and how to maintain a powerful position to keep speed after the turns exit. After working on that with him for a turn or two I had totally lost contact with the pack. Without the ability to get into my big ring (did I mention I had put my bike together less than 24 hours before the race?) there was no way I was going to catch the peleton which was averaging close to 30 mph. A fellow rider who had lost touch with the pack offered to draft with me so we could do some work to catch up. But I felt like I was pulling him alot more than he was pulling me and eventually he couldn't hang my wheel. With about a lap to go the race director told me to go back to the start; which I guess means my first crit learning experience was a DNF, no biggie this was all for the lessons and god I learned alot.

Some things I learned:

Stay with the pack, don't try and move up until the last few laps, and for the love of god don't go out too hard
Have a bike that can get into the big ring and road shoes and pedals probably would help
No matter how fast you can sprint or how powerful you are, you can't keep it up for 40 straight minutes unless you're on the tour
Crits aren't tris!

Needlesstosay, last night I hit up Sports Basement in San Francisco to pick up some road shoes and pedals. I can't freaking wait for next Sunday's clinic and race; I love triathlon and all the sport has to offer but I honestly can't remember the last time I had as much fun as I did yesterday. One of my goals for 2011 is to do as many different types of races as possible, Eric and I both thought that I might really take a liking to some of the power oriented cycling events and if yesterday is any indication that assumption is totally right. Yesterday was a freaking blast!

Stories of Bike Commuting

2011-01-03T08:52:00.000-08:00

One of the best things about living in San Francisco is the critical mass of people who ride their bikes into work. Public transportation out on the left coast can be a nightmare so I built up a single speed to ride into work. Each day I'm blessed with the opportunity to ride my bike 6 miles into work and 6 miles home; so even if I don't have a chance to get in a workout due to my crazy start-up work schedule I at least get in some exercise.

However, every once in a while you encounter a driver who views cyclists much the same way the Orkin man views roaches. Or you may run into two homeless people having a sword fight in the middle of an intersection. Both of those are pretty easy to deal with just by paying attention. What I find to be the most comical is the avengers of public peace (or crankiness).

Today while riding in I came to an intersection in front of SF's capital building. This is one of the less busy intersections downtown. I came to a red light, stopped and waited for the traffic to clear. Once the traffic cleared and there were no cars coming for at least 2 blocks I got up on my pedals and rode across the street. That's when I had this exchange with a woman who must still be nursing a New Year's hangover:

Woman who hates the world: "aren't you supposed to obey the traffic laws!?!?!?" said in the same tone and voice as the wicked witch of the west
Me: "Are you serious?" said in the same tone as one would after getting punched in the face for ordering a happy meal (as in surprised)
Woman who is angry at society: "It was a red light you f*cking asshole!!!!!!!" said in a demonic tone that might have been followed by tounges
Me: "Happy New Year To You Too!" said in my happiest and most chipper tone

Nice way to ring in the New Year. And yes "technically," she was right but this is also the city where people refuse to cross the street when it says don't walk even if there are no cars coming for 5 miles; yet an 18 year old can get a medical 420 card as easily as he can get a pepsi. It never gets boring out here, that's for sure.

History of Insulin - Part 2

2010-12-31T03:38:00.000-08:00

After the group of Toronto doctors were able to isolate insulin, treat humans and refine the extract with the help of Eli Lilly; there was still a huge problem. Supply & distribution. This area of the exhibit was much smaller than the areas devoted to the discovery of insulin or the advancement of how it was utilized by patients; but had my MBA dork side really excited.

Before a synthetic compound like Novolog or Humalog was created insulin needed to be extracted from the pancreas of a pig. The below picture shows the number of big pancreases necessary for 1 liter of insulin:

Since everyone loves Wilbur, that was obviously going to cause some supply chain issues!

John Rockefeller then got involved in the process and promised the Eli Lilly corporation $150,000 for the refinement and further development of insulin extracts. The financing and partnership provided the capital necessary to develop the drug for wide-scale human use and allowed for further partnerships with manufacturing and shipping companies. Without the wheels of business the discovery of insulin would have impacted the lives of far fewer people.

This part of the exhibit really spoke to me directly. My professional life has turned towards creating partnerships that allow a product, which I believe will help people lead healthier lives, reach more people. Until I grasped that I probably would not be alive today if it wasn't for the funding by people like Rockefeller or partnerships between Eli Lilly and Toronto University I don't know that I fully appreciated the necessity of such partnerships. One can't function without the other and while the discovery of insulin won a Noble prize its reach, scope and impact would have been far less dramatic with the wrong supply and distribution strategy. This quote from J.K. Lilly to Elliott Joslin kind of sums it up:

"The great and refreshing discovery through this experience

was that the really great men in any line of endeavor are the

most approachable, simple, and direct in their reasoning and contacts.

Both in letter and in spirit, we have endeavored to indicate to you

how precious our relations have been with you and your associates."

History of Insulin - Part 1

2010-12-29T08:05:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of visiting the NY Historical Society's exhibit on the history of insulin with my sister on December 21st. After some holiday cheer I finally had the time to upload the pictures from the exhibit to my computer so over my next several posts I hope to walk you through how amazing the exhibit was. The exhibit brought to light how incredible of a breakthrough the discovery of insulin was but also illuminated how the breakthrough would have saved far fewer lives had it not been for the potential profitability of the drug. From a personal, medical and business perspective I was in awe as I walked through the exhibit.

Part 1 - The Breakthrough

In 1921 a group of University of Toronto researchers were able to isolate the peptide insulin from islet cells in the pancreas. This would lead to the first partnership between a research university and a corporation, Eli Lilly. The path to discovering insulin not surprisingly was met with in-fighting, and egos. Tensions were no doubt raised due to the near death-sentence a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes had been met with to that point.

While the Toronto researchers were successfully isolating insulin in the pancreas Frederick Allen and Elliott Joslin were treating diabetic patients through a near starvation diet. The idea was to restrict a diabetic to a critically low level of calories so that the body would be forced to accept the calories with a minimal insulin spike. The diet prolonged the life of some diabetics but did not address lifestyle conditions and was not sustainable. Essentially the diet bought time as the real treatment was being developed.

Dr. Banting in 1920 was reviewing an 1889 study of Dr. Minkowski and jotted the following note to himself "Ligate pancreatic ducts of the dog. Keep dogs alive till acini degenerate leaving islets. Try to isolate internal secretion of these and relieve glycosurea." Over that summer Banting and team performed several experiments on dogs and were able to keep Alpha alive for the entire summer with no pancreas. In subsequent months further tests were performed on dogs using insulin extracted from a fetal calf pancreas with positive results. This led to the first human test on Leonard Thompson in 1922. The first experiments proved costly as the insulin was too impure and caused severe allergic reactions in the test subjects. With the help of Eli Lilly the research team was able to better purify the insulin extract which led to one of the most heart wrenching exhibits:

In 1922, 5-year-old Teddy Ryder was treated with insulin. The first picture shows how dire his medical condition was prior to receiving insulin; the photograph on the right is Teddy after insulin a cherubic faced healthy boy. That moment more than any other during the exhibit struck me as how fortunate we all are that the Toronto based team was able to isolate insulin. This team is the reason why any of us can function normally in society let alone run triathlons, compete in the NBA, NFL or accomplish whatever we set our minds to.

Teddy's note expresses in its simplest form the impact this discovery has had on anyone who has been diagnosed with diabetes:

"Dear Dr. Banting, I wish you could come to see me.

I am a fat boy now and I feel fine.

I can climb a tree.

Margaret would like to see you. Lots of love from Teddy Ryder."

Exhausted of Explaining

2010-12-07T07:36:00.000-08:00

Something odd happened on Friday night when I was out for Korean BBQ with around 15 people, some of whom I knew and some of whom I was meeting for the first time. Before the food arrived I excused myself to the rest room, tested my blood sugar and pumped off before returning to the table. One thing I have never done is felt the need to hide my diabetes; I wouldn't help out Triabetes or blog if that was the case. Rather dating new people, working in a new place and meeting new people has caused me to explain how I compete in triathlon, how I developed type 1 at 27, describe the difference between type 1 and type 2 and explain that juvenile diabetes is the same as type 1 and that it doesn't go away just because you grow up so many times over the past month and 1/2 I just couldn't do it one more time.

Explanation fatigue; I'm sure this is a universal trend for anyone who deals with something that is a bit different than the person sitting next to you. There comes a point where you just don't feel like talking about "it," whatever "it," may be anymore. As understandable as it is that I wanted a night where I didn't have to have "the conversation," my decision to test and bolus away from the table really surprised me. I guess sometimes everyone just needs a vacation from the things they are forced to focus on daily.

High fat foods

2010-12-01T21:43:00.000-08:00

It has been far too long since I wrote about how various food compositions affect my blood sugar so I thought I'd get back on the d-blogging wagon and talk about something relevant. Armed with my trust Dexcom again I've been able to analyze how all sorts of foods impact my blood sugar levels. The really cool thing about a CGM is that you can see the time series trend of how the glycemic index of a food will impact the amount of time your blood sugar spends "out of range."

Normally for lunch I have a turkey sandwich on sprouted grain bread or a salad, I know exciting. Today I was beyond hungry when lunch rolled around so I opted for lamb shwarma and falafel. Not the epitome of health but my diet has been super rigid lately so I felt the need to splurge a bit and get in some fats. The shwarma was covered in hummus and babaganoush while the 6 falafel balls were gigantic. Since this wasn't a very carb dense meal (although high fat) I assumed there were about 90 grams of carbohydrates. I took in the approriate amount of insulin and 20 minutes after eating began to see my blood sugar climb. My blood sugar plateaud at about 290 and remained there for about 3 hours before it precipitously came down to range.

This got me to thinking about the relationship of different nutrition compositions and diabetes. It is alot easier to understand what a high carbohydrate/ high sugar food is versus a high glycemic food. Ice cream for example has much fewer carbohydrates than you would first assume but the high fat content of ice cream makes it incredible difficult to manage with artificial insulin. Understanding the glycemic index takes time and its not the most widely discussed nutrition metric but probably should be. Counting carbohydrates is important to determine the appropriate amount of insulin but understanding how the nutritional composition is what can really lead to an awesome a1c.

Oh and since I didn't post last week, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Seasons? Or Something In The Water?

2010-11-24T08:37:00.000-08:00

Over the past week or so my blood sugars have been angry, even with the new pump. I have been struggling to get my blood sugars out of the 300s even with big boluses, lots of water, a good amount of exercise and an increasing basal rate. My first thought to get my blood sugars back in line was to have a day of nothing but Ezikuel bread (which is really sprouted grains), salad and quinoa. When a dinner of just quinoa still had me high I figured something bigger wast at play.

Yesterday on Facebook a post by Anne popped up that said, "RAGE BOLUS!" I e-mailed her and asked if her blood sugars had been crazy for the past week as well. She told me she couldn't figure out what was going on and that she too was struggling to keep her blood sugars under the 250 mark. Moreover, another type 1 friend of hers was experiencing the same issues. WTF!!!!!!!

So either there is a mass conspiracy in San Francisco to drive all diabetic's A1c above 10 or the change in seasons this year is just really weird. The temperatures in San Fran have dropped pretty starkly over the past week after some unusually warm weather. My best guest is the drastic change in temperatures has messed with people's metabolisms. "Normal," people as Lauren Antennucci, my sports nutritionist, used to say will be more tired than usual in the face of a changing metabolism but for someone special, like Anne, her friend and me the repercussions are blood sugars that are totally SNAFU. Hopefully all the SF blood sugars get under control soon; if not an investment in the companies that produce insulin might not be the worst idea!

36 hours of shots....

2010-11-17T12:24:00.000-08:00

10 am this morning could not have come fast enough. For the past 36 hours I've been managing my blood sugars with a combination of lantus and novolog injections. The last time I was on lantus I was still in the "honeymoon," phase of type 1 so I gave myself something like 13 or 14 units of lantus a day. Because my exercise rate varies daily due to training I manage my blood sugars with a combination of my basal rate and planned boluses throughout the day. Therefore, I had no clue how much lantus to give msyelf for the the first 24 hours without my tail.

After Anne gave me the lantus I knew I didn't want to go overboard with my long lasting insulin so I gave myself 11 units and planned to manage any highs with novolog injections. I woke up with a blood sugar of 255 and had an egg on a small multigrain english muffin for breakfast. By the time I got into work about an hour later my glucose had popped to 352. The day was not off to a good start and I was feeling awful, I was thirsty, had to pee, had unclear vision and my head felt like someone was lightly tapping it from the inside. For the next 6 hours my blood sugar oscillated between 275 and 325 as I gave myself injection after injection. Finally around 3pm my blood sugar dipped below 100 and then quickly dropped into the 70s. I had a clif bar to bring my bs back up and then took another injection when I saw my blood sugar rise to 180.

When I got home at 7:30 pm I took in 14 units of lantus and 4 units of novolog to cover the salad I was having for dinner. Thankfully my blood sugar finally stabilized as I laid on my bed and watched some Netflix too exhausted to move. I woke up with a blood sugar of 190, took in 2 units of insulin, had a cup of coffee and rode my bike to work. Once at work my blood sugar remained at 120 and finally at 10am my new pump arrived.

Today I feel 1,000 times better than I did yesterday; I have no idea how I lived like that everyday for a year as I went undiagnosed. The headache, the thirst, the muscle cramps, the problems seeing; all those little symptoms that had me so confused from 2006 - 2007 were on full display yesterday as my blood sugar was consistently the highest it had been in many, many years. With a stomach sore from the # of injections I gave myself yesterday I sit here tremendously happy knowing that my tail is firmly in place and that I'm back in control.

Another pump bites the dust

2010-11-16T07:34:00.000-08:00

The new purple pancreas was with us for a very short period of time so it will not be receiving the 21 gun salute that the original purple pancreas received. In fact, if not returning the pump didn't cost $3,000+ for not returning (can you follow all those negatives?) it would currently be somewhere between my apartment and the Pacific Ocean for how far I would have thrown it! The freaking thing lasted from late August until mid-November; not my idea of a quality built product. Alas, here I am waiting for my new pump to arrive - it won't arrive until Wednesday, so I'm on lantus for the first time since June, 2008 for 24 hours.

The beauty of Triabetes and the diabetic community was on full display last night. After my pump would not prime and a ton of moisture was underneath the screen I called Medtronic. Since my pump died at like 9:15 pm PDT, UPS could no longer ship it out for next day delivery. Apparently Big Brown says you have to place an order by 11pm central time for it to arrive the next day. That doesn't sound like just in time logistics to me; but whatever I guess commercials lie.

I hopped on gmail to see if any of the local Triabetes crew was online, God smiled down on me as Anne of Annetics happily had the green available to chat button next to her name. The crazy thing is Anne was one of the first diabetics I had ever spoken with, how I became involved in Triabetes and was a guiding light during my early days of both triathlon training and more importantly managing the D.

Our conversation went something like - "Hey Anne, my pump broke, do you have any lantus or syringes?" Anne replied, "let me check; yep I do, come on over!" Simple as that I wouldn't have to totally freak out for 24 hours without any tail. I do feel kind of paralyzed though. I was supposed to ride in GG Park this morning with a friend of mine from SF Tri Club but I had to bail because I'm not sure at all how my body will respond to lantus. So for 24 hours I'll be eating pretty light (not that, that's a huge change) but won't have the ability to really work out. I remember when I was on multiple-injections I was low pretty much all the time so I'll just have to be extra vigilant about that today.

Pretty frustrating that technology failed me again so quickly. Maybe it's because I went for a run in the rain with my pump; maybe it's because it was a refurbished pump. I love the purple pancreas but lets just say if any pump manufacturers want to sponsor me right now I wouldn't be opposed to switching.

Finding a Pool - the life of a triathlete on the move

2010-11-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

A triathlete faces many obstacles when moving. Beyond figuring out how to get one's most prized possession (a tri bike) from point A to point B safely, securely and in one glorious piece the triathlete has to figure out where the heck to work out in their new city. Finding running and cycling routes is one thing; finding a new pool is a completely different story.

I became somewhat spoiled having UVA's pool as my body of water to train in for the past two years. Having top notch division 1 facilities, a clean locker room; a wall of windows and enough lanes to satisfy all the bike commuters in San Francisco. The luxury of having that pool for 2 years has left it hard for me to be satisfied of another pool to train in. Thus far I'm up to trying out three pools in SF and researching about 5 others.

Each pool has had a really interesting draw back:

the first was USFs' pool - nice enough, a good amount of lanes, kind of weird because there is no shallow end so during rest periods you have to hold onto the wall for dear life. The big kicker at this place is to join I have to "try out" for the masters team. I'm not worried about the try out but am just kind of annoyed by the fact that I have to be "approved" to swim in the pool so I don't have to spend $15 every time I show up.
the second was UCSF's Mission Bay Pool. Really nice facilities although kind of confusing to navigate. I can join this as a "neighbor" because my apartment is near their other campus. However the big challenge here is that the pool is on the roof - outside. An outside pool is awesome somewhere like oh I don't know Miami, but San Francisco gets freaking cold and is wet, ALOT. Swimming outside in the rain in 50 degree temperatures isn't my idea of a good time. If this pool had a tent over it or something it would be a great option.
Now last night's fiasco. I was real excited to find a Y 2 miles away from my apartment with awesome hours. Their website said the pool had 8 lanes (4 split in 2s) and while Ys aren't glamorous they normally get the job done. I got to the pool last night to swim, each lane was marked for speed, Fast, Medium Fast, Medium and Slow. Looking over the swimmers in each lane I opted for the fast lane - with 3 other swimmers. I'm not a huge fan of circle swimming to begin with; if everyone is doing the same workout it's great; it's pretty awful if there are individual agendas going on.

To continue.... two of the people in the lane were wearing paddles, one of the swimmers with paddles had a weird tube around his feet that was kind of like a pull buoy but seemed way more bouant and then there was the woman.... I should have known this woman would be a disaster when I arrived at the pool and the lifeguard tried to explain something to her. So I hop in the pool as the woman continues to just stand in the middle of the lane. Finally I push off the wall and go to swim; when I returned to the starting wall the woman was still standing in the middle of the lane. After my next 100 she had finally crossed the length of the pool and stopped in the adjacent half lane (i.e., the one you would kick off from during circle swim) when I asked her, "do you have any idea how to circle swim?" I know, I know but I was frustrated.

She continued to do bizzare things including just swimming a very slow breast stroke which continued to clog the other 3 of us. Finally she left to go to the medium slow lane. Since she continued to clog up the lane the other 3 of us came dangerously close to hitting into each other during the push offs from the wall; at least I thought that was her causing all of it. But no..... as I continued to try and circle swim one of the swimmers with the paddles would stop every 50 yards and instead of getting to the corner that would give the rest of us more room he would stop short of the wall and kind of take up both 1/2 lanes. This caused me to almost hit into the dude with the inner tube thing 3 times. And at one point as the paddle guy was walking between lanes I pushed off the wall directly into him, fun.

Then inner tube guy had his son also wearing an inner tube on his feet join him in the fast lane. They decided that chatting along the wall taking up an entire 5 yards of a half lane was ok as they allowed their inner tube feet to float to the surface. Concurrently paddle guy was standing in the other half lane doing absolutley nothing so as I returned to the wall I literally had no where to push off of or touch. At that point I had, had enough jumped out of the pool, packed up and went home. The Stonestown Y will not be my pool of choice.

As it stands now it looks like I'll have to get over my annoyance and try out for the Masters team. Either that or get over my fear of sharks and swim at Chrissy Field for free year round (although the rain and cold thing would put a damper on that). Oh the joys of a moving triathlete.

Returning To Form

2010-11-11T03:21:00.000-08:00

Hello again, it's been a while since I've had the time to sit down and collect my thoughts. Life at a start-up keeps you busy for sure, the frantic pace and constant need to move things forward keeps it interesting and fun but a 36 hour day would help things out quite a bit! However, now that I'm finally settled into life on the West Coast things are returning to normal.

Late last week I decided to start training again. My body needed some time to recover from training for CDA and well I overall needed to adjust to the move and new job. I technically never stopped working out but I hadn't worn my heart rate monitor for a couple of months and really had no structure to anything that I was doing. All that was a nice change of pace but I was craving a direction and some hard core heart pounding work outs. With that I finally turned the corner on Sunday and found my mojo to push it again.

Sunday was a rainy day here in San Francisco, but I woke up feeling a desire to run that I hadn't felt in some time. My previous 5ish runs had been cut short because of blood sugar issues but for this run I made sure to prepare my nutrition and to load on carbs pre-run just like I do during normal training periods. I left my house with a blood sugar of 238 ready to take on the hills of SF. The goal for the day was to run more than 7 miles.

I headed through Golden Gate Park with fresh legs and a focus in my mind I hadn't felt in a while. My blood sugar felt stable as I cruised with a really comfortable stride. The miles began ticking off, my heart rate was staying in zone 3 and I was feeling fantastic. I ran along the Great Highway cruising at an 8:30 pace, looked at the Pacific and smiled; this was my first real California moment, running the rain with waves crashing to my right - one of the exact images I had hoped to find when I so wanted to move to the West Coast.

I slowed my pace just a bit from mile 6 to 7 as I wanted to push the pace a bit for mile 8. Mile 8 ticked by with my watch showing an hour and 9 minutes; which left me with a great mile cool down as I jogged back to my apartment. My first "real run" since CDA, and better yet my blood sugar was a happy 140 when I got out of the rain.

The day after the powers that be at my firm gave the company the day off for a super successful product launch. So I locked El Bastardo to the roof of my car and drove down to Santa Cruz for what was sure to be some great riding. Made a blood sugar mistake on the way down as I started the ride with a bs of 392 - scones sure have alot of carbs! The ride in Santa Cruz was in a word, perfect.

I started my 40 mile loop with a 10 mile beast of a climb. The climb reached grades of 11% for short stretches and averaged about 6% for the entire climb. The climb was longer than anything I had done in Virginia and was unbelievably challenging as I couldn't get into my biggest gears on my rear cog (need to make some rear derailleur adjustments). But I kept a steady cadence (dropping to 45 at one point!) and kept the wheels rolling. Close to an hour later I had conquered the first 10 miles and faced a crazy steep descent.

The amazing thing about riding in California is the drastic temperature swings. I was pretty warm on the climb up in my merino wool jersey, warmers and bib shorts. But I was cold to the point of shivering on the way down! At one point I had to stop in a patch of sun light to stop my teeth from chattering and warm up a bit. Once I finished the descent I was greeted by an unbelievable view of the Pacific Ocean and 15 miles of pure bliss as I time trialed it down US 1. Sadly, my damn Droid didn't save the pictures I took of the ocean so the images are only burned in my mind not on film.

For 15 miles I jammed along at a 24 mph pace and my legs turned the pedals seemingly like they never forgot how. Riding along the Pacific, enjoying the view was the happiest I had been since I moved to California. I couldn't have asked for a better loop.

The ramp up in exercise has of course begun dropping my basal rates like a lead balloon. One of the many reasons I hopped back on the saddle was an escalating basal rate and some blood sugar numbers I wasn't happy seeing. The combination of commuting by bike and my daily workouts has me exercising close to 2 hours a day which has brought my basal rate from a high of 17.5 back down to 15 in a 10 day period. That has translated to blood sugars that were hovering around the 160 mark to blood sugars between 100 and 120. My basal rate still isn't as refined as it should be, the move and recovery took its tool. However, slowly everything is returning to form.

Diabetic Recovery

2010-10-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a really good friend of mine got some fantastic news. My friend who is an incredible athlete, former NCAA all-american, had gone through several hip surgeries to repair a chronic condition. For the past three years she thought she had to give up being competitive, something that was so integral to how she had defined herself for more than 20 years. Yesterday a visit with her incredible team of doctors yielded the result that she can get after it again! When she called me to share the news I about wanted to jump out of my chair and do a jig; having been in the same situation after surgeries I know how incredible the feeling is when a surgeon says - let it rip. But her situation was a bit different, she still has to take it easy on the run and went through years of slow rehab - it actually got me thinking to how that parallels diabetes.

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes I had no idea what it meant to my life. One of the reasons I signed up for my first Ironman was to prove that I was still the same idiot meathead I had always been and that the disease wouldn't take away my ability to use determination to accomplish my goals. I would think much like any child, parent of child or person who is diagnosed none of really knows what this disease means for our lives.

Over time we learn how to adapt our lifestyles to blood sugar management. I've learned over time what is required to swim, bike and run as well as I can. I've learned over time how to function as well as possible at work without going low or going high. I've learned over time what to look for when I'm going low or high and learned how to control the symptoms when I can't just bury my head in the sand.

As a diabetic we never receive the words from a doctor that "you're you again," but with every passing day and every passing experience that lets us control this disease a bit better we reduce the limitations this disease places on our lifestyle. I know how big a smile my friend will have on her face the first time she really races again; it's alot like the smile I have each time I run because I know, like all of you know that a run for us isn't "just a run."

The New Endo

2010-10-20T06:56:00.000-07:00

As the knowledge of my disease has progressed the importance of my endo has decreased. Now that I'm pretty patched into the diabetic network I can get the support and knowledge I need from a community of patient and care giver support rather than having to make an appointment to see a white coat. This has created a weird situation where my endo has become more of a gateway to a prescription rather than my outlet of all things diabetes.

On Monday this relationship became abundantly apparent as I met my new KP endocrinologist. Dr. Kantor seemed like a smart enough doctor but when I left the office I had this weird feeling that he could have been a robot and that would have been fine too. He asked me a series of questions about my basal rates, disease progression (to clarify if I had traditional Type 1 or the more recently claimed Latent Adult Onset Type 1 - I'm a traditional T1) and queried me for my bolus ratios. When I told him about my basal rate which is now about 17 units a day of insulin I mentioned that when I did IMCDA my basal rate was closer to 11. He asked about my job, so I told him I now work for a healthcare tech start up and also do work with a non-profit devoted to revolutionizing blood sugar management. At that he realized that I kind of have my sh*t together when it comes to all this and said something like, "it's amazing when a diagnosis like this happens and kind of transforms someone's life." After that it was just all about the prescriptions.

In the hallway I heard him tell his nurse that "I had everything under control and that I even do Ironmans so all I needed was my scripts." But that also brought up the question in my mind - what if I didn't have it all under control. What if I do triathlons, devote my life to healthcare, know my basal rates inside and out but have zero command of blood sugar. This isn't the case but very easily could be. I was surprised my A1c wasn't taken to confirm that I have transformed into this machine of blood sugar management.

I left the KP facility with 9 vials of insulin and 900 test strips realizing my brain had become a walking encyclopedia of type 1 diabetes knowledge. I can tell you the glycemic effect of just about any food, analyze the fat content versus carbohydrate amount in a given item and have full working knowledge of what exercise will do to my metabolic rate. Three plus years of constant knowledge seeking has made me my own walking white coat. Now the challenge is to stay as aware of my body and my disease as I have been so that the I continually expand my ability to manage my disease no matter how solid I have become at that task.

Insulin - a Great Forecast of Future Healthcare

2010-10-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

A week or two ago the NY Times had an amazing article on the history of insulin. Some time ago I wrote about advancements in medical technology that allow me to pursue some of the crazy athletic things I do; but I had kind of taken the discovery of insulin for granted. I forgot that at some point isolating the compound that allows the body to use glucose has allowed all type 1s to live past their first few years with the disease. The article discusses how viscous a killer diabetes was in the early 1900s and basically states insulin was one of the few "once in a generation," drugs that truly changed the world.

The description of children with type 1 in the article is tremendously heart wrenching. The mental image of a 10 year old who is nothing but skin and bones really made me realize how incredible it is that I control my disease with a pump and about 90 years after the discovery of the drug am able to be a muscular 31 year old. None of that would have been possible without a team of canadian doctors - so my heartfelt thanks to that team!

What was really shocking about the article was how strongly it parallels what is occurring today. Much like the treatment for the biggest health risks of the 2000s (obesity, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, etc), the management of type 1 required doctors to loosen their grip on the patient and allow them to treat themselves at home. Doctors were terrified that letting their patients inject themselves with insulin would lead to all sorts of down stream ramifications (thankfully I can get an infusion set into my butt cheek as well as a guy who went to Harvard med!). Today, although Doctors are all for eradicating the greatest health risks we face the medical business model doesn't let them be treated as effectively as they otherwise could be.

So anyway, overall a really interesting article that is a great read. The article was written in concert with the launch of a new exhibit about the drug at the New York Historical Society, 2 West 77th Street. "Breakthrough: The Dramatic Story of the Discovery of Insulin," runs through January 31; I'll be sure to get to it when I'm home for the holidays!

Ed's adventures in prescriptions fills

2010-10-05T07:14:00.000-07:00

As most of my loyal readers know by now I've since left the east coast and the world of PCs for the open air of California and a Mac loving industry (for the record I lasted 12 hours on a Mac!) With the big move came switching pharmacies and transferring my prescriptions from VA to NY to CA. I've also switched insurance and pharmacies so the idea that all of that would have gone smoothly for someone who has encountered more problems with prescription re-fills than NASA does testing flight equipment was probably a stupid thought.

For the past couple weeks I have been getting everything set for my first insulin pick up at Kaiser Permanente (KP). I contacted my new PCP to let him know I would need insulin for October 1st, contacted the KP pharmacy to ask what the protocol was and followed up with CVS to initiate the transfer. Through a series of e-mails, phone calls and follow ups I was assured that I would have a 1 month supply of insulin by September 25th and that not seeing my doctor for the first time until the second week in October was not a problem.

So I hopped on the 38L from work last night and anxiously awaited to hop off the bus at Divisaderio and Geary. An aside, it is really hard to tell what street you're on while riding the bus in SF; I constantly have to look at google maps on my Droid because the street signs aren't consistent and have names, not numbers so I can't just "count." I'm sure eventually I'll know landmarks and stuff or figure out the mystical language other SFers use to know when to get off the bus but for now I rely on technology.

Once off the bus I walked into the KP building, found the pharmacy and got into line. The pharmacy is freaking huge and feels more like a DMV than a CVS, there were about a dozen people waiting in chairs staring at some screen that apparently tells you when your script is ready for pick up and there are windows of tellers - not a nice open desk for you to drop off your script, pick up or pay for stuff I guess. This pharmacy also had the most robust section of contraceptives I've ever seen - no problem with that, KP just offers quite the variety!

Finally I got to window 5, handed the clerk my drivers license and KP insurance card and then I saw her inquisitively looking at the screen. Uhoh, the trouble begins. "What medicine do you need?" I respond insulin - Novolog. "Hmmm, ok there is a note from your doctor but CVS hasn't transferred the scripts yet." I responded, I confirmed everything with my Doc and CVS and have e-mails following up with each, yes those scripts have been transfered. The really nice (seriously) clerk then said "ok let me talk to the pharmacist."

After a couple minutes the clerk came back and said "we would send you up to emergency care to get a script but they are closed." I responded ok, I'm just about out of insulin and will be by tomorrow morning, this is kind of a necessity right now. For the record this was the first time I could actually go to KP to get my script filled, I didn't intentionally wait until I only had 30 units of insulin left - all in my pump. "Ok let me get the pharmacist to talk to you."

Evil pharmacist comes to greet me. "We can't refill your script, it doesn't exist." I responded in a non-elevated tone, that of course it exists, I have e-mails saying so, can pull my old scripts on CVS.com and have an e-mail from my doctor. Evil pharmacist of course doesn't budge so I then get a little agrivated but didn't raise my voice (I'm learning!). So I asked her this; KP is supposed to be all about patient centered care, right? she responds "Yes," and I am the patient, right? again she says, "Yes", so then if in the morning I'm in the hospital because I don't have insulin how does that possibly equate to patient centered care?, she looks slightly annoyed so I close with; I'm pretty sure a dead patient doesn't equal patient centered care. At that she replied "we can't fill your prescription you have to talk to your doctor," and walked away.

My clerk in shining lab coat was way more empathetic and tried to help me out; she asked me what the CVS phone # who held my scripts was, and if I had the RX number in the e-mails from my Doc. I then brought up the e-mail from my Doc on my trusty Droid and showed her the CVS script on the same gift of technology. My CVS script said refills "transferred out," proving they did their job and the e-mail from my Doc said "you are fine to pick up your one month script before seeing me, the endo nurse will follow up and confirm," which she did.

The clerk in a stroke of genius then went to talk to a different pharmacist, this one with a brain, who understood the importance of insulin for a T1 and who realized that this was a system mistake and not some dude on the street trying to score some insulin (because nothing says a fun night like going hypo). After 45 minutes everything was resolved and I did in fact receive the goodness that is synthetic insulin that keeps me going day after day. Sampson hadn't lost his hair. Welcome to a new pharmacy - my adventures continue.

Adaptation

2010-09-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

Adaptation has never been something I've been particularly adept at; take one look at my nutrition plan for race day and you'll realize I try and figure out every variable known to man and prepare for it. It's one of the reasons why I manically studied metabolism and nutrition when I was first diagnosed with nutrition, the inability to control my fate has been something that has always bothered me - that may be one of those reasons I always work so hard. But I think my move to California may just hint towards a more mature Ed, an Ed whose willing to flow with things a bit more and not freak out over time zone changes, an inability to find things 100% organic and a workout schedule that has been schizophrenic at best.

The first year after my diagnosis I had tried to control every variable that went into my blood sugar management. I would freak out if a friend made me eat an hour later than I had planned, would all but lose it if someone wanted fast food instead of something healthy and god forbid a workout started 20 minutes late. I had tight control over my A1C but probably wasn't the most pleasant person to be around. During my first season of triathlon I was so worried about hitting my nutrition protocol to a tee that I kind of forgot to have fun during alot of my races. Fast forward a year and I was still pretty nervous about my pre-race routine but started to loosen the reins on other parts of my life. Then at the start of IMCDA I had lost that gel, a year earlier and I wouldn't have started the race - this time around I had a super solid swim. Baby steps towards the willingness to adapt added up to a huge change.

Tonight after work I was planning on going for a run; I had no idea the exact time I'd start or even how far I would go for (I know, shocking). I left work at about 6pm, and turned my basal rate down to 40%, when I finally got on the N to head to my super sweet new pad (more on that below), I opened up my Clif Bar wrapper and munched away then got home tested, tossed on my running shoes took a swig of Odawala Super Food and off I went. At some point during the run I decided a 7 mile Monday night jaunt was solid enough. No planning, no fuel belt, not even a heart rate monitor! I did wear the Garmin though - I mean I can't just go technologically nude!

And now about the place. In year's past I was terrified to live with people I knew, let alone people I had only met for 10 minutes! But on Sunday I moved into my humble new abode with 2 roommates whom I've spoken with a total of 30 minutes, maybe. I have none of my own stuff here (that comes the first week in October), am making due with the food I could find at the local market and am just enjoying my first place in California.

So how's all that relate to diabetes? I've switched time zones 8 times in the past month, that hasn't been great for blood sugar management - but rather than freak out about it I'm adapting. Yes I have to take in a bit more insulin than usual and yes it has been frustrating that my blood sugar is bouncing more than I would like. But... freaking out about every second of every day isn't going to help my A1C. I think I'm finally at a place where I can sit back and know that I have tight control of my disease and know that I'm taking the steps necessary to control diabetes as best as I can. The learning continues - or maybe I've just become mellow since I'm off the East Coast!

Mobile Health & Diabetes

2010-09-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

Through my awesome new job I'm going to have an opportunity to attend some great healthcare related conferences. Last week I was in San Diego for the MHealth conference which focused on how mobile technology can improve the efficacy of medical treatment, adherence to protocol at home and improve the overall heath outcome of a patient. One of the subjects that came up alot was home biometric devices.

To aid in adherence biotech companies have come up with an idea to attach band aid like sensors to people to monitor everything from blood sugar to cholesterol to hydration. I love the idea of body sensors and to have a ton of metabolic information at my finger tips. I'm a data dork and the more information I can get about my metabolic rates the better I can manage my blood sugars and the better I can perform everyday activities. However, this technology relies on one huge assumption - that it's accurate.

A few presentations I saw talked about constant glucose monitors, and Dexcom was mentioned! I love my Dexcom, having the CGM gives me much tighter control over my blood sugars - but it's not accurate all the time. A while back I talked about the night time low alarms that were occurring for no reason; for home medical technology to really drive great care those problems need to be resolved. Accuracy needs to improve to a point that shows true trends and presents actionable data in the absence of a manual confirmation.

I do believe that home biometric devices will be a large determinant of improving medical outcomes in the future. However, the accuracy of that technology needs to increase a great deal before home biometric monitoring becomes a driver of health. For a pretty healthy 31 year old who understands data a false alarm on my Dexcom is no big deal, for a 70 year old on blood pressure meds a false alarm could be deadly. Once the technology improves home biometric devices will be awesome; hopefully that day comes sooner rather than later.

California Dreaming

2010-09-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

After close to five years of trying to move to the west coast I'm finally following the advice of Horace Greeley and heading west. Prior to leaving Manhattan for Darden I was emphatic about working for a small start-up on the west coast where I had control of my own destiny. Over the course of my 2 years in business school that plan shifted and bent at times but when I returned for my second year in VA I had a firm resolve to make it out West. One characteristic that has defined who I am is perserverance - my path to a healthcare technology start up demonstrated that quality ten fold.

At the start of b-school there were two career paths I was considering, both slightly non-traditional for a post-MBA career. I was trying to decide if my skills and passions were a better fit for socially sustainable international development or if following my love of athletics and wellness along with the nerdiness I bring to data analtyics made healthcare technology a better fit. Since my resume is pretty strong in financial services it was easier to figure out if the buy side of finance would let me pursue a msision that satisifed me both professionally and personally - by the end of the summer that answer was a resounding no. So when I returned to Charlottesville I was hell bent on getting into health and wellness no matter what.

Over the course of my second year at Darden I tried to start my own healthcare technology company that could be implemented in a corporate envrionment. I did this with a small intent of getting funding but mainly to gain experieince in the industry. Creating my business plan and value concept gave me enough cache to get on the schedules of executives at various healthcare firms around the country and demonstrated a passion to actually work in the field. The hours I spent laboring on my idea proved to be one some of the best time I spent academically at Darden.

From September until August I talked to anyone who would listen about my ideas behind health and wellness and what I could bring to the table. There were tons of bumps in the road, a start up that had flirted with me lost their funding, a large medical group misled me during the recruitment process, a research grant was refused (still slightly bitter about that one), and I turned down a couple offers that wouldn't have let me fulfill my career aspirations even if the I loved the personality of the companies. Then this summer hit and I had informational interviews with Microsoft, in person interviews with Amazon. Those discussions continued to fortify my desire to work for a small start-up who got my ideas so our mutual passions could create growth. My continued outreach finally paid off in late July.

On a whim I e-mailed the head of the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to pick his brain about the industry and to find out if they needed an intern for the summer (I was starting to need cash in a bad way!) The Pioneer Portfolio is RWJ's investment arm that funds disruptive technologies in healthcare innovation - totally the type of stuff I wanted to be doing; although my ultimate goal was to get on the product side of things. After pitching my ideas behind Perform Wellness and asking Paul about his thoughts on the industry I swung for the fences and asked him to name some firms he thought were really pushing the envelope on healthcare innovation. One firm he named was Keas.

After doing some google searching, Keas seemed like a totally kick a** place to launch my career or hell to become a lifer at. At its core Keas is a technology platform that transforms content from healthcare experts into actionable care plans that are personalized for the patient's disease, lifestyle and personality needs. Keas and my ideas behind Perform Wellness had so many similarities that I thought I was dreaming when I first read their product descriptions. Not only is the product awesome but when the company launched they made the front page of the NY Times and were recently recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 50 best consumer websites out there - tops in healthcare. At this point I was pretty much salavating like Pavlov was ringing a bell in my ear then I came to learn that their founder was the previous head of Google Health.

I calmed my nerves, collected my professional thoughts and shot an e-mail to the career address for Keas. Within a few hours I heard back from HR asking some clarifying questions; our dialogue led me to the Director of Business Development. After a quick e-mail the DBD and I had a close to 2 hour conversation about our thoughts on healthcare technoogy, my ideas on corporate strategy and on competitive intelligence - by the end of the conversation Ms. DBD asked me to come out for an in person interview.

The following Wednesday I was on the first flight I could find to San Francisco, had my game face on and knew it was now or never to break into the industry I was dying to get into for a firm that I thought I could really crush it at. From 9am until 3pm I met with the CEO, COO, DBD, Head of Product Management, and HR. Each conversation had me more impressed with the firm, not only did I love their thoughts on the industry but I felt like it was a fit; I felt like the people involved in this company really wanted to create change, not just talk about it.

The wait that weekend was agnoizing, I had sent them my references and knew they had contacted at least one, but I was dying to know if I had finally landed the gig I was dreaming of. All signs were pointing to yes but after more than 9 months of hard core job searching I was starting to lose faith in the process and confidence that I would ever find a job outside of finance. Then finally at 7:30 pm on Thursday August 26th, Ms. DBD called me to offer me the position of Manager of Business Development! I started on Monday remotely from NY and spent the last half of the week working in San Francisco for what was without question the best first week of work I have ever had. Working for a start-up is totally different than the buttoned up culture I come from, but I freaking love it; I'm free to think how I think, be creative and just get after it - there aren't floors or ceilings to navigate, simply a hunger to get the job done lets you feel empowered to take on the challenge.

It's funny, without having been diagnosed with type 1 in 2007 I'm not sure I would have ever realized that health and wellness was the way my career should go. I had always thought I had so much freaking fun playing football because I was pretty good at the sport and loved the competition. It turns out helping my teammates become better and challenging myself to be a better athlete were the things that got me going. As I continued to write this blog and continually applied my analytic geekiness to sports nutrition and blood sugar management that I was deveoping some intresting ideas on how to help people become healthier. Since 2007 I've been on this crazy quest to figure out what stuff meant for me, where I fit in and how to become succesful not defined by the amount of money I had in my bank account but by the level of personal satisifaction I felt from my job. I think that quest got alot more clairifed on August 30th, that whole perserverance thing turned out to be pretty important in all of this. The next chapter begins in San Francisco, I have no idea what this book will look like but if it's anything like the journey I went on the past 4 years I'm in for one hell of a ride.

Choosing Health Insurance

2010-08-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

For the first time, either in a really long time or possibly ever, I have a choice as to what health insurance I will use. When I was first diagnosed with T1 I was already enrolled in Aetna while working at Brown Brothers and there was no way I was going to try and change insurance plans. At Darden my coverage with Aetna continued under their student health plan and really it was either use that plan or go it alone and try and buy something off the street (not really an option). However, now that I've FINALLY FOUND POST-MBA EMPLOYMENT (more on my dream job later this week) I need to figure out which insurance plan to go with.

The choices:

Anthem Blue Cross PPO - $20 co-pay
Kaiser Plan 20

The most important part of my coverage is prescription cost. The Anthem plan will have me paying $15 for generics (does Novolog even come in generic?), $25 for brand name with a $250 annual deductible. Kaiser's cost structure is $10 for generics, and $60 for brand name at a 100 day supply through their mail order service.

Does anyone have experience filling Medtronic or Dexcom orders with these plans? Anne of annetics.blogspot.com loves her Kaiser plan but its a different one than what my future employer (unveiled later this week) is offering. Not sure what else I need to look out for - any advice would be awesome!

The Little Things

2010-08-25T00:23:00.000-07:00

NPP and I have been getting along very well over the first week of our relationship. My blood sugars have been incredibly steady and my bolus ratios actually work like I expect them too again; I fear that OPP was on the fritz for the better part of a year. I really wish there was a guide book for all the little things that a diabetic encounters during the course of their disease. Most of the daily adjustments we make become second nature, but every so often I am reminded of how much thought and practice it took to get accustomed to this new way of life.

Tuesday evening after physical therapy I met my sister out for dinner at Suenos, a tasty Mexican restaurant in the Chelsea area of Manhattan, for taco night. We started the night with some guacamole and then split a delicious trio of taco meats and we made our own tasty delights family style at the table. With the massive amount of corn I was about to consume I started plugging away on NPP to pump up the bolus. I figured that my meal would be about 160 grams of carbohydrates, but for the life of me couldn't figure out where my dual wave bolus function went. I also could not fathom why my pump kept locking me out of administering a regular bolus saying I had exceeded my mass bolus limit!

Now a step back, due to all the medical regulation required for medical devices the device pretty much has to be error proof. Additionally, tons of children use insulin pumps so there need to be a ton of fail safe mechanisms so a 5 year old does not inadvertently give themselves 20 units of insulin. So on each pump there are settings that open up more menus for a higher level of customization of insulin infusions. It's kind of like unlocking a secret level on a video game except in this case it lets me eat, not just spend more hours getting callused thumbs.

After staring at NPP for a good 3 minutes I finally remembered that it came with factory settings - not Ed customized settings! With that realization I began beeping away expanding my max bolus from 10 units to 25 units and unlocking the magic menus of square and dual wave boluses. Had those two functions not been available to me there was no way I could have eaten the meal we ordered.

Over the past month I have gotten just a small taste of what blood sugar management must have been like prior to pens that could give you lantus or novolog in micro-adjustments or insulin pumps that can change the level of insulin in your body at the push of a button. The advancements in medical technology have made it possible for me to eat a carb-riffic meal of tacos, compete in Ironmans and go about my day like any other 31 year old would. And the amazing thing is, it's not the big advancements that have helped totally change blood sugar management, it's the small things that let insulin calculations become more precise. I know that the advent of insulins that react differently in the body (i.e., lantus v novolog) revolutionized care but the incremental changes to deliver that insulin more precisely has provided alot more freedom. From a 30,000 foot level we all manage this disease pretty similarly but when you get down really close to individual management you see how unique this disease is for each person who has it. The past few weeks have made me realize how much all those little things add up and reminded me why it's so important for our collective experience to be shared.

Re-Birth! The New Purple Pancreas Arrives

2010-08-23T07:56:00.000-07:00

I anxiously waited by my front door on Tuesday morning hoping to see Big Brown making its way up the hill my parent's house is on. I sat by the door like an anxious puppy with my head turning at each passing car. After less than 24 hours I couldn't handle shots anymore. I had bruised my stomach twice, had a rapidly escalating blood sugar and overall just felt lousy from the worst control I had over my blood sugars since day 1. My knight in shining brown could not get here with my package fast enough.

Just before 10:30 am I was in my driveway to go pick up my Dad from the auto-mechanic shop where he had dropped a family car off for new brakes. As I opened my car door I heard a rumble at the end of the driveway - Big Brown had finally arrived! I signed for the package and called out for my Mom, I couldn't wait, it was time to put my tail back on!

Giddy with joy I opened each box, removed my remarkably similar new pump (there was some anticipation that there would be some distinguishing characteristic). I had hoped for a slightly different colored "ACT" button, maybe a slimmer profile, but NPP looks identical to OPP - I guess while OPP was not original in looks he was original in spirit. I take solace in the fact that on my belt NPP is OPP's twin.

I found my settings on my Minimed Connect site, loaded them into NPP, felt the oh so familiar sting of inserting an infusion site and was off to pumping again! By the time I had NPP up and running my blood sugar was up to 279. To manage my blood sugar while tail-less I set my alarm for 4am so that I could get some mid-sleep fast acting insulin into my system. At 4am my blood sugar was in the 250s, I took in 3 units of insulin and woke 3 hours later with a blood sugar of 215. At 8am I took in another 3 units of insulin but by 10:30 am without any breakfast I had hit the 279 mark. With my pump attached I bolused away but my blood sugar was still on the rise. Due to the lack of insulin in my system my bood sugar continued to climb into the 300s until I had enough insulin in my system to reach a homeostatic state. Around 5pm I finally had control over my blood sugars again.

Over the past few days I have noticed that the control I have over my blood sugar levels has been much tighter than what it was with OPP. During OPP's final few months I had to fight off low after low and often encountered an unusual high that made no sense. Foods that I would bolus for one day under the exact same environmental factors (exercise, temperature, etc) would require a totally different insulin amount the next day. I probably should have called Medtronic as soon as I noticed my blood sugars doing weird things because it was probably a warning side that OPP had gone crazy. NPP has worked like a champ and my bolus calculations have returned to what I expect them to be and my blood sugars are reacting like they should. I guess I'll take this as a lesson to never be too cautious when it comes to my blood sugars and when I notice something is repeatably out of line to take action and find out what's up.

Obituary: Original Purple Pancreas

2010-08-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

On August 16^th at approximately 4:10pm on the 5^th floor of 60 East 56^th street in Manhattan the Original Purple Pancreas experienced a fatal button error. After numerous attempts to revive the Original Purple Pancreas through a series of battery changes, rapid button pushing and the seldom effective slap on the side, Minimed Paramedics called time of death. The Original Purple Pancreas was born on June 12^th, 2007, lived a full life and is survived by 6 boxes of infusion sets, 5 boxes of reservoirs and 17 needle marks on Ed L’s posterior.

The Original Purple Pancreas truly gave life to all those he came in contact with. The Original Purple Pancreas was a warrior insulin pump having survived two Ironman triathlons, including one in the pouring rain, five half-iron, 2 Olympic and 1 sprint triathlon. The Original Purple Pancreas was no stranger to foreign cultures having visited Costa Rica, Sweden and Denmark as well as spending time in no less than 15 US States.

OPP three times survived extensive security screenings at airports and was known to perilously detach himself from the safety of its belt clip to dangle life and limb from nothing but an infusion site tube; OPP was truly a thrill seeker. OPP with a series of beeps, calculations and corrections was always fond of low glycemic foods but gave its best to counteract the sugar spike of the occasional pizza. OPP unfortunately never was able to achieve its life’s dream of testing its carbohydrate counteracting abilities versus Wylie Dufresne’s molecular gastronomy however. OPP’s last great triumph over blood sugars was at Jonathan Waxman’s Barbutto, 6 days before OPP’s passing.

OPP will sorely be missed by those he supported and allowed to thrive. On countless bike rides, through questionable placement during debaucherious pursuits, and steadfastly fighting the fight against type 1 diabetes OPP was always there. He will be most fondly remembered for his remarkable ability to face carbohydrates and allow those he supported to live their life to the fullest.

Tribute to Original Purple Pancreas will be paid during his long lost twin brother’s first priming on June 17^th, 2010 at 10:30 am in Upstate NY. Sarah McLachlan’s I Will Remember You will be played during priming simultaneously on all connected Itunes libraries at that time.

The Nutrition Protocol Drawing Board

2010-08-16T06:28:00.000-07:00

My attempts at exercise starting at a lower initial blood sugar has been going on for about a month now. At times the process has been tremendously frustrating, like getting to the pool parking lot with a blood sugar of 75, sitting there for 15 minutes and then realizing a swim just isn't going to happen. Or going out for what you hope will be an 8 mile run and having your blood sugar drop into the 40s during the first 20 minutes of the attempt. However, I totally expected this to run into some really frustrating moments as I attempted to tweak my nutrition. After a month I've noticed some trends and am getting more comfortable taking insulin before I workout. Also, thanks for some of the great suggestions with my last post on this topic, please keep the ideas coming!

Thus far swimming has been the easiest thing to change my nutrition protocol for. For swimming I can take in more insulin than for biking or running pre-workout and my blood sugars seem to be more stable for the duration of the effort. It also seems I need a lower level of initial carbohydrates for swimming than I do for the other two disciplines. Not sure how that will play out in a race but as a stand alone the new protocol is helping alot. In the past I would start a swim with a blood sugar upwards of 220 and that number would continue to rise throughout my warm up. During the early part of my main set I'd often be dizzy or just not feel that great. Now starting at a blood sugar of 140 - 160 allows me to feel much more fluid in the water, concentrate to a higher degree and feel much stronger at the end of my set. I've been taking in about 35 grams of carbohydrates pre-swim with 1 unit of insulin compared to 60 grams of carbohydrates pre-swim with no insulin; the protocol still needs some tweaking as my blood sugar is dropping into the 70s or 80s if I swim for more than 1,500 yards but at least I am avoiding the massive blood sugar spike post swim that I had encountered in the past.

I have only been on my bike 4 times since IMCDA but 3 of those times came in the past week. My physical therapist wanted me to hold off on biking as we've been working on my back but having made some progress I was comfortable enough to get back in the saddle. Last week had mixed results for blood sugar management on El Bastardo. Monday I threw my bike onto my trainer and was set for an hour long effort. I took in 1.5 units of insulin for a clif bar about 40 minutes prior to my workout. 20 minutes into the ride my blood sugar dipped to the 60s which required a 20 minute break before my blood sugar came back up. Thursday I attempted the ride again this time taking in 1.1 units of insulin for my clif bar and was able to hit the ride out of the park. Confusing the issue has been a major basal/ bolus rate problem I've had since diagnosis. Almost everyday sometime between 4pm and 5:30pm I know I'm going to go low. No matter what I do, what I change, what I eat, I go low. A future post will feature that issue since I have no clue what the heck is going on in the afternoon.

The run has been by far the most frustrating part of the nutrition tweaking idea. I know for certain taking in insulin greater than 1 unit in the 40 minute window prior to running will make my blood sugar go way low in over the first 2 miles of a run. I have also realized that when I run with a blood sugar between 130 and 150 I feel freaking awesome, especially when compared to running with a blood sugar near 200. The stomach issues and cramps that I normally associate with a run are absent when exercising at a lower bs. There is a really delicate balance between insulin intake, carbs or board and running duration to my blood sugars though and I just don't have it dialed in yet. I'm getting closer - on Saturday I headed out for what I hoped to be an 11 mile run (bonked at mile 9.85, fitness has left the building!) by mile 4.5 my blood sugar was in the 90s and I felt a little low - in the previous attempts I'd get that feeling around mile 3. I was able to recover my blood sugars quickly and continue the run with a stable blood sugar in the 120s. There however is a huge mental hurdle to get over to have the confidence to run at a stable 120 when you have spent 3 years freaking out if your blood sugar was below 160 for a run.

The quest continues; a few more weeks of this and I'll hopefully have everything locked in.

Dropping Knowledge About My Dexcom

2010-08-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

I still need to finish my long overdue full review about my Dexcom. But honestly the thing has been amazing and well my long self-directed job search has been taking up the bulk of my time. While I know that going the off-grounds route for my post-MBA job will prove to be incredible rewarding does not make networking my butt off on a daily basis any easier. But enough of the whining, onto some knowledge about the Dexcom.

My one big frustration with my Dexcom has been its uncanny ability to wake me up at 3am proclaiming that I'm about to go into a hypoglycemic coma with nothing but an announcement of LOW on the screen. The vibrations and beeps are enough to wake the dead; the tones are especially nice when I accidentally hit the Dexcom next to my pillow while I sleep. Now if my blood sugar was in the 40s or 50s each time the alarm went off during prime sleeping hours I'd be ecstatic. However, alot of the time the alarm is going off even though my blood sugar is somewhere in the 110 to 130 range. Getting woken up at 3:30 for no reason = not cool.

Then during a run the other day I had an epiphany. My blood sugar started to drop quickly and I could feel some of the symptoms of a bad low coming on so I plopped my butt on a bench. Since I was looking at my Dexcom every 30 seconds waiting for the trend arrow to change (it takes 7 minutes btw) I decided to clip it off of my shorts and put it on the park bench next to me. Even though I was just inches away from the Dexcom the out of range icon popped into the status box. Hmmm..... weird.....

At that moment I realized that the sensor for the Dexcom is probably on the back of the device (I have no official knowledge of the engineering specs for the CGM). So that when the back of the device was laying flat on a solid wood park bench and my sensor site was above the receiver the transmission got lost in space. when I flipped my Dexcom face-side down it quickly picked up a signal again somewhat confirming my hypothesis.

It then dawned on me that the same thing is probably happening while I sleep on my mattress. My big ol' butt is making the sensor site higher than the receiver and if the receiver is face up its receiving nothing but transmission from my mattress. I've noticed when the Dexcom picks up an intermittent signal it can start to do wacky things - which is what I believe was happening each night. Now that I keep my Dexcom face down on my mattress I'm getting an "illegitimate" low maybe every 3rd or 4th night - way better than being startled awake up to 3 times a night for false lows. The small change did the trick and now I'm getting much better sleep!

MacGyver Like Diabetes Management

2010-08-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

Each year my Uncle throws what he calls the "Sweeney Bass Tournament," at his lake front cottage just North of Albany, NY. The origins of the name are a bit confusing, in the 20 or so years that the family BBQ has been going on a total of zero bass have been caught and well I'm not sure anyone has actually seen a bass in the lake, ever. But I guess Bass Tournament sounds alot better than Sunny Tournament. The family get together was held this past Saturday and marked the first time I was able to make the party in about 3 years.

Besides some great highlights, like my sister's boyfriend and 2 of our cousins flipping the canoe over in the lake, my first match of can-jam and running the fastest 3.5 miles and longest distance (7.5 miles) I have run since prior to IMCDA, one diabetic incident almost soured my day. In my temporary stay at my parent's house during my quest to launch my ideal post-MBA career my diabetic supplies aren't in the nightstand I normally keep them in; since the stand is in storage. So, about a week ago my Medtronic Inserter fell into the vortex of lost things in my parent's house forcing me to put my infusion sites in by hand.

The Medtronic Inserter makes putting a silhouette infusion site in way easier than putting it in by hand. The "gun" controls the speed and angle the needle punctures your body at creating an optimal insertion. When inserting a site by hand I never know how hard or deep to push or what angle I should ultimately put the needle in at. Plus, the "gun" is considerably less painful than putting a site in by hand. With that history, on Saturday I had to change my infusion site by hand and hoped that I had put it in at the right angle.

When I finished my 7.5 mile run on beautiful country roads up at the lake house I hopped in my Aunt and Uncle's shower. When I removed my running shorts I looked down to see a bloody infusion site hanging at my waist - it had completely fallen out of my butt. I quickly showered, got dressed, and then found my Mom to say "ummm, I have a problem." Normally I bring an extra site with me when I travel but for whatever reason I didn't have one in my bag of blood sugar doom. I then tried to call Medtronic to see if there were any reps in the area I could grab a site from but after 20 minutes on hold with no answer I went to plan C.

I had remembered sometime ago reading on another diabetic's blog that they used their pump reservoir as an insulin source and inserted their novolog with a syringe. With that faint memory my sister and I headed to CVS to pick up a package of syringes. Once in the car I took the reservoir out of my pump, tried to calculate 2 units of insulin on the 50 unit syringe and for the first time in over 3 years stuck the needle into my gut to manually give myself insulin. The day was kind of saved and we wouldn't have to leave the party early.

For the next 5 hours I kept a close watch on my blood sugar levels but knew there was no way I could be as precise with a 50 unit syringe as I could be with either a novolog pen or especially my pump. For dinner I ate as carb light as I could passing over the meatballs, pasta, steak and fried chicken for quinoa, salad and green beans. Even with a super careful eye for carbohydrates my blood sugar was just not stable, the difference between giving myself 3 and 5 units of novolog is huge from a blood sugar perspective, but on the syringe each looks about the same. So for the next 2.5 hours I battled a bunch of lows, but had an ample supply of clif mojo bars and Erin Bakers brownie bites to stave off the glucose deficit.

Once home I happily put in my infusion site and once again had my tail attached to me. Sleep Saturday night/ Sunday morning was a mess however. The combination of my attempts to work out last week at a lower blood sugar target and my non-precise insulin calculations during the day had me wake up four times with blood sugars in the 40s! After some extra eating on Sunday including a flat bread pizza, ice cream and a delicious avocado and potato salad my blood sugars have stabilized and I'm back to normal. But my day of MacGyvering out blood sugar management was an interesting one.

Tweaking Nutrition

2010-08-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

Any change to a type 1 diabetic's exercise nutrition plan takes a ton of practice and bit of patience. I'm awesome with the practice part; patience, not so much! For the past few weeks I have been attempting to start my work outs with a blood sugar around 160, rather than the 220 I had been aiming for the past couple years. The new target is for both performance and health. It's probably not healthy for me to intentionally spike my blood sugars into the 200s once a day to get in a workout. Also, spikes that high in blood sugar can really degrade performance. So in addition to trying to get my weight down to 175 this off season Coach E and I set a lower pre-workout blood sugar target as priority A.

My first big experiment with the new target is to take in insulin with my pre-workout food. Historically I had eaten a Clif Bar 30 to 45 minutes prior to exercising to spike my blood sugar for the start. If I was just munching on a Clif Bar as a snack I would take in 3 to 3.5 units of insulin (a carb ratio ranging between 1:11 and 1:15). Now I'm experimenting with taking in 1 to 2 units of insulin for the deliciousness that is a White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Clif Bar. I'm then taking in some liquid nutrition right before the start of my workout so that my blood sugars don't plummet during the first 15 minutes of output. So far, so good.

The results have been pretty good thus far. I haven't yet tried any workouts longer than an hour with the new plan. The big workouts I've been doing over the past few weeks are a 5 mile trail run in the Ward's Pound Ridge Reserve (awesome park if you're in the Westchester area) and a 1,500 to 2,000 yard swim set. For the past 2 weeks I have been consistently starting my workouts with a blood sugar between 140 and 170 and ending with a blood sugar right around 90. I've noticed that this has helped my speed towards the end of my run but has really hurt my effort during the swim. I'm not convinced that my blood sugars will hold up during exercise of longer than an hour yet but this will be an iterative process with alot of trial and error.

Also, a huge shout out to Triabetes Captain Annie who broke 6 hours in her first Half Iron this past weekend!

More Abnormalities!

2010-07-30T07:01:00.001-07:00

Recently I went to see Dr. Jordan Metzl, sports doctor for the stars, about the chronic back pain I've been having during cycling. Dr. Metzl is a contributor to Triathlete magazine, Ironman finisher and all around awesome advocate and supporter of athletic pursuits. I knew him from my days with Terrier Tri in Manhattan and had visited after him IMLP to talk about the stress fractures that I developed in each shin during that race. This time around the situation was a bit more serious as my chronic back issue has seriously been affecting race day performance.

On my flight back from Seattle a week or two ago after having made my appointment with Jordan, I came across one of his articles in Triathlete magazine. The stars were aligned as his most recent article was on pain in the sacroiliac joint; the article described the issue I was having perfectly!

The great thing about Dr. Metzl is that during my appointment prior to asking me any medical questions or rushing me out of his office he took the time to ask me how triathlon was going, talk to me about my latest races and tell me about his pending plans to compete in IMLP. Then after a quick examination (his article made it pretty easy to tell him my problem) he triumphantly shouted - I can fix you! Gave me a fist pump and was off to get me the info for the physical therapist who would put me through pain towards health.

I've now been to Chris and Ali at Vitaris Rehabilitation a couple of times. They diagnosed the cause of my problem as a leg length difference! Currently we're working through determining if the leg length difference is an anatomical or functional problem. The functional issue of a pelvic tilt needs to be addressed first this requires a ton of stretching that has me sweat like a pig and put my abs into spasms but all that is an effort to level off my pelvis. After a few weeks of torture Chris and Ali will re-valuate the problem to determine if there is an anatomical difference between the bone structure in my legs. If so I'll need to wear a lift in my left shoe while running and biking so that I'm on a level surface.

The leg length discrepancy has caused my right side to basically compress on itself to artificially level off my pelvis during exercise. This compression is causing my sacroiliac joint to spasm which starts as an ache in my lower right back, turns into a shooting pain and then eventually the pain radiates from my back to my right hip. When that happens I loose the ability to generate power with my right leg on the bike and it kills my speed. The off season is time to fix stuff so hopefully I can get this leg length issue taken care of and then really get after cycling!

Huge Shout Out - Jon Paladini

2010-07-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

For the past year or so I have been helping out my younger sister's best friend's younger brother, Jon, prepare for Ironman Lake Placid. Jon was diagnosed with Chron's Disease when he was just a kid and really struggled to get the disease under control as a youth. Over the years he became really interested in fitness and nutrition and will soon graduate from SUNY Cortland with a degree in nutrition and physiology (or something close to that). Anyway, just over a year ago I received an e-mail from him on Facebook asking me about Ironman Lake Placid and telling me he was thinking about signing up for the race.

I had warned Jon about the time commitment training for an Ironman takes and that the Ironman won't go anywhere but you're only in college for a finite period of time. He was fully prepared for the commitment and seemed hell bent on crossing the finish line so I told him I'd help with whatever he needed during his preparation for the race. With that he drove up to IMLP last year to sign up for the long journey to the starting line.

Over the course of the year Jon prepared for the race all on his own. From training to nutrition he read books, found outlets online and asked questions to develop his own training plan and nutrition protocol. I was a bit worried when he told me his main source of nutrition on the bike would be Fig Newtons, but hey if it worked for Dave Scott in the 80s' I guess it was "ok" to break out the history books and try it again. We went on a couple rides together, I talked to him about cadence, gave him a set of my old clip on aero bars and discussed how the Ironman is way more mental than physical.

Leading up to the race we continued to exchange e-mails, he told me about sleeping on an air mattress in his friend's apartment on weekends because there were too many parties on his floor, asked me what the worst long training ride I went on was, and picked my brain about running form and things like that. All in all I think I was just a resource for him not to feel like he was the only person who had thought "what the hell did I get myself into."

Knowing how much work he had put into the race there was no way I was going to miss cheering Jon on at IMLP this year. The Friday before the race I sent some text messages to people who were going to be at the race to see if I could find some floor space to crash on. Of course Jon's sister came through and away I was from my parent's house to Lake Placid to watch the race as spectator for the second time.

Heading into the race I was worried for Jon. Like I said he had the 1984 nutrition plan and he had only done two sprint triathlons prior to the big day. I knew he would cross the finish line but wondered if the Fig Newtons would give him the energy needed to perform well. Holly Cow did he SHOCK ME!!!!

Although he had won his age group in his last sprint triathlon I never expected him to lay down a 12:31 FOR HIS FIRST IRONMAN!!!!!! On a training plan all his own, dealing with the stresses and weird schedules of college life, on a nutrition plan to fit a college budget Jon freaking crushed the Ironman Lake Placid course; 12:31 is a great time for any Ironman, but freaking incredible for a first one! Congratulations Jon, you've come a really long way since you started to win your fight against Crohn's disease! I'm incredibly honored that you let me be a small part of your journey to the finish line - you are an Ironman!

IM Aftermath on Basal Rates

2010-07-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks I've been traveling between the East & West coast interviewing for jobs that will be the first step in my post-MBA career. Over that time I've had to pay extra special attention to my blood sugars as breaking out in a full sweat while interviewing with a Senior VP at a multi-billion dollar company isn't the best way to make a first impression! That's given me the opportunity to really see what effect recovery from an Ironman has on blood sugars and basal rates.

In the week following IMCDA my basal rates slowly climbed from the 11ish units per day my basal was set at on race day. Towards the end of the week my blood sugars were consistently in the mid 200s to low 300s. As my muscles recovered from a brutal training year and arduous race alot of insulin was needed to transport glucose from my blood to my muscles for the recovery. 8 to 10 days after the race my basal rate had jumped about 5 points to 16 units per day.

As I began to do some unstructured workouts and my sleep schedule returned to normal my basal rate started to slowly fall. Last Monday, some 2 weeks after the race I started to encounter low after low. My Dexcom would wake me up several times a night with a low alarm, and during the day I'd constantly be fighting my way out of the 70s. Finally my metabolic rate had returned to normal, my body finished it's aggressive recovery and I have reduced my basal rate to about 13 units of insulin per day.

The variation of blood sugars and basal rates has all sorts of short-term consequences on one's mood and energy. All the lows I encountered as my basal rates returned to normal forced interrupted sleep and had me exhausted in the mornings. Additionally, the high blood sugars after the race increase irritability and really just made me feel kind of "icky." Active management of my blood sugars with a focus on basal rate patterns was necessary to get back to feeling like myself as quickly as possible.

Compete Each Mile: IMCDA Race Report

2010-07-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

Determined not to have to borrow just about every piece of triathlon gear imaginable like I did for California 70.3 I flew out to Coeur d'Alene the Wednesday before the Ironman with a death grip on my triathlon back pack. I figured I had built up enough goodwill points with the airlines by always stowing my carry on under the seat in front of me to have one flight where I could jam a big backpack into the overhead bins without feeling guilty. With my triathlon gear in hand I arrived at my beautiful lake front condo on June 23rd feeling amazingly confident and calm.

As the week progressed I was shocked at the contrast in my attitude and demeanor towards my second Ironman than at IMLP in 2008. It's not that I didn't feel nervous, it was more that I felt like an athlete and less like someone to prove. I was excited to take on the distance, to strut my stuff for 140.6 miles and was determined to give the race everything I had. In speaking with Coach Orton in the days leading up to the race my only goal was to compete for every mile.

The days leading up to the race had my blood sugars doing some really funky things. E had warned me that I might become extremely hungry during my taper as my body recovered from a years worth of the training hell he created for me. In the 10 preceding days to IMCDA it almost seemed like I didn't need any insulin to cover the food I was eating. Of course this would be a welcome gift to any Type 1 but..... in the week leading up to an Ironman I'd rather have business as usual with the blood sugars. Even though my training volumes had dropped way down my basal rate went from about 13.5 units per day the Monday before the race to 11 units per day the Saturday before the race. Just something I was going to have to deal with, no freak outs were allowed.

Race Day

After a week of doing pretty much nothing I was itching to go on Sunday morning. I woke up at 4am, had my fruit shake, hopped on a boat with my flippy floppys (Arrowhead resort made my race day commute the easiest I've ever had!) and headed over to transition. At transition I popped on my race day Ipod play mix and got deeper into my own world. Calm, confident and anxious were the 3 words that described me best in the hours before the race. I knew I had put in the work, now it was time to have some fun.

I unfortunately was not able to drop the kids off at the pool prior to the race. As hard as I tried nothing would happen. As much as I try and practice race day bathroom habits I just can't seem to get it right. So after 20 minutes in a port-a-potty and nothing happening I figured I'd have to take a quick break at some point during the race. After my trip to the plastic throne I stripped out of my morning clothes, donned the Triabetes jersey, lubed up with some body glide and was off to the beach.

The Swim

My only complaint about the race organization was that the path to the swim start was not sectioned off from the spectators like it is at IMLP. 2,700 athletes had to fight their way through friends and family to make it to the one entry way that activated our timing chips; nothing like adding a rush hour bottleneck to the high stress environment of a IM swim start. The first time I made it through to the timing mat pretty easily; I made my way from transition to the entry way at 6:15 am; but much to my surprise I couldn't find a medical needs table at the swim start or finish so I had to return to transition to put my blood sugar meter and Dexcom in my swim to bike transition bag. God however was smiling down me, threw the throngs of people and faceless crowd I spotted a "Ring The Bolus," t-shirt on my walk back to the transition area. Serendipity was in full effect as I ran into my parents and friends on my hectic fight to find refuge for my diabetes gear; with a bear hug for my Mom and high-five for my Dad I smiled at this awesome stroke of luck.

I returned to the beach, got into the water for a quick warm up and was kind of surprised at how cold my back was. After a 10 minute warm up I got out of the water and realized that the zipper on my wet suit had fallen down, no wonder I was so cold! However, the open zipper caused the gel I had planned to take between lap 1 and 2 of the swim to fall out of my wet suit so I had to adapt my race day plan. I wasn't too worried about the short fall in carbohydrates. Prior to leaving my bs meter in my transition bag my blood sugar was 285 and that was prior to my final liquid fuel up so I was pretty sure my bs would be in the 300s at the swim start; high but I'd rather be high than low during a swim.

Coach Orton wanted me to start in the front 1/3 of the field for the swim. I stupidly took this to mean to start in the second row. As Mike Riley got the athletes and crowd pumped up with his unreal enthusiasm and energy I wondered if I should move back just a bit. Too late! Before I knew it the gun went off and I was charging into the water ready to get the day underway. For the first 500 meters I totally got my a** kicked in the water; even though I'm a strong swimmer I'm not one of the fishes so for a brief moment thought of bowing out of the race before my day ever really started. I slowed my breathing, cleared my head, remembered that I had started way too far up in the field, found some open space and regained my composure. Freak out # 1 of the day was under control and I was settling into my race.

The IMCDA course has 2 turns during the swim in pretty close proximity. If you want to know what the turns feel like, cram yourself into your washing machine and have someone hit you over the head with a rubber spatula. 50 at a time we bobbed water around the turns and laughed together that this was more like a pinball machine than a swim. Finally able to get horizontal again I finished my first lap right around the 35 minute mark - perfect, just where I wanted to be!

After a short beach jog I returned to the water for my second lap. The water was pretty rough for the second lap and on the way out I had to fight swells and waves to make it to the turn around. Although it wasn't overly windy the water still felt pretty angry, so I shortened my stroke and kicked a bit more to combat Poseidon. This time around the 2 turns had a bit more space but were still crowded. I took two good kicks to the chin around the turns, one of which had me seeing some stars. Eric had told me to embrace the physical nature of an IM swim rather than getting pissed off about it, so rather than bite the dude's ankle who kicked me in the face I decided to blow by him and beat him out of the water.

I finished the swim in 1:14, 7 minutes off my dream goal but more than 5 minutes faster than my IMLP time; the day was off to a great start.

The Bike

After a T1 which took an eternity; taking my pump out of its water proof case, reattaching my pump clip, drying my hands to test, attaching my Dexcom, and taking in a gel, I grabbed El Bastardo and was off.

Coach E had laid out an awesome bike plan for me; take the first 8 miles to settle into the race at zone 2, don't get caught up with people hammering past me, spin up the hills, elevate my heart rate on the flats and stay within myself. I stuck to this plan as closely as possible and felt outstanding. I was in my own world on the bike, I was having fun, smiling and treated it just like another training day. When I had driven the course prior to the race I was pretty uninspired, but driving and riding the course were 2 totally different worlds. CDA is an AWESOME bike course, it doesn't have a consistent personality and you need some serious handling skills to attack some of the descents so the course requires a ton of focus but is fun enough to keep your mind fresh - it's alot of fun.

I started on the bike well out side of zone 2, the adrenaline from my swim and normal race day jitters had my hr elevated. About 2 miles into the bike I settled in, got my heart rate into the 130s and just cruised. My cadence was high, my back felt great and I was having fun. I easily spun up the first hill towards Higgins Point, and the second felt even easier. On the downhill I started to dig into my aero position, tucked a little tighter and opened my legs up just a little bit. At that point I started to reel in some people but continued my somewhat casual effort.

Finally, I reached mile 10 and was thrilled to up my effort to zone 3. Now, it was time to race! I felt freaking awesome, my heart rate was below 145 and I was actually passing people on the up hills. Apparently all those rides that almost made me throw up on the Blue Ridge Parkway paid off. I would spin up hills only to have 3/4 of the people who I had passed on the uphill bomb past me on the downhills. I knew by the second lap their strategy would take a toll on their legs so I continued to stay the course and stick to the plan.

Around mile 35 my back started to tighten up. I wasn't super worried about my back at this point but am a little aggravated that no matter what I do to try and solve my back issues on the bike I just can't seem to get it right. Since the off season is all about fixing things I'm seeing an orthopedist on July 19th to figure out what the heck is going on. I finished the first 56 miles of the bike in just under 3 hours and made it to the special needs area of the bike in 3:06 - 60 miles in 3:06, not too shabby!

At special needs I made my first major mistake of the day. My blood sugar was 256 and I knew I needed to get it down so I took in .3 units of insulin. For me exercise essentially makes a bolus 2X stronger than normal so I figured the .3 units would bring my blood sugars down to the 170s. In my special needs bag I also had a Snickers Bar. During all my century training rides I have a Snickers bar around the half way point. However, during training I normally take a break, and sit in the shade for a few while I chomp on the nuget and caramel. I took in .6 units of insulin for the chocolate but then forgot to continue with my regular scheduled feed intervals. Around mile 70 or 75 I started to feel really sick and my effort dropped way off. At that point I realized I was trending low as I checked out the pattern on my Dexcom and started to take in nutrition like a mad man. To combat the adversity I made a promise to myself to work as hard as I could to get to the bathroom at mile 90. My bowels finally decided they wanted to make a move around the same time I was trending low so I thought I'd play the 2 against each other to save me from a really painful and dark period of the race.

Finally I reached the porta-potty, got off my bike and dropped the spandex. Stomach relief at last! I tested and had a blood sugar of 160 and then started to feel alot more stable. 10 minute later (literally, I timed it) I was back on my bike and off to finish up the final 22 miles of the bike course. At this point my back really started to act up. The only way I could get relief going up hill was to pedal with my hands on top of the pads on my aerobars. This took some of the power out of my legs but I was able to climb the hills pretty effectevley. Headed back into town the wind had picked up a bit so the stretch along 4th St. and Gov't Way was a bit slower than in the first lap.

I finished the bike course in 6:09, slower than I know I'm capable of but still pretty solid. I averaged 18.2 mph on the bike, the goal was 19 but with the blood sugar mistake and bathroom break I couldn't be happier with how the bike went.

The Run

T2 went much more smoothly than T1 and I was off to the races. I came off the bike with a blood sugar of 158, took in a gel to start my run, tossed on my fuel belt and was ready to rock n' roll.

The goal for the run was to get my legs back over the first 4 miles, run at a steady pace from mile 4 to 20 and then empty the tank for the last 10k. Mile 1 and 2 were run exactly to plan. I opened up in an easy zone 2 at a 9:30ish pace. But as I passed by the 2 mile mark my legs started to feel like they were stuck in mud and my mind became fuzzy - I knew what that meant. I took in a gel, stopped for a quick bathroom break and tested. My blood sugar had dropped 70 points in the first 2 miles of the run, but I caught the low before any real damage was done. I grabbed a gatorade, polished off a fuel belt bottle, had a quick stretch and walked for the next mile. After a mile I tested again and had a blood sugar of 170 - I upped the pace but just couldn't get my mind into it. I tested and had a blood sugar of 295 - the more than 300 point yo-yo had me feeling awful but I was determined to keep moving forward.

For the next 8 or so miles I ran at a 10 minute pace and walked each aid station to take in as much water as possible. It also didn't hurt that CDA has some of the best looking aid station volunteers of any race I've done! I was a particular fan of the aid station captain right before the uphill at the mid-point of the run; even gave her a high-five which during an Ironman is pretty much as good as getting her number, right?

Slowing my pace over that 8 mile stretch worked, my form returned and my blood sugars became stable. From mile 14 to 22 I was able to run at a 9:30 pace; Coach Orton had me prepared for this race, all that training, all that work was paying off. Around mile 23 my tank was pretty empty, as hard as I tried to crush the last 3 miles my legs couldn't muster up much more than a 9 or 10 minute pace. It didn't matter though - when I turned the corner into downtown CDA I can't remember a time that I was happier.

The Finish

Running down the crowd lined blocks was flat out awesome. I entered the finishing shoot, flapped my arms to the crowd, gave some kids a high five and nearly had my muscles pop out of my arms as I crossed the finish line. My only goal for the race was to compete within myself for every mile and I did just that. I took an hour and 16 minutes off my Placid time and while my ultimate time goal was to break 12 hours, finishing in 12:42, 916th overall is just plain awesome for me. I'm not sure after Placid I had the respect for the Ironman distance the race deserves. I knew that covering the distance was an incredible feat but I didn't know what it meant to be able to compete for the entire distance. I had, had so many blood sugar issues during Placid and was so new to the sport I didn't know what it all meant. At CDA I wanted to really see what I was capable of, I wanted to test myself and just get after it. I left everything I had on that course and know I have a ton of work left to do to get to where I want to be in triathlon.

Coach E wanted me to have a mantra on race day; I had 4 quotes written on an index card in my tri jersey:

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts." ~ Winston Churchill
"He is able who thinks he is able." Buddha
"You can't cross the sea merely by standing & staring at the water." ~ Rabindranath Tagore

and my personal favorite from the day that I repeated every mile of the run:

"What lies behind you & what lies before you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have some long conversations to have with Coach E in the next couple weeks to determine what direction we'll take my endurance sport career. I might try my hand at track cycling but at this moment I still can't stop smiling because for each mile of that race I competed the way I wanted to and gave it everything that I had.

What a day!!!!!

2010-06-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

Full race report to follow later in the week; but the cliff notes version, great swim, awesome bike except for an insulin mistake at mile 60 that I had to recover from and a run that I was able to compete in for the entire 26.2 after I fought off a nasty low where my blood sugar dropped 90 points in a 2 mile span and then sky rocketed 220 points in the next 2 miles. All in all couldn't be happier, 12:42 was a bit slower than what I was dreaming of but in the end I was able to compete the entire day. Great course, great day, lots of fun! Talk to you all again after a few days of eating unhealthy and drinking some beers!

Follow & Support Me at IMCDA!

2010-06-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

It's time to dance with the devil again! In 11 short days I will stand on the beach at Lake Coeur d'Alene about to embark on my second dance with the Ironman. Since Lake Placid I've retired the orange and blue spandex to proudly wear the Triabetes Race Kit. I am as proud to wear Triabetes across my chest as any jersey I have worn before.

The goal of Triabetes and its parent organization, InsulinDependence, is to revolutionize blood sugar management. With enough support and research we can shift the paradigm of how type 1 diabetes is managed. In racing in my Triabetes kit I seek to raise awareness for the organization's mission and would be honored if you could support our cause with a tax deductible donation to InsulinDependence at https://www.z2systems.com/np/clients/insulindependence/donation.jsp.

On June 27th you can follow my pursuit of my second Ironman at www.ironmanlive.com and type in bib number 439 to the athlete tracker.

I'm not sure it's possible to be more excited to wake up at 4am to workout for 11 to 13 hours!

Super Cool Company - Endurance Conspiracy

2010-06-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

Some of my favorite things are fun and funky art work, t-shirts with fun and thought provoking prints, companies that "do good while doing well," and triathlon. So when I came across Endurance Conspiracy last week I was psyched that they were a firm that combined all of those characteristics. It is always wonderful to find companies like Method who incorporate the environment into their value proposition; Endurance Conspiracy is also one of those firms.

EC is owned and operated by Tim and Tony DeBoom; Tim is a two time winner at Kona and one of America's best professional triathletes. The DeBoom boys have always been into sports and art so EC was a perfect way for them to share their passions with the world. They describe their company in this way: "We are a new athlete owned and managed company inspired by endurance sports and our love for the environment. We are dedicated to creating a unique line of apparel of the highest quality while maintaining and promoting the utmost ethical and environmental best practices."

Rather than focus on developing a logo that goes on every t-shirt; the EC t-shirt's are an artistic representation of what those of us who love endurance sports think about. They are also committed to sourcing and producing their shirts in the most responsible way possible, a methodology that is becoming more common but still miles away from being the norm.

I've ordered two t-shirts so far and am dying for the one below to get in stock - for me EC represents alot of the things I believe in and they produce a pretty sweet product.

Lions & Tigers & Bears, Oh My!

2010-06-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

When my workout calls for a day of avoiding hills I normally head out to Sugar Hollow on the edge of the Shenadoah National Park to get my rides and runs in. Sugar Hollow runs right along side a gently moving creek/ river so in one direction it has a slight decline and in the other a slight incline. I'm pretty sure that there is not one stretch of actual flat road in all of Charlottesville, so this is the best I have.

I've been out in Sugar Hollow at all times of day, yesterday I headed out there with my road bike to get in an hour of spinning in zone 1 - 2 starting around 4:30 pm. It was an overcast day in the SV so the normal car traffic that heads into the Park from Sugar Hollow was absent. For the first 35 minutes of my ride I didn't see another soul. Then on my last loop of the ride I saw something that will be etched in my mind forever - A FREAKING BLACK BEAR!!!!!!!!

As I came around a turn in Sugar Hollow about 300 yards from me I saw what I first thought was a very, very big dog. I slowed to a stop and realized that this was no dog - it was an awesome, furry and totally cool black bear just hanging out smack in the middle of the road! I unclipped one foot and stood there for a moment looking at the bear, half smiling because of how cool I thought the sight was and half wondering what the heck do I do if this thing charges me.

The bear looked at me for what felt like 10 to 15 seconds and realized he was no match for my quads and scurried off into the woods. I'm now satisfied that my training is coming to an end in VA. I think bears are pretty awesome so seeing one in the wild is something I'll never forget. So this will go down as the best recovery ride I've ever had. As I returned back to my car I passed another rider, held my hand up to have him slow down and said "hey just so you know there was a black bear hanging out in the road just before," he responded, "cool," yes, yes it was.

That's a bit more like it!

2010-06-09T05:45:00.000-07:00

After a day off Monday to rehydrate and recover it was back to work yesterday to continue my build to peaking for CDA. On tap for Tuesday was an hour long swim with a main set of 4 x 300, a 300 kick and 6 x 50 at "relaxed speed." More on my mind was a 40 minute run with 20 minutes of zone 4b running. Although I was 99% sure that Sunday's run disaster was due to a major dehydration issue as almost any athlete will tell you, confidence doesn't come back until you prove it on the field.

When I go to UVA's pool I shared a lane with someone who was obviously a hard core swimmer. This girl was about 5'10 with an unmistakeable swimmer's build. Her looks weren't the most remarkable thing though, as I stretched on the deck I noticed that she had written pace times on her kickboard. At first I didn't pay much attention to it until I saw a 100 in 1:06 - I thought wow that's pretty fast for a 100 freestyle, not super fast but pretty fast. Then I looked a little closer and realized it was for 100 breast!!!!!!!!! Are you kidding me a 100 breast in 1:06! The UVA pool record is like a 1:04 or a 1:02. At one point we happened to start a set at the same time - me, freestyle her, backstroke. With her doing flip turns and me doing my oh so remarkabley athletic grab and turn our pace was identical at what appeared to be a pretty moderate pace for both of us - insane. I'm continually amazed by how effortless the hardcore swimmers at the UVA pool make swimming fast look.

Then in 80 degree temps with thankfully pretty low humidity I headed out to Sugar Hollow for my 40 minute run. My legs are still shaking out the lactic acid from six months of strenuous workouts but they felt way fresher yesterday than they had in some time. I set off at a 9 minute pace to warm up and was happy to see a heart rate in the low 140s (right where it should be). I gradually built up to an 8:30 pace in zone 3 then at the 15 minute mark it was time to hammer out 20 minutes of zone 4b running.

The big issue in Sugar Hollow is that the road runs along a river bank; in one direction it's a slight downhill, in the other a slight uphill so one direction is about 15 seconds per mile faster for me than the other in the same heart rate zone. But in zone 4b my times were solid, unlike Sunday where a 10:40 pace had my heart racing to more than 165 bpm, I was holding steady at a 7:30 pace on the flats at 162 to 164 bpm. My speed varried a bit depending on the terrain, averaging just under 8 minute miles for the 20 minute stretch - I'll take it! It's not as fast as I was running prior to California in late March, but much faster than I had been running in the VA heat and humidity. As my legs continue to come back to me my pace should continue to slowly build over the next couple of weeks.

The peak period is going well, today is a nice hour long chill bike ride, Thursday and Friday are test days. Miles to go before I sleep but the big day is getting close!

Bad Insulin + Bad Infusion Site + Humidity = Dehydration

2010-06-07T07:25:00.000-07:00

It all started on Wednesday night as a reward for a solid brick consisting of a 1 hour trainer ride with 4, 5 minute, 5a efforts followed by a 90 minute run at a 3 - 4a pace (10 minutes of a cool down) I ordered some chicken fried rice and tofu in green pepper sauce for dinner. At first my blood sugar seemed to respond perfectly well to the 140 grams of carbohydrates I assumed were in the meal. But then my glucose levels started to rise slowly; after giving myself an additional 12 units of insulin I should have realized that something was up but of course I just went along with it knowing that chinese food has a tendency to play tricks with blood sugar.

I woke up on Thursday with a blood sugar in the mid 180s and fought off his for the rest of the day and for boluses it seemed I needed 1.5 times the amount of insulin I normally would take in. On Friday when I woke up in the 200s I kind of figured my insulin was going bad so I took my new vile out of the fridge and switched infusion sites. When I inserted my silhouette site I felt like the canula didn't go all the way in, but like an idiot didn't pay much attention. My blood sugar finally dropped below 90 so I assumed that the site was in perfectly fine. After swimming Friday night I had grilled chicken on a split sprout tortilla - a total of like 30 grams of carbohydrates with a very low glycemic index. Since my blood sugars had been so whacky I bolused up for this meal with 5 units of insulin (normally i'd have a bolus of 2.5 units for this meal); my blood sugar continued to slowly rise, after giving myself 6 more units of insulin with no blood sugar response I felt my site and realized the canula had totally come out - ugh. A quick infusion site change had my blood sugar totally come back into range.

Saturday was my big workout for the week a 3 hour ride followed by a 1.5 hour run - done at approximately Ironman pace. The preceding night I had gotten kind of dizzy a couple times but assumed it was just because my blood sugars were running so high, when I woke up on Saturday I felt a little off but thought it was just due to my 6am wake up. My bike started off great, even in 80 degree heat and 80% humidity at 8:30 am (that's alot of 8s!). I took my Mavic Cosmic race wheels off so I get more of a speed boost on race day and swapped in my much heavier training wheels. Even with the training wheels I was holding a solid 23 mph pace on the flats and climbing comfortably in upper zone 3, low zone 4. At one point during the ride I stopped to pee and when it came out bright, bright yellow I probably should have realized I was in a bit of trouble. I bought some more water and had a gatorade low calorie at the country store and finished up the last hour of my ride.

I took in some gatorade at my apartment, tossed on my fuel belt and headed out for a run. 12 minutes into my run my entire body started to tingle, my hands went a little numb, I could barely see straight and my chest felt like someone was stabbing a knife into it. I quickly found some shade and had to brace myself against a tree to make sure I didn't go down. I drank a fuel belt bottle and waited, and waited, and waited for my heart rate to get into a recovery zone. Normally stopping my run for 30 seconds will have my heart rate quickly drop below 120. Standing in the shade, braced against a tree my heart rate wouldn't drop below 144! WTF!!!! I stood in the shade for what felt like an eternity until I could see without blurriness and set back for my apartment at a 10:30 pace. Even at a fat man shuffle jog my heart rate was in the upper 160s.

Finally back at my apartment I pounded 30 oz of low calorie gatorade and collapsed on my floor with a bag of ice on my neck. Once I finally cooled off a bit I started drinking bottle of water after bottle of water. After 100 oz of water I finally peed again and it still wasn't clear! Quickly googling the symptoms of dehydration I realized that the water level in my body was down somewhere between 5% and 8%; not good. The combination of an intense workout on Wednesday, high blood sugars in the 48 hours preceding Saturday and insane humidity on Saturday had me in a bad spot hydration wise. I made the smart choice by cutting my brick short on Saturday and at this point whatever fitness I have is the fitness I have for CDA, it's much more important to stay healthy than to push through a dangerous wall. It was also amazing how much more "ok" I was with having to cut a workout short for something other than blood sugars.

Ready To Start

2010-06-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

"True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

Last weekend was my last HUGE week of hell as dictated by Coach Orton; from Tuesday to Monday I trained for just about 20 hours including a monster 112 mile bike ride and a 20 mile run in heat and humidity that would have made a sauna feel comfortable. For the past several months I've been pushed like I never have before and through it all I've only cracked once. Unlike the preparation for my first Ironman this time around I've just enjoyed the ride. The first time I had a host of questions I needed to answer about myself, I needed to figure out what my diagnosis meant, what leaving NY for my MBA meant and really what direction my life was going. This time around it hasn't been about answering any questions of my capabilities or desires, this time around it has been about relishing in the opportunity to be a triathlete and realizing how much I love putting my body through hell for no other reason than I have alot of fun doing it. This time around it hasn't been about overcoming doubt, it's been about pursuing dreams.

The 112 mile ride I did on Saturday didn't have the amount of climbing that my rides through the 7 gates of hell on the Blue Ridge Parkway has. However, Coach Orton wanted me to do the second 56 on a hillier route than the first 56. So at mile 80 I climbed Afton Mountain (the back way not on 250) and gained a whole new respect for the riders on the Tour. The 2.53 mile stretch up Afton ascends just about 1,000 feet and has twists and turns the entire way up. How guys like Contador and Armstrong do climbs way steeper, and way longer 20 days into a Tour is flat out incredible; I'll blame it on the fact I'm on a time trial bike.....

I finished the climb and finished up my ride and felt fantastic. When I got home I had a flashback to my first few centuries training for IMLP in 2008. I remember that some of those rides took me more than 7 hours, I remember having to stop every 30 or 40 miles to stretch, I remember being frustrated and remember trying to learn how to climb, how to descend and how to push flats. I remember not having the confidence to ride within my ability and continuously wanted to exceed what my body was ready for. On my past few long rides none of that occurred. At a relaxed pace and heart rate I finished the 112 in around 6 hours and felt like I could have ridden for 100 more. This time around just going with the plan I've made progress without even realizing it.

Sunday was a bit of a recovery day, my legs were filled with lactic acid and I just had a 40 minute run. Monday was the big test - 20 miles, temperatures in the 90s and humidity above 70%. I had set my alarm for 6;15 am hoping to get at least part of the run in before the furnace that is Virginia really had a chance to heat up. My alarm either never went off or I turned it off as soon as it went off so I didn't wake up till 8:15 am and didn't get on the road till 10:30. So my run was done in the sultry heat (next week I'll have some cool Dexcom data to share as to how my blood sugar responded to this). During my run I went through over 3 liters of water and had to take a couple shade breaks to cool down. At mile 11 I had perspired so much that I had to take my socks off to ring them out - yeah kind of nasty. But in the end I got through the 20, dehydrated, sore and ready to pass out on my feet but I made it. In the lead up to Placid I was never able to train for more than 16 miles; in the past few weeks I've run 20+ miles in a 24 hour period on 3 separate occasion and now a 10 mile run feels like a jog in the park - 3 years of progress.

Tuesday I was supposed to swim a 10 X 200 after a pretty strenuous warm up. After the 3rd 200 I was spent; normally I'll swim a 200 at a medium pace in the 2:55 to 3:10 range; I'm pretty sure it took me close to 4 minutes to swim that 3rd 200. At that point I realized that I was toast; 20 hours of workouts in a 6 day period was all I could handle. I hopped out of the pool, more mentally and physically tired than I had ever been so I went home and ate a pizza. The pizza was followed by 2 hot dogs, which was chased by some pasta. I may have been in a bit of a carb hole, Wednesday was a very welcome day off and the first true day off I had, had in over a month. A slight crack in an otherwise amazing stretch of workouts, I'll take it.

Through it all I realized that this whole triathlon thing is about gentle perseverance. Sometimes you need to grit down and bear it but other times you need to shut it down. Success in triathlon all comes through having the trust to listen to your body and having the confidence that you'll be ready for whatever race you're about to do. Like everything else in this sport the longest distance you cross is between your ears. When you look back on a year's worth of training and realize how all this progress occurred just by putting in the work and not worrying about the destination you realize that the starting line can't get here fast enough. Just over three weeks and it's time to dance with the devil again, CDA here I come.

For 11 It Begins

2010-06-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

Today marks the start of the Triabetes 2011 Ironman Captain's Training Program in preparation for the 2011 Ironman St. George. I have the distinct honor and privilege to be the managing director (aka Oracle) of the 2011 program and am so excited for the journey that these 11 incredible type 1 diabetics will face in the coming months. For me the opportunity to coordinate efforts to support these athletes in their journey across the finish line at IMSG is a dream come true. Not only do I have the chance to give back to a sport that has given me so much but I am also able to help other type 1 diabetics chase their dreams, one of my goals when I was diagnosed some 3 years ago.

During my oversight of the program I will be responsible for reviewing the annual training plan put together by Coach Andrew and establishing a network of medical experts to support the athletes in any way that they need. I hope to use my experience creating a team of doctor's that fit my specific needs to help these athletes have the best experience possible. I mainly had to learn the ins and outs of triathlon training through trial and error; it is my hope that through shared experience and coordinated efforts that the path to safe, healthy and fun training is filled with far fewer peaks and valleys than mine was! I will also get to feed my hunger for data analysis as each of the Captains will be reporting blood sugar and carbohydrate intake information. Our goal is that in the future this data will serve as the platform for analysis that will revolutionize how blood sugars can be managed. At present I'll be sharing that data with Coach Andrew and the network of experts to adjust training plans and nutrition intakes accordingly.

Most importantly my goal in overseeing the training program will be to provide the support necessary for the Captains to relish in how amazing an organization Triabetes is. As I have become more involved with Triabetes over the past several months the pride I have when I put on my race kit or wear my t-shirt around town has grown. Although we have athletes who want to achieve great things, like qualifying for Kona, our focus is on creating a community of support for living a healthy active lifestyle. Whether running your first 5k or breaking the tape at an Ironman, Triabetes and Insulindependce "inspires people with diabetes to set personal fitness goals, educates them on adaptive management strategies through hands-on experience, and equips them to explore their individual capacities." Peter's vision for Triabetes is incredible and I am thrilled to help turn that vision into reality in 2011.

So to the Captains - good luck! And to my readers, please check out the blogs of the 11 captains; their journey and experience is sure to be an amazing one.

The Power of a Dexcom

2010-05-26T12:09:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about the Dexcom is the wealth of data it provides for analysis. I'm about as big of a data nerd you can find, so if I have data to play with to help identify needed changes in nutrition protocols I'm as happy as a soccer hooligan will be on June 12th. Today I finally had some free time to download my Dexcom data from my long brick on Saturday and the data helped highlight some interesting developments.

The highlighted red area shows the bike portion of the brick, while the highlighted green area shows the run portion of the brick. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the stark drop off in glucose measurements over the last 20ish minutes of my ride. That steep slope coincides with the period of time my crash occurred. Putting two and two together it appears that I had not kept up with my nutrition prior to my last hard climb attack of the day. The drop off in glucose meant that my body would not be functioning at its optimum awareness, so when I waved to the other rider the slight change in balance was magnified exponentially. While I crashed because I'm an idiot for waiving while out of the saddle, the blood sugar dynamic probably impaired my judgement and ability to react.

Prior to starting the run portion of my brick I had to rebound my blood sugar. Two things of note are the double dip effect of the rebound meaning that my body was super efficient in burning off extra sugars, but more importantly during a race if I'm low in transition I will have to stagger when I take in carbohydrates to rebound. For the most part my blood sugars were stable or trending upwards for the better part of the run. I may have to scale back the amount of carbohydrates I'm taking in as I'd much rather race at a blood sugar of 160 than 200. But the Dexcom gives me the data necessary to be able to do that analysis.

Anyway from this I see that my nutrition is in good shape heading into IMCDA and with a few minor tweaks over the next two weeks I should be right where I want to be. Finger pricks don't allow this type of analysis, only a CGM does. In other news, I went to the ENT doctor today, my purple ear will recover to a normal state so I'll be as beautiful as ever!

Purple Ears & Graduation

2010-05-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

Well it's official - I'm an MBA! I now can call myself a Darden alumni; it's a bittersweet end to an amazing 2 years. I'm ready to return to the "real world," for a while but will miss my amazing classmates, incredible professors and the opportunity to explore intellectual puzzles dearly. What a 2 year ride it has been, and to close off this chapter of my life with my second Ironman will just be a perfect way to start the next book. Although this chapter almost took an ill fated turn during a training ride on Saturday monring.

My parents, sister and Moose were in town for graduation weekend. So I set my alarm for 5:30 am on Saturday to get on my bike bright and early to make sure I finished my hour and 45 minute ride and 3 and 1/2 hour run well in advance of the 25th annual Darden pig roast. By 7:15 am I was out the door, blood sugars right where they should be for a ride where I was to attack the hills and recover on the downhills and flats. Attack I did! I went on a route that has several short steep hills, no climb greater than a 1/2 mile, but enough rolling terrain to really get a workout in. On three of the longer hills I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest as I was out of the saddle grinding away to get up the hill as fast as I could.

That style of riding was totally foreign to me, normally I look to crush the flats and try to mantain a steady heart rate during climbs. On Saturday the goal was to have a screaming heart rate on the up hills and a descending heart rate on the flats. I averaged just about 20 mph for the ride and realized that this strategy worked amazing. A half mile per hour difference in my speed on the flats led to a 10 bpm lower heart rate - basically into full recovery zone. Getting up the hills faster led to an overall faster average pace so the riding style worked great, but made my legs super wobbley.

After taking a left hand turn back onto Garth Rd. I got out of the saddle to get my speed up and waved to a passing rider coming in the other direction. The next thing I know I'm flying over my handle bars with my face breaking my fall. Thankfully I landed in dirt rather than the road but I did crack my road cycling helmet and wound up with one of the weirdest bruises in the history of the world.

Yes blog readers, that purple hue that you see is a bruised ear! I had a bit of cauliflower ear from high school wrestling, but no where close to as ugly as my ear is right now. I'm seeing an ENT doctor on Wednesday to make sure I didn't break any of the bones of my inner ear. The picture really doesn't do justice how freaking weird it looks to have a bruised ear. And how I broke my fall with my ear I will never know. My neck and shoulder are super sore today, and I have some nice cuts around my eye, thankuflly my Oakley lenses kept my eyes totally protected and my bike made it through in one piece. I don't have any balance issues and I'm pretty sure I can hear perfectly fine, just a weird way to land I guess....

After I crashed the guy who I had waived to made a bee line to yours truly to make sure I was ok. I stood up, dusted myself off and assured the older rider I was totally fine. He made me smile to check to see if I lost any teeth and looked me up and down for any bones sticking out. At the time I was more concerned about El Bastardo than anything else. During the crash I remember seeing my bike above my head as I was still clipped in as I went head over handle bars!

While the other rider was talking to me I said "nope I'm fine and that's good news because I have a run after this." He tried to convince me to put off the run but no such luck, IMCDA is too close to be worrying about bruised ears. As long as I could walk I was going to get my run in.

I made it back to my apartment, pounded a gatorade to get my blood sugar back up and changed into my running clothes. From there it was off to a 3.5 hour run. I was anxious about this run. Over the past several weeks I've had some major blood sugar issues affect my long run performance. And as I mentioned in my last post the run I had in the OBX on Wednesday was the first run that I felt confident in since Oceanside. My goal was to hit 21 miles in the 3.5 hours I had scheduled. That distnace would be 8 miles greater than any run I've had since the Charlottesville Marathon in April '09 and I knew it was imperative to hit 20 so I had the confidence that my training was on schedule for CDA.

With that I left my apartment and set out at a zone 2 pace for 20 minutes. After the 20 minute warm up I was supposed to run for 2 hours and 30 minutes at varying paces between zone 1 and zone 3. I had strict instructions not to spend the entire run in upper zone 3, so I forced myself to vary my pace. To help pass the time I varied my speeds in 10 minute increments, for one 10 minute set I'd run in upper zone 2, then in zone 3, then bring my pace down so my heart rate returned to the 130s. The varrying pace worked amazinglly well and kept my mind fresh because I was thinking about stuff 10 minutes at a time rather than 150 minutes at a time. My endurance strength was great as I was able to run sub 9 minute miles well into miles 18 to 20; I would have had no issues at all running a marathon on Saturday.

The killer part of the workout was 15, one minute speed intervals followed by one minute of a slow jog/ walk starting 2 hours and 50 minutes into the run. Shockingly, I was cranking out between a 6 minute to 7:05 pace for the 1 minute speed intervals, drenched in sweat. The Rhino was in full charge during the speed intervals and my muscles felt great. At the 3:19 mark I hit mile 21 exceeding my goals and finished just over 22 miles in the 3 and one half hours. This run gave me the confidence I needed in my endurance strength to know that I'll be ready for CDA!

So all in all it was a great weekend, purple ear and all!

Just the Rx - The Beach, Friends and flats!

2010-05-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

Monday morning I wrote my blog post from a beauitful beach front rental house in the Outer Banks. Darden has a tradition for the graduating class to spend a week in OBX each year as our final send off before we re-enter the real world. Gone are the days of late night drinking and acting far younger than our age would indiciate as we go back to the professional world. So beach week as the tradition is called is the last chance we have as MBA students to let our immaturity shine! But I started the week with a melancholoy attitude, I was bummed out that my run on Sunday didn't go super well and was pretty nervous about all the lows I had been fighting off.

Monday, right after my blog post I set out for my run in OBX. The first thing I noticed was FLAT GROUND! I wouldn't have to face any of C'Villes rolling terrain, I could just sit back and focus on my stirde - just what I needed. 1 hour and 28 minutes later my 10 miles were up and I was feeling great. For 4 miles I ran in zone 2 at an 8:48 pace and then cranked out 4 miles in zone 3 - 4a at an 8:24 pace with a 2 mile cool down - some of my speed had returned and my blood sugar stayed mostly stable throughout the run.

After the run I continued to fight off pesky lows; I decided to reduce my basal rate to 80% for a 15 hour period and that seemed to help keep my blood sugars above 70. Also, when my friends went out to another houses' party that night I decided to stay in and go to sleep early like the old man I am! Thankfully I finally had a full nights sleep and woke feeling refreshed.

The next day I had a killer 6 X 500 swim on tap. A few of my housemates joined me at the local Y as I swam away. My swim felt fantastic, I entered the water with a blood sugar of 198, tested after my 4th 500 with a stable bs of 161 and then finished up strong - the 80% basal rate seemed to be doing the trick. With that knowledge I adjusted my basal rates to try and stabalize my blood sugars further. With the Dexcom I'll be able to refine my hourly basal rate further, but the past two days my blood sugars have been more stable than they had been at any point over the last 3 weeks.

Wednesday was the big test, a 2 hour bike with 2, 20 minute time trials followed by an hour run. I fueld up as per Eric's instructions throughout the day on Tuesday as each of my classmates were shocked by the amount of food I'm able to consume. I think each of them asked me how many calories I consume per day, and when they would respond with "I wish I could eat like that," my retort was - actually eating kind of becomes a full time job so it's not as much fun as it sounds. Although eating ice cream and still lossing weight is pretty cool.

So Thursday I woke up early and set out for a rainy bike ride. I freaking crushed the time trials! I covered 40 miles in 1 hour, 54 minutes; the first 20 minute time trial had an average pace of 25 mph and the second of 22 mph (into the wind). Better yet my blood sugars were right at 205 when I finished the bike portion of my workout so I could safely go out for a brick! I downed some water, got some confused looks from my friends and was off.

The run was mixed intervals, 8, 30 second max efforts and 4, 4 minute build intervals. At no point during the run did I feel fatigued and my last 4 minute build was my fastest. I was able to maintain a sub 8 pace for each of the 4 minute builds and my heart rate stayed lower than expected throughout. Honestly, this run was the first time since before Oceanside where I felt like I could run again. I'm not sure if my basal rates have been screwed up since then or what but holding a 7:45 pace with a moderate effort felt amazing.

The plan was to leave right after the brick workout for an 80 mile ride today, but then I remembered that my classmates and the time I spent at Darden is way more important than one workout. I texted Coach E and asked him if I could switch my 80 mile ride to a 2 hour trainer session today so I could spend one last night with the Darden crew. He of course said that was totally cool, so right after that text I grabbed a Bahama Mamma at our beach party and enjoyed some more time in the sun with individuals who I've gotten to know like family over the past 2 years. My friends were psyched that I stayed and spending one extra night, waking up a bit hung over put my mind at ease and let me relax a little bit as I was starting to stress about the race a bit too much. Now it's time to hop on the trainer!

Frustrations

2010-05-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

It has been about 2 years since I was fully emersed in Iron distance training. I had forgotten how much planning, preparation and eating was needed to complete a full week's workouts for this distance of a race. Over the past couple years I pretty much got the half iron training program down pat - iron training is a whole different story. My training schedule for the end of last week looked like this:

Friday - 40 minute continuous swim; 2 X 1000 increasing pace
Saturday - 100 mile ride (20 min zone 3 - 4b, 40 min zone 2 per hour), 15 minute brick
Sunday - 18 mile run: 2 mile wu, 10 mile zone 2, 4 mile z3-4a, 2 mile cool down

Friday's swim went off without a hitch. Each of the 1,000 yard intervals was done in about 16 minutes, so all in all I swam 3,000 to 4,000 yards. Saturday I woke up a bit later than I had wanted so instead of starting my ride at 8am as planned I started at 11am. Sadistically I thought that riding during the hottest part of a very humid day would prepare me for any conditions I'd encounter on race day. The thing I forgot - training isn't race day! I sweated up a storm and stopped twice for an ice pop to try and cool down my core temperature. I got through the ride without too much problem although I was exahausted by the end of it. When I finally made it back to my car about 5.5 hours later I was so thirsty I drank the gatorade I had in my car which was about as hot as coffee, bad idea! 10 minutes into my 15 minute brick I threw my guts up and called it a day.

That evening I ate a pizza (yeah a whole one) had some more gatorade and pretty much whatever else I could get my hands on. I fell asleep at 11:30 but was awoken about 6 times that night because of lows. I took in close to 300 grams of carbohydrates during the course of the night but still couldn't fight off the lows. The next morning I woke up, had my breakfast shake and a clif bar in my pre-run protocol. I started the run with a blood sugar of 399, a bit high so I took in .5 units of insulin. I skipped my first feed interval trying to get my blood sugar down into the 180 - 200 range but by the time I tested 6 miles into my run (52 minutes) my blood sugar had dropped to 104! I took in a gel and a fuel belt bottle, jogged a bit, then walked for .25 miles seeing if I could spike my bs again - it was a no go, my blood sugar had only gone up to 130. Knowing my bs had somewhat trended up I ran mile 7 to 8 and called it a day. That turned out to be a prudent decision as the rest of the day and into the night I was fighting off low after low.

I forgot how hard it is to keep up with a fluctuating basal rate due to 10 hours of workouts in a 3 day span. I'm working on establishing a few different basal rate protocols and am trying to be as vigilent with the Dexcom as possible (which really is an awesome device). Right now my basal rate gives me 13.5 units of insulin per day - I probably should be closer to 11. Today with some changes and on the flats of the beach (in the Outer Banks for beach week) I hope to nail my 10 mile run and not encounter any lows. The key with Ironman training and diabetes is to not get frustrated, to keep a positive outlook and to know that I'm putting in the hours to have a solid race. I got pretty down on myself last night after I couldn't finish my run - but I know my legs are fully able to run 18 miles, sometimes the best laid plans just don't work, I'll be ready and I'll stay positive.

Dexcom - First Thoughts & Impressions

2010-05-14T06:14:00.000-07:00

When I returned from my trip out to California a month or so ago I strated to become really interested in Dexcom. A few of the people I had met on my trip worked for Dexcom and the people whom I met who use the product had nothing but rave reviews. So as I started to tool around the Dexcom website I was surprised to see an offer for users of the Abbott Freestyle Navigator. My issues with the Navigator are well documented on the blog so I won't go into them again; the "special offer," had me very curious as to what was up.

So I did some more google research, called Dexcom and then called Abbott. It turned out that Abbott was having severe supply chain issues with the Navigator and if your product was on the list for replacement they were offering cash in exchange for the old device. Since that particular CGM never worked for me I gave them a call to see if in fact my Navigator was defective. As we went through the motions of testing the product it turned out that over time the battery connectors fell out of the device. By the grace of God I was able to return my Navigator for a nice chunk of change! Maybe feeling deathly ill during the C'Ville Marathon in 2009 because of that thing was worth it - well actually the cash wasn't that much.

After I received my return authorization I talked to the people at Dexcom and receiving the device was potentially the easiest medical transaction EVER. Insurance approval took about a day, and the Dexcom people were in constant contact to make sure I knew where the processs stood. Less than a week after our initial conversation I received my Dexcom Seven + and was set to re-try the world of CGM!

Out of the box I was psyched at the clean, simple design of the device but also the intuitive nature of the interface. I would like the receiver to be a bit smaller or perhaps in watch form (please oh please will a CGM manufacturer take a page from the Polar or Garmin play book and realize that a small device can be more technologial advanced than a big one - I would KILL for this to be in watch form). But beyond the receiver being a tad on the large size it was totally functional and intuitive.

The big difference from the disaster that was the Navigator is the transmitter. Unlike the Navigator the Dexcom has a full circle of tape around the infusion site (not dislike the minimed silhoute) and the applicator is less a Chinese torture device and more in the pen style. The transmitter is also small and unobtrusive at no time has it woken me up at night because of how uncomfortable it is and after a week of wearing it including one half ironman it hasn't come close to falling off!

The accuracy of the Dexcom has been pretty darn good. I have some graphs and stuff to post next week that highlight how the device works, but don't have the time to post all that jazzy stuff today. The big test was when my Ultra Mini gave me error 2s right before the Kinetic Half on Saturday. I was a little bit freaked out but decided to fly with the Dexcom. As best as I could tell the Dexcom gave me directionally accurate blood sugar readings, showed a stable bs on the bike and a gradually declining bs on the run. I confirmed those data points the next day during my 70 mile ride where the Dexcom was always within 20 points of my finger prick tests.

Over the course of the week the Dexcom alerted me to several night time lows, and allowed me to readjust basal rates that were causing some annoying bs issues. Additionally it kept up with my blood sugars during a zone 3 - 4a trainer ride and maintained its accuracy throughout the week. The Dexcom doesn't report rising or falling blood sugars as quickly as a finger prick test does but eventually comes back into line. Only 3 times during the course of the week was my Dexcom more than 5% different than my finger prick test.

All in all I'm really happy with the device. The technology still needs to improve before blood sugars are continuosly reported in real time, especially during periods of rapidly changing blood sugars. But as a tool to adjust basal rates, reduce the number of finger pricks per day and provide insight into baseline basal rates the Dexcom is an amazing product. Geeky graphs to come next week!

Learning To Focus - Kinetic Half Race Report

2010-05-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

Quietly I went into the Kinetich Half Iron in Lake Anna Virginia this past Saturday. I realized I hadn't talked about this race much, at all, when on Wednesday evening my Mom asked me what I was up to this weekend, when I responded "I have a race," she said "you do?!?" The race was coming in the middle of an intense training block and I'm honestly trying to shift my mindest to races being training days with just a few more people and a heart rate that's a few beats higher and more steady. So rather than put any expectations on this race I quetly preparred and was out to just have fun.

Earlier in the week I had e-mailed Coach E to let him know what my one goal for the race would be. In each of my previous races under Coach E he has texted me the night before asking me what I want to take away from the race, what lesson I want to learn. Rather than wait to the night before I wanted to focus on this goal during my last few days of training leading up to the half and really let his teaching sink in. On Wednesday I e-mailed Eric: "My goal for this weekend is to maintain a steady focus without getting too high, or too low and to have my fastest splits of the day at the end of the race. That isn’t a physical performance goal, it’s a mental performance goal, to no time during the race get down on myself and at no time during the race to doubt my abilities."

Coach E responded with some incredible advice. His key inisghts were: a mile is a mile is a mile, you can't shorten a race by running faster and blowing yourself out, if your body is tense your muscles will prematurely fatigue and most importantly, identify a trigger to refocus. My younger sister was surprised to hear me tell her that my goal for the race was to work on my mental focus. During most of my athletic career I was known as the guy who you could throw a brick at and I wouldn't notice because I'd be so focused on the goal at hand. The difference between my past and present however is that now my focus needs to be sustained for 2 to 12 hours, not for a play at a time. During football maintaing my focus on the field was easy, a long dirve was 12 - 15 plays and maybe 20 minutes; after that I'd return to the sidelines, put a cold towel on my head, collect my thoughts then head out to do it again. In triathlon, there are no breaks, there are no moments to sit back grab a towel, close your eyes and adapt - everything is done through continuous movement.

Coach E suggested that everytime I feed that I use that as my trigger to refocus. I liked this idea, it gave me a tangible event to use to clear my mind and get back to work. He also suggested that this would let me listen to my body, be intune with whatever was going on and learn how to control my heart rate throughout the entire race. On the bike as my focus wained at the end of a 15 minute feed interval I would reach back, grab my water bottle, close my eyes for a moment and then outloud say "focus, focus on your race and worry about no one else, you are racing within yourself, not against them." The results: my best race yet!

Pre-Race

I headed out to Lake Anna with Rami, a classmate of mine at Darden who was part of a relay team, on Friday afternoon to stay at his friend's lake house. I had preparred my usual pre-race meal and all that good stuff and was also wearing my brand spanking new Dexcom (full report on that later this week). We arrived at the house and I think I was honestly more calm and relaxed than I had ever been before a race. Nothing eventful happened last week, there were no heart attacks on planes, no long drives to a race venue, no personal issues to deal with, just a nice normal week of preparation leading up to race day. We were actually staying with the parents of Rami's fiances friend with whom we shared some tremendous conversations. They were really curious about how I race and prepare with Type 1 diabetes and each had some amazing stories about their professional life - all in all it was a really nice Friday night.

My blood sugars were a little high after my pasta dinner but I got them under control by my 10pm bed time. However, the Dexcom woke me up 3 times during the night because of lows so I didn't have my best night's sleep. Whatever, it's not like anyone has a great night's sleep before a race with a 4:30 am wake up call anyway. So I woke up at 4:30, filled my nutrition bottles, had my breakfast shake and was out the door to head to the race site.

The bs continued to climb pre-race so I went out for a quick one mile warm up run to try and bring it down naturally. After the mile my bs had come back under 250 so I took in .5 units of insulin before my clif bar and pre-race mix and also skipped my swim nutrition for the day. All in all I was well set up for a steady blood sugar day.

Swim

It was WINDY on Saturday; the gusts must have been reaching 20 miles per hour and the water was choppy. Thankfully I'm a bi-lateral breather when swimming because I could only breath to the right during the race. Everytime I tried to breath to the left side I was greeted with a face full of water and no oxygen. From all accounts the swim was short, it sounds like people finished the swim about 4 to 5 minutes faster than expected. I, as usual, got lost on the swim and found myself in the middle of no where trying to figure out how to get back into the race. Maybe for my next race my goal will be to not get lost on the swim!

I exited the water in 28:40, good for 161st, I think I could have been a bit faster but honestly I'll take it, I was expecting a 33 minute swim so if the course was 4 to 5 minutes short that puts me right on target. I was slightly disoriented in T1 so I took my time getting on my bike shoes. My finger prick meter broke right before the race so I had to blindly trust the Dexcom and my nutrition protocol to get me safely through the race - yikes!

Bike

The real work began when I got onto the bike. But right out of transition a fellow pump wearer started talking to me! I had my full Triabetes race kit on so he was telling me he loved all the stuff that our organization is doing. In fact, over the course of this race 8 or 9 people mentioned to me how awesome they think the work we're doing for juvenile diabetics is. It was an incredible feeling to have total strangers talk to me about how inspired they were to see me out there as each of them had been touched by the disease in some way and wished they could get a family member to just exercise some more - that made this race really special.

As I started out on the bike I knew was ready for a pretty good day. My back was a little tight from the softness of the mattress I slept on the night before but Eric's advice to listen to my body kept resonating in my head. With each little twinge I felt I adjusted my legs slightly to alleviate the stress on that muscle; I continued to monitor my heart rate and continued to focus on my mind and body - lose body, tight mind I remineded myself. My Dexcom finally started to give me blood sugar results around the 5 mile mark, 238 came up on the screen so I opted to skip my first scheduled feed interval. At the 30 minute mark my blood sugar had dipped below 215 so I took in my nutrition as usual. As I felt the bottle in my hand I repeated to myself the focus montra, got back in my aero bars and continued to pedal away.

At the 1 hour mark I was 21 miles into the race and feeling very strong. I was biking conservativley and into some heavy winds but I felt nimble on my bike. If anyone passed me I let them go, if I reeled anyone in I didn't think about them, I thought about my cadence, my heart rate, how my body felt. No one else on the bike course mattered, it was just me and El Bastardo. Well that was until a super cute girl (1 of only 2 females to pass me on the bike) and I thought about trying to hang with her and tried to develop a strategy to get her phone # during the race. Thankfully that thought process was very close to a feed/ focus interval so I quickly had to get that thought out of my mind and get back to work!

I continued to speed along and knew that if I maintined my effort and focus I'd finally come close to averaging the 20 mph for a half iron I knew I was capable of. But as Eric said, a mile is a mile is a mile, so instead of forcing the issue I biked within myself, checked my Dexcom, continued to feed and continued to bike smart. Then at mile 40 - it happened, I realized that I was starting to learn how to be a triathlete, I realized that all the work that my Coach has me do that I'm pretty sure comes close to killing me is really paying off. At mile 40 I felt stronger than I had at mile 1, at mile 40 I started to reel in people who had hammered past me during the race. At mile 40 I actually sped up!

My pace upped as my heart rate declined, I continued to focus, I continued to feed, I continued to listen to my body. At this point I also, for the first time in my life, got hit on during a race! As I passed a woman spectator she said "looking good # 77 (my race #)" and followed that with, "and your arms are looking really good!" That did make me laugh a bit and I said thanks as I sped away trying to finish up the last 10 miles of the bike leg. I crossed back into Lake Anna state park and got to the dismount line in 2:45!!!!! It was a slight awkward jog to the transition timing mat so my official bike time was 2:46, good for 106th overall! And better yet a 20.4 mph average!!!! I finally achieved one of the goals I'm been trying to achieve since I strated this sport, a 20 mph average on a long course - freaking awesome!

Run

The run course was one of the hardest I've ever encountered. There weren't any particurally steep hills, but each of the 3 loops started with a 3/4 mile up hill climb. The best way I can describe the climb is if you go to a treadmill and set the hill incline somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5; not very much fun and takes a bit of extra effort to get your pace to where it should be. This climb was also the only portion of the course that was shadded. The rest of the course was roasting in a strong sun. My first mile was done at a 9:14 pace, and my second at a 8:27 pace - perfect I thought, my heart rate was averaging 156 bpm, just 1 beat higher than I wanted; but somewhere between mile 2 and 3 something happened.....

There were no sponges or ice on the run course and even though it was early in the run, the water was already starting to get warm. I couldn't get my core temperature down and at about the 2.5 mile mark I started to see stars and got really, really dizzy. Learning from Eric's lessons of the past, keep moving forward so instead of forcing the issue and ignoring my body I listened to it and slowed to a walk to get my core temperature back in line. As my breathing continued to be shallow I stepped to the side of the grass, stretched for a moment, closed my eyes and breathed slowly. Forcing the issue now would mean ruining my run later on, take a step back to move forward, focus. Mile 3 and 4 were done at an 11+ minute mile - dreadful but I think that decision saved my race.

By mile 5 I returned to a 9:43 pace and upped that to a 9:12 pace at mile 6. I knew due to the heat, hills and no ice on the run course I wouldn't be setting a pr in this half marathon. I also screamed at myself anytime I strated to think about my time instead of focusing on my foot strike. A mile, is a mile, is a mile I continued to think to myself - forget thining about breaking 5:30, or 5:20 or 5 hours, just run, just focus and just stay in the moment. I continued to use my success in short term focus by using triggers to reset. In the end this worked out beauitfully.

With the exception of mile 12 all my splits after the decesion to take a step back and get my core temperature down were below a 9:45 pace. My average heart rate during all those intervals were in high zone 3/ low zone 4 (amazing for a really hot day) and I was able to keep my blood sugars on a very slight downward trend for the entire race. My half marathon finishing time was 2:07, a far cry from the disaster I had at Cali 70.3 but also way off from the great run I had at the South Carolina Half. I know I'm capable of running much, much faster but given the envrionmental limitations I'm really happy with that run. Given that heat I very easily could have full out bonked on the run but I maintained my focus and knew what my body was capable of. In 70 degree temps I can run sub 8:20 miles, in 90 degree temps I can't - that will come in time but that time isn't yet.

Overall

5:29!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I broke 5:30!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For some reason I have always felt like 5:30 is this huge milestone in a half iron. It's like there are different goals the first is finishing which is a huge accomplishment in and of itself, then after you finish 6 hours is the target; but after you get your time to 6 hours a ton of work is required to break the next barrier, the 5:30 mark. I don't really know how to describe the emtion at the end of this race. Over the past 3 years I've learned how to manage blood sugars, am turning into an endurance athlete and am now understanding how to adapt what I was really good at athletically into an entierly new envrionment. I've been training for 12 to 20 hours a week for the past few months and while I had a blast at Cali 70.3 I was pretty disappointed to return north of the 6 hour mark. In this race I accomplished each and every one of my goals, my focus was the best it has ever been during a triathlon, I listened to my body and most importantly I raced smart. I no longer need to gut out races, now I'm learning how to race within the constraints of my body to have a succesful and awesome day. The small victories are starting to build up and now I'm ready to bear down and grind it out until the starting line in Coeur d'Alene. The next 6 weeks will be intense but I wouldn't have it any other way - it's time to get after it.

Back To Normal (well for me...)

2010-05-07T05:42:00.000-07:00

Not sure that normal and me have ever been used in the same paragraph let alone the same sentence; but my blood sugars seem to have returned back to normal. After the weird spike after breakfast yesterday and a nice 75 minute trainer ride with some zone 4b efforts my blood sugars returned to a nice steady state. Although I was fighting off some lows in the evening as opposed to the 300s I was battling in the days before.

Now that the blood sugars have steadied themselves it's time to just sit back and relax as I prep for the Kinetic Half Ironman tomorrow. If nothing else, the lead up to this race has been VASTLY less stressful than the lead up to California 70.3. There have been no frantic calls to Continental to find out where my bags are, no scavenger hunts to find triathlon gear and really no stress related heading into this race (save a few weird blood sugars). Kind of nice to do a Half that's just an hour away from where I live.

The difference with this race, no tapper, it's smack in the middle of a huge training block and my recovery from the race - a 70 mile ride on Sunday. I blindly trust Coach Orton and think his methods are incredible but I'm pretty sure my legs hate him. I'm actually really intrigued to see how my legs are going to respond to a half iron with no taper - I've always wanted to try this. During my college football career I always played better after a really hard week of practice - getting used to pain lets you play in pain! Either way this is less a race than a long training day. No pressure, no expectations; the only goal is to stay focused, and stay positive - oh and maybe reduce some of those transition times.

My Blood Sugar Is Driving Me Crazy!

2010-05-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

For the past week or so my blood sugar has shown no consistency and has had no discernable trends. My blood sugar has alternated between a high day and a low day each of the pat 7 days; I've never experienced something like this and have no clue what's going on. No matter how much data I collect or how actively I manage my blood sugar with insulin I can't get it under control.

Originally I had thought my 300 - 400 day on Sunday was due to all the salt and water I lost during my hellish 100 mile ride on Saturday. I figured that the intensity of that workout caused my body's metabolic rate to go totally out of whack. The previous week my blood sugars had been a bit funky but were only a little outside the realm of normal. Monday after my 15 mile run my blood sugars were fine throughout the day, they never crested above 210 and I was pretty happy with how my body reacted to insulin intakes.

Tuesday it was back to a day of highs, where I had to fight off 300s throughout the day. I was able to get in all my workouts on Tuesday including a pretty hard swim with a 10 x 100 hard effort but my blood sugar was still in the 300s for a few hours from 9pm to 12 am, no matter how much insulin I took in. Then yesterday my blood sugars returned to the normal range, I even had a few lows, including one particurally bad low around 12 pm.

Fast forward to 9pm last night - my blood sugars crested back into the 200s (maybe a basal rate, maybe too many carbs at dinner). I woke up with 2 low blood sugars below 60 last night and woke up with a blood sugar of 85 - seemed like it would be a day of steady blood sugars. At 9:30 am I had my regular breakfast of 1 bannana, a 1/2 cup of frozen berries and 6 oz of odawala superfood; a total of 45 grams of carbohydrates. My blood sugar seemed to be stable, until it spiked way up to 251 - I have the same breakfast just about everyday and I can't recall a time delayed spike like that at any previous time.

This every other day trend is driving me crazy and I can't figure it out. I'm nervous to play around with my basal rates because I seem to fluctuate between hi and low and don't want the lows to get too dangerous. I have my regularly scheduled appointment with my endo tomorrow so hopefully we can come up with a strategy to solve what's going on.

My Quinoa Addiction

2010-05-04T04:31:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months I have become obsessed with quinoa. Quinoa is one of those superfoods with complete proteins that help your body build muscle, has 9 essential amino acids, is high in omega-3, has healthy fats and is gluten free. Quinoa is commonly mistaken for a grain when it's actually a seed, native to Peru (a wikipedia search during a dinner party last night gave me that insight!) and is one of those foods that has kind of been neglected over the years. But no longer, you can make some really tasty, nutritious and low glycemic meals out of this amazing seed.

At an end-of-MBA pot luck dinner party last night I made quinoa salad. I've been eating this salad four to five times a week for the past month or two. The great thing is it quinoa does not give you the full feeling that rice sometimes does, is great cold so its awesome after a workout and stands up to dressing better than other grains. And much to my delight my friends loved the salad and were really curious about quinoa, its nutrition benefits and more importantly wanted to get the recipe:

The recipe:

1 and 1/2 cups quinoa boiled in 2 and 3/4 cups water with salt to taste, after the water boils turn the burner to medium, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

1 can organic corn - remove quinoa from burner when water is absorbed add corn, cover for 10 minutes.

1 avocado
Chopped cilantro (I like to use alot but that flavor is up to you)
1 organic orange pepper
3 stalks of scallions
2 jalapeno peppers
1 english cucumber
Chop above vegetables and add to quinoa and corn in a large serving dish/ container

1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
salt, pepper, cumin and chili powder to taste
whisk the above ingredients together and then stir into salad

The whole meal takes about 10 minutes of actual work, is highly nutritious and easy to bolus for. A bowl of the salad has about 50 grams of carbohydrates and really is a delicious and healthy meal.

Heating Up

2010-05-03T04:43:00.000-07:00

Heat and humidity returned to the South this weekend; while the later part of last week was beautiful with temperatures in the mid-80s and low humidity, the weekend had temperatures in the 90s with humidity rising by the hour. It was one of those weekends that when you step outside you feel as if you walked into a sauna. That weather is great for a day at the beach, for your first century since January, not so much.

Friday evening was one of my favorite social events at Darden, Darden Days. The entire school gets bused out to King's Family Vineyard (with breathtaking views) for some great music, free wine and BBQ. Thankfully my friends have finally accepted my complete tri-dorkiness as they only looked at me with a raised eye brow when they realized I brought my own food. I love pulled pork as much as the next person but eating it the day before a century ride just sounded like a bad idea. So I packed a container with quinoa salad (will post the recipe in the future) and ate a healthy and organic meal. After a great night with friends I got to bed around midnight and was excited for the big ride the next day.

I got a bit of a late jump on Saturday, I had wanted to wake up by 7am to get on my bike by 8:30 am but of course left my apartment 2 hours late. I finally got to the Church parking lot I've been using as my staging area just outside of Afton, VA and started by bike ride around 11:30 am. The heat was really starting to come on strongly by this point, and my climb up Afton Mountain was BRUTAL. I huffed and puffed up the mountain and was drenched in sweat by the time I reached the top. Over the first 15 miles the ride climbs 2800 feet - in the humidity that felt like 10,000 feet! During the climb my heart rate crested into the 160s which set the tone for the rest of the ride.

Two weeks ago when I did an 80 mile route over the first 60 miles I averaged 16.7 mph, on Saturday I gained .5 mph and upped my average pace to 17.1 mph. Most of the gain was on the climbs which is huge, my legs are getting stronger climbing up the hills and I'm able to sustain a much higher cadence. More importantly my blood sugars remained stable the entire ride as my nutrition was spot on (except for the salt).

Given the nearly unbearable heat on Saturday I didn't have close to enough sodium or eletcrolytes in my nutrition mix. I ran out of Thermolytes and had to use my backup Hammer Nutrition Endurolytes. Endurolytes have about 1/2 the amount of sodium in them that Thermolytes do. Given that by the end of my ride on Saturday I was dizzy, had a terrible head ache and could barely see straight. As my clothes dried I was shocked to see the amount of salt on them, my black bib shorts turned almost entierly white. In a word I was hyponatremic.

The last time I had felt that sick after a bike ride was 2 years ago after my first half ironman at Mooseman. I ate as much salty food as I could Saturday night but it wasn't enough. The ride on Saturday took quite a toll on my body so my blood sugars were a mess on Sunday. I was supposed to run 2.5 hours on Sunday which I tried to get in twice. I woke up at 8:30 am, and was to my running route by 10am. When I left my apartment my blood sugar was 240 - a tad high but not too bad to start a 15 or 16 mile run. 10 minutes later when I got to the parking lot I was going to start my run from my blood sugar sky rocketed to 460!!!!

At 460 it just isn't safe to start a run because of dehydration and the serious risk of kinesitosis. In the short run it is very hard to take in nutrition when blood sugar is that high so starting a run is pretty much a no go at that point. For the rest of the day I battled highs but tried to be as conservative as possible with my insulin as I wanted to get the run in. I had planned to go for my run again at 5pm hoping the humidity would break by then. Of course at 4pm when I started my pre-run prep my blood sugar began to drop. I left my apartment with a blood sugar of 220 and by the time I started my run I was down to 206. 14 minutes into my run my blood sugar had dropped to 130 so I turned around to head back to my car, when I arrived my bs had slipped to 80. Prior to my run I had a clif builder bar and a clif shot - both should have sustained my blood sugar well above the 130 it dropped to. The issue was from batteling highs all day long there was way too much IOB. I also believe that my system was thrown so out of whack from the day before that my body wsa in active recovery mode which will also promote higher blood sugars.

Thankfully this morning I'm finally feeling a ton better so it's time to go out for that 2.5 hour run!

My Dynamic Nutrition Spreadsheet

2010-04-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

Since I built my nutirtion protocol into an excel spreadsheet (god that makes me sound like an MBA) the number of lows I've encountered has dramitcally dropped and my performance during workouts has increased. Although I always knew how many carbohydrated I would need for a given workout I would often loose track of the cumulative deficts I'd build up due to a missed meal or not being very hungry.

Coach Orton finally has me getting into the big mileage for the lead up to IMCDA. This weekend my long ride jumps from 80 to 100 miles, and I'm suppoed to run 16 to 18 miles on Sunday. In addition to a huge weekend of mileage the week included hill repeats, 18 miles of running and 4,000 yards of swimming. According to my nutiriton formulas I would have had a 1,200 gram carbohydrate defecit if I only ate during workouts!

Trying to keep up with that amount of food isn't easy - especially when you're in the middle of some end of MBA celebrations. Nutirition truly is the 4th discipline of triathlon. But the spreadsheet has my blood sugars pretty stable (I did hit 48 yesterday but I think that was a bolus mistake) and I've had the energy to get through 9 hours of workouts through the first 5 days of this week. So far, so good.

A Well Rounded View

2010-04-23T09:31:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago a classmate and I co-founded the Business & Public Policy Club at the Darden School of Business. To our knowledge and according to the Darden faculty and administration we've spoken with our club was the first to partner with a Master's program from UVA main grounds; in this case we partnered with the Batten School of Leadership & Public Policy. The mission of the Business & Public Policy Club is to connect students from both the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy & the Darden School of Business to engage in action-oriented discourse to cultivate a collaborative mindset and establish mutual responsibility for the societal effects of business and policy decisions, and to promote cross-curricular education of issues and professional opportunities among future policy and business leaders.

Yesterday, after 8 months of work we had our keystone event for the year; Preventative Healthcare in the U.S.: How Holistic Discourse Can Lead to Better Healthcare Solutions. This was the most ambitious and most public event I had ever tried to put on. My responsibility for the event included all the external networking, inviting attendees, and creating the forum questions; while my co-founder handled all the internal administration and dealing with school policies (it was a perfect partnership!) The group of panelists we put together was phenomenal. Brandon did an amazing job coordinate all our internal needs and dealing with the administrative burdens of putting together such a public event, Hayes, next year's president, really went above and beyond creating professional looking marketing materials and setting up classroom 50 to look like a first-class event. Without them I would have just had some really impressive professionals sitting in a room talking with each other - with them the event became magical.

Our goal for the forum was to bring together individuals from diverse professional backgrounds to highlight how when a societal issue is examined from a multi-faceted view point you will uncover new challenges and ultimatley identify a better overall solution. Our panelists included:

Dr. Dan Carey, President of the Virginia Medical Society,
Dr. Steve Danish, Professor of Psychology and Director Life Skills Center from VCU
Mr. Joel Salatin, Owner of Polyface Farms,
Professor Mary Margaret Frank, Associate Professor of Business at Darden,
Mr. Ridge Schulyer, District Director for Congressman Tom Perriello
Professor Gaare Bernehim, Director, Division of Public Health Policy & Practice at UVA and Associate Director, Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life.

The forum was moderated by Mary Ann Leeper, former President of the Female Health Company, an expert in public-private partnerships and a visiting professor at Darden.

All in we were covering preventative wellness from angles including tax policy, ethical concerns in public policy, medicine, behavioral health, procedural policy and farming. This was a unique approach to a complex problem and the rich discussion that forum created was all that I had hoped for and more. When Mary Ann asked me how I thought the forum went I replied, "my goal was never to try and solve anything with this forum it was to get individuals to start asking thought provoking questions that forced them to think outside the usual construct they would normal analyze a problem." The panelists were all challenged to think outside of the professional world they are comfortable in and that was exactly what I hoped for.

One of the big reasons I chose Darden for my MBA was because I believed the small class size and intimacy we have with the faculty and administration would allow me to find outlets for true leadership. I've always thought about things and wanted to do things the way I believe in; I believe in debate and I believe in looking at things from every conceivable angle. Yesterday's forum once again reconfirmed that Darden was absolutely the best place for me to pursue my MBA. It was an amazing opportunity to see the way my mind works come to life through a collection of panelists and to see how cross-functional thought can really push for better solutions. It was an amazing experience and a highlight of my MBA career. We hope to have the video of the event uploaded to the web at some point in the near future, I'll be sure to post a link when that happens.

Beautifully Hard

2010-04-20T07:25:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I went on the most grueling, challenging bike ride I had ever performed yet at the same time I was in awe of the scenery and the amazing feeling of accomplishment during and after the ride. Over the course of 82 miles I climbed 7,801 feet, passed by waterfalls, saw horses grazing in wide open fields, was passed by a mini cooper club all with customized license plates and found a real deal old school country store - not bad in a day's ride!

My mission on Saturday according to Coach Orton was to:

"Ride a very hill course with long climbs: Zone 1-5a. Push hard on climbs/hills when you feel good, but always keep it under zone 5b. Do not force your effort"

My description of the ride after I uploaded my data to my TP account:

"ummm yeah.... that was hilly, well that's one word for it, another word would be insane and yet another description could be near death; hardest bike ride I have ever done but was awesome; was cool that I still had juice when i got to the flats to crush them in a steady high zone 2/ low zone 3 heart rate"

Over the first 20 miles my elevation changed more than 3,000 feet and my average speed was just about 13.5 mph - 13.5 mph!!! Seriously, that's how much I was climbing, little gears, legs churning, up and up I went. My strengths and weaknesses were on full display for this ride. But you know what, climbing is fun; climbing isn't like cycling through annoying rollers where you can't get into a rhythm or where you can jump out of the saddle to power over them. Climbing requires patience, requires dedication and requires a strong mind, because as you continue to go higher, the hill continues to get steeper. The Blue Ridge Parkway is like nothing I have ever ridden before, it provides breathtaking views with climbs that you could find in the Tour de France. Saturday was my favorite bike ride of all time because of that.

Each new peak was rewarded with a view that was better than the last. Some bikers passed by me headed in the other direction but I was alone in the direction I went. A few cars passed by, including that cool Mini Cooper club, I passed a guy hiking the Blue Ridge accompanied by 2 dogs carrying his gear but mostly I was entertained by climb after climb after climb. The Blue Ridge doesn't plateau, the Blue Ridge just gets steeper and I loved every increase in grade and every extra foot I climbed, by the end of the 20 mile ascent my legs were jello but I felt perhaps for the first time less like a hammer head and more like a cyclist.

Miles 30 to 40 presented some rollers, a bit of a rough road and not a ton of opportunities to find a rhythm; I was able to get my average speed back up but this was one of those mundane stretches that you just need to focus to get through; the reward for those 10 miles was perhaps the most incredible 25 mile stretch I have ever cycled. Just past mile 40 I entered the town of Montibello, VA; a picturesque country town with horses in lush green fields, grazing on a hill side. Small ponds were on each property and I felt like I was transported back in time to a community out of the 1800s - it just had that feel for no particular reason at all. I crossed into the town and saw one of the most quintessential country stores I have ever come across. A large log cabin that sold pocket knifes, fishing bait and all the snickers bars a cyclist could lay their eyes upon. The store served as the town's outlet for information with a gas station and post office in the same parking lot, advertisements were hung up for rental cabins, adventures in the woods and other activities. It reminded me alot of my training days in Lake Placid and other amazing places in the Adirondacks.

I sat on their porch, filled up my water bottle, ate a Snickers bar, received some weird looks for being clad in all black spandex but then was off to continue my cycling adventure. My stomach filled with nuget and caramel gave me the energy burst I needed as I descended into Crabtree Falls. The descent was incredibly fast and had at least 5 hair pin turns; on my right side was a cliff with a rushing river below, on my left the side of a mountain. Riding beneath the cool cover of trees I cruised down the hill at 35 mph just trying to soak in the scenery. Before I knew it I was down my 5 mile descent and then it happened..... I reached the flats.

Just before mile 50 I was able to get back into my aero position, shift into my big gears and simply unleashed my quads. Having climbed for such a long period I didn't think i would have any juice left in my legs at all - my heart rate and speed over this stretch convinced me otherwise. At a cadence of 93, and a heart rate of 142 I saw my speed climb from 25 mph, to 28 mph to 31 mph - all on a flat. Over this 10 to 12 mile stretch I hummed along at speed I had never felt for sustained periods before. Over this stretch my speed never dipped below 21 mph and my position felt as steady as my effort. Hills, descents and flats, this ride had it all.

After mile 60 I was greeted by my third 8% graded climb of the day; back to the little ring, I spun and spun with my heart rate getting into zone 4b. At this point my legs were really starting to feel it but I knew that this 1,000 foot climb was the last huge challenge of the day. Finally I crested the ridge, descended down the backside of the mountain and had just some rollers to get through to make it back to my car.

Miles 65 to 75 were perhaps the most mentally draining of any I faced that day. I knew that I was close to finishing but knew that I still had about an hour to go. I was tired, my allergies were bothering me and I was supposed to meet some friends out at the Vineyards. But, I couldn't really get into a rhythm, this stretch was up and down, up and down; and I kind of knew the roads but not well enough to know exactly how far I had left to go. After what seemed like an eternity I finally reached the intersection I was dying to see and was able to return to my aero position to fly back to my car; amazing I still had legs, I was able to churn out big gears at a high cadence, as Coach Orton would say, my strength endurance is outstanding right now.

Saturday's ride was indeed "beautifully hard," the scenery was incredible and the ride offered everything. My weakness as a cyclist is climbing, my strength is the flats. The challenge on Saturday was to climb as much as I could, to challenge the hills and challenge myself; the ride was tremendously hard and with perfect blood sugars all day and some of the most amazing views I have ever had the opportunity to witness it truly made it beautiful - what an amazing Saturday.

Ups & Downs - More Than Hill Repeats

2010-04-12T07:27:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of last week Coach Orton warned me to "be ready, because you have your hardest training block yet coming up." At the beginning of the week there wasn't alot of length or intensity work but my blood sugars were not cooperating. I finally got the nutrition right for Thursday through Sunday morning, but after Sunday's long ride my blood sugars responded in a way they never had before - the ups and downs of training with JD were on full display last week.

Last week was just the tip of the iceberg for what's sure to be my most challenging stretch of triathlon training ever. However, that challenge is what I crave and what makes me smile. At the same time it also requires a much greater degree of planning for nutrition than I had originally thought. I'm actually revamping how I analyze my nutrition needs which I'll describe in detail later in the post.

All the traveling I've been doing over the past several weeks had my basal rates all screwed up. During the early part of last week I kept going low during workouts performed around 5pm; finally on Thursday I realized that it wasn't the workouts causing me to go low but my basal rate starting at 3:30 pm was way too high. One of the dangers in performing exercise at the same time each day with a basal rate reduction is knowing what your body's underlying insulin needs are - altering the schedule let me see what was up.

Now that I had my afternoon basal rates cleared up I was able to get through some awesome workouts during the later part of the week. Thursday had called for a 2.5 hour ride followed by a 45 minute run; during the run my heart rate was OUT OF CONTROL. Summer was in full effect in VA last week with temperatures reaching into the 90s along with a good dose of humidity; ummm yeah zone 4b at a 9 minute pace - usually my heart rate doesn't hit 160 unless I'm cruising along at sub 7:15! On tap for Friday was my hardest swim workout yet, a 3300 yard pyramid! On top of that I was on a team for a case competition this weekend so I was feeling the time crunch. But the real fun didn't start until Saturday......

<p><a href="http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/va/-/220127095852753842">repeats</a><br/><a href="http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-states/va/-">Find more Bike Rides in , Virginia</a></p>

2 hours and 45 minutes of hill repeats; it actually turned into a 2 hour ride, I was supposed to do a 45 minute warm up but drove out a bit too far and only did a 10 minute warm up which was followed by a 35 minute climb!!! 35 consecutive minutes of climbing - never in my cycling history had I ever done something like that before. It actually felt incredible to climb an 8% grade for that long; legs burning with a smile on my face I climbed and climbed and climbed some more. Finally I turned onto Skyline Drive found a great 1.5 mile stretch for some 5 minute hill repeats. The stretch was between two overlook areas so I'm pretty sure the people parked in them during my training thought I was totally insane; they may partially be right but whatever.

For 40 minutes (5, 5 minute hill repeats with 3 min rest intervals) I climbed in aero position, out of my saddle and spinning. I hammered as hard as I could charging the hill - hitting 18 mph on a 4% incline! Once I got to the steep stuff I got out of my saddle and charged (as per Eric's instructions). My heart rate was hitting the 170s but I was loving it. I'll be a frequent visitor to Skyline drive as my training for IMCDA progresses. Plus the reward for climbing is a view like this one:

Not too shabby! (my camera phone doesn't really do the view justice)

Exhausted I returned home and made my first big nutrition mistake in a while. I was tired, had work to do for the case competition and wanted to be able to attend a friend's birthday party. So I skimped on food - rather than hitting up the store to get the carbohydrates I needed, I had some toast with almond butter and a clif bar - totally not enough for the intensity of work I had done. To top that off for dinner I grilled some chicken kabobs and just had potato salad - maybe a total of 100 grams of carbs when I should have refueled with closer to 300 grams of carbs after the rdie.

Sunday, I woke early to get out for my 60 mile ride, 15 of which was a warm up, 40 in zone 3 and 5 as a cool down. By 8:15 am I was out the door and felt great to be on El Bastardo again. My legs were still burning from the prior day's repeats but anytime spent in the country on my bike makes me feel fantastic. Around mile 20 I started to feel just kind of "off". My blood sugars were fine according to my meter but my body didn't feel like it normally does. I finished the ride without a problem and was surprised to see a blood sugar of 127 on my meter (with the cool down normally I'd be closer to 180). I changed into my running clothes for a 10 mile brick but was shocked when my blood sugar was at 107.

Never before has my blood sugar continue to drop after finishing exercise. Normally as my heart rate returns to resting my blood sugar will spike 50 to 100 points, to see it drop 20 more points in a matter of 15 minutes after taking in a gel let me know something was up. I texted Eric and he recommended not to force the workout - I was feeling pretty zapped of energy so headed over to Whole Foods for a super foods salad and a sandwich. I continued to pop in Clif Bars and get in as many carbohydrates as I could. I struggled to maintain my blood sugars and realized what a huge carbohydrate deficit I had let myself get into.

Additionally, I had experienced some weird morning highs (like in the 300s) earlier in the week so I jacked up my basal rate from 7am to 12pm. At a 40% basal rate my insulin intake over that period was about what it was at 100% the prior week - so I think I had way too much IOB. The combination of the carbohydrate defecit and too high basal rate messed up my blood sugars and forced me to miss the 10 mile run.

After a few years of experience with blood sugar management I thought I could put nutritional assessment and basal rate calculations on auto-pilot. Much like Toyota I learned that this stuff takes constant vigilance. Therefore, I'm creating a dynamic spread sheet to calculate my carbohydrate needs for me based on exercise duration and type. As good as I am at keeping stuff straight in my head, sometimes it's better to just let a spreadsheet do the thinking for you!

Triabetes Weekend & 3 Years In

2010-04-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

After crossing the finish line I spent some time (like 30 minutes) trying to figure out where the parking lot was that I parked in at 5am. Thankfully I ran into Julie, the other Triabetes athlete racing Cali, who happily offered to drive me around with her husband and dog so I could find my car without walking for miles. Some 15 minutes later we finally figured out where the lot was (about 4 miles from where I was aimlessly walking around! Still smelly from the race I hopped in my car to head over to the Triabetes BBQ in Carlsbad hosted by Jason.

The BBQ was awesome, nothing tastes better after a long race than burgers, grilled chicken and beer. At the BBQ were a few other type 1s, some of whom had been diagnosed within the past year or so. It was great to be able to share experiences with other JDs and spread the word about Ring The Bolus a bit. Talking about my blog with other type 1s reminded me why I started writing all this stuff. 3 years ago when I was first diagnosed I was so frustrated at the lack of information about how to train and live a normal life as an adult diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that I forced myself to be part of the solution, not add to the problem. To help others in my situation I wanted to be an outlet of information and just document my experiences managing blood sugars and life. Was kind of cool to be reminded of that and recharged me to keep writing about finger pricks and insulin needs.

About an hour and 1/2 into the BBQ my bags were finally delivered! Having clean under ware for the first time in 3 days was one of the greatest feelings of relief. I showered, put on deoderant and clean clothing all for the first time in a while. As the BBQ started to wind down I continued some great conversations, got to hang out with Ryan and the Maloneys a bit and continued to joke around with Nate, my host for the rest of the weekend.

From the BBQ I headed down to Pacific Beach, during the drive I had an awesome conversation with Steve Parker, a Triabetes captain from 2008 who I met at IMAZ. During the conversation I was amazed at how great an organization Triabetes is, all of the athletes in Triabetes have one common bond and that bond lets us become quick and instant friends. Whether talking to Julie about blood sugars during Cali 70.3, Steve about his up comming race schedule, or sharing stories about nighttime lows with people I hadn't met before we are all sharing intimate shared experiences. Just knowing that there are other people out there who battle and struggle on a daily basis with the same things you do brings great comfort and solace to a lifetime journey.

Once at Nate's awesome house in Pacific Beach we quickly changed and headed down to PB Bar & Grill. I still hadn't had my fill of post-race goodies and well wanted to check out the PB Bar scene a bit. Unfortuneteley by 11pm both Nate and I were beat - a 4am wake up call and a long day out in the sun had wiped us out. But over a couple beers Nate and I realized we are both born on 4/15/79! That explains our similar taste in reading and constant obscure references.

The next morning Nate and I headed over to one of the beautiful San Diego beaches for an InuslinDependence Breakfast Blend. Since ID (the umbrella non-profit which Triabetes is a part of) was founded in San Diego the support network and events are more established there than in other geographic locations. Breakfast Blend is an opportunity for supporters of the organization to meet over coffee and pastries on the beach with the opportunity to surf. It's a totally informal meet and great and a fantastic experience. At the Breakfast Blend I met 5 or 10 fellow diabetics all of which had a story to share. We spoke about new medical technologies, surfing with diabetes, and really just about life in general. An outstanding time was had by all. Having had a blast surfing when I was in Costa Rica I was dying to ride the waves, after a few times trying to pop up on my board I realized the half Iron from the day before had taken its toll on my legs - surfing was not in the cards.

The rest of the day was spent eating burritos, drinking some beer and returning the cornucopia of triathlon gear I had borrowed for the race. All that was topped off by a great BBQ at Nate's place that evening and then an early morning flight the next day. In all it was a tremendous weekend and I'm always struck by how amazing an organization Triabetes/ ID is.

Recently in an interview for a strategic consulting firm the President of the company asked me, "on your resume what are you most proud of?" I thought about his question for a moment and rather than list one of my professional or academic accomplishments I told him the strategic advisement I have done for Triabetes is what I am most proud of in my career up to this point. When I was diagnosed on April 2nd, 2007 I vowed to inspire as many people as possible; in all likelihood I will never win Kona so the chance that ESPN will feature me as the first type 1 diabetic to win the big show is pretty much 0.000001% (there's always a chance!) I however have been blessed with some athletic gifts that brought me to the world of triathlon and an ability to set forth strategic visions that help others succeed. The combination of those two attributes have let me help Peter and the rest of the ID crew set the table for some really exciting events in the coming year. After 3 years my desire to help and inspire others through the things I'm good at are at an all time high - my diagnosis anniversary passed this year with a smile because I am truly excited for what the next year holds.

California 70.3 Race Report: Getting By With A Little Help From My Friends

2010-04-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

From my two blog posts on Friday the diverse emotions I experienced are pretty apparent. When I arrived in San Diego on Friday morning I had truly believed that my race was over before it started. Jerry mentioned in the comments one race does not define a season and my triathlon career is about something much bigger than how I perform in a given race but disappointment that I wouldn’t be able to test myself on the course was abound. However, adversity leads to life lessons and growth opportunities and after this weekend I can say I left San Diego as a better triathlete but more importantly as a happier person.

Friday started with several angry phone calls to Continental as I was trying to figure out why it was taking 36 hours to get my bags to cover a 13 hour drive. Operationally, it just didn’t make sense and for that lapse in operational efficiency I plan to never fly Continental ever again. I will also carry my triathlon gear onto any flight with me in the future – I may have to check my nutrition but I’ll be damned if my shoes, wet suit and sun glasses are out of my control ever again. The issue I had with Continental wasn’t that we had to make an emergency landing, I 100% agree with that decision; the bigger issue was why they had no protocol in place to get the checked bags from point A to point B in a more efficient way.

After I found out that my bags would not get to San Diego until at least 10am on Saturday (race day). My Mom suggested that I carry on as usual just in case I was able to race on Saturday. Downtrodden, I headed over to Rudy’s dinner for some huevos rancheros, a cup of coffee and some delicious multi-grain pancakes. Thankfully I filled up on about as much food as I could because the rest of my day would have me traveling all over Southern California on a scavenger hunt for triathlon gear. Some quick text messages from Mary Eggers improved my spirits and I returned back to my hotel room for what I thought would be a relaxing day of doing school work. Coach Egg – thank you for all the support, through it all you really have been a guardian angel for me in the triathlon world.

Upon getting back to my hotel room I received a text message from Nate, the type 3 diabetic of the year, saying “dude are you in sunny socal yet?” My response “dude I’m not fing racing my gear didn’t make it.” The following day I found out that Nate called Peter, Triabetes commander in chief, and said like hell Ed isn’t racing let’s put the wheels of Triabetes in motion and figure this out. After a quick phone call with Peter the army that is Triabetes was in action. Peter contacted Jason, a supporter of Triabetes and Ironman himself to inquire about gear. A 10 minute drive had me at Jason’s gorgeous home where he handed me a wet suit, goggles and a Desoto tri suit to race in and some sweet Oakley sun glasses. Unfortunately, his feet are 2 sizes too big for me so I was still on a quest to find running shoes, cycling pedals and cycling shoes.

Peter had also sent out an e-mail to the Tri Club of San Diego telling them of my predicament. Within 30 minutes of Peter’s e-mail I had received about 70 phone calls and e-mails from TCSD offering me gear and whatever else I needed! Seriously, people who had no clue who I was were willing to offer me their triathlon stuff so I could race, people I had no connection to, people who simply shared my passion for triathlon were willing to go out of their way to help out a stranger – how amazing is that. A special thanks goes to Jerry, John and Darrel. Jerry let me borrow his shimano pedals and sidi cycling shoes, John called Nytro bike shop so I could purchase nutrition and a hydrotail at a discount and Darrel let me borrow his Garmin 305 so I would have access to my heart rate during the race. Individuals who went above and beyond to help out a guy in need – that is flat out Awesome. Although I will never race as a member of that tri club, I became a member when I returned to Charlottesville; I simply couldn’t resist becoming a member of such a great organization.

Jason’s friend Craig, also a member of TCSD, offered up his old Saucony Sinisters for me to run in – we both wear a size 10 running shoe, so there I had it, everything I needed for race day was in my possession. I also purchased a visor at the expo to shade my face during the run and picked up some water bottles at Nytro – if nothing else this race was going to be an adventure. I returned to my hotel room at 7:45 the night before the race with some food from Trader Joes, and a ton of prep to do before a 4:45 am wake up.

I finally finished eating, drinking and prepping my bike (thank god for Tri Bike Transport) by 10:30 pm and got into bed. Since I drank so much water to hydrate between 7:45 and 10:30 I woke up about 5 times during the night to pee and not just a little bit- more like a gallon at a time (should have hydrated more frequently during the day but the scavenger hunt took up my focus and time.) At 4:45am my alarm went off and I thought – holy cow what a crazy past 48 hours, now it’s time to just go out and have some fun – today it really doesn’t matter what happens I’m just thrilled to death I’m having the opportunity to race.

I got to Oceanside and was so nervous accidently drove onto the military base, thank god I didn’t get shot – that would have added some fun to the weekend festivities. I collected myself, turned around and finally found the parking lot where athletes were supposed to park. I picked up my makeshift transition bag and hopped on my bike to ride to transition. For the first time all week I felt confident, the second I got on my bike I smiled and was happy to feel El Bastardo between my legs. The comfort of something I knew brought great solace to my mind - the one thing that would be “mine” on the race course was my bike frame, the thing I spend the most time on during training, the thing that has become a part of me – at that moment it struck me the only thing that mattered on this day was to have as much fun as possible and smile as often as I could, because the ability to race on this day was truly a gift.

I got to transition and started to unload my over stuffed bag. I was cracking up as I tried to figure out where to put everything, I had no towel, no sun screen, I was in a one piece tri suit, and didn’t recognize anything that was coming out of my bag. Bad News Bears style I was ready to race! I spoke more with the people around me than I had ever before, I felt no pressure on this race, I was just having a blast being out there. Still in my warm ups (all of which I bought the day before except my jacket) I put on the running shoes for the first time and set out for a jog – hmm my pace seemed to be ok, but the shoes felt a little off, oh well I’ll get used to them during the half marathon I thought; a ¾ mile warm up and then I stopped by the Triabetes tent to say hello to Nate, then was off to stretch and eat.

As I tested my blood sugars before I put on my wet suit, the guy next to me asked “are you diabetic?” Yes I am, I replied and it turned out so was he! Are you kidding me, 2,000 people in the race and the guy right next to me on the transition rack is a good ol’ type 1 – pure awesome! Ryan from Dallas if you find this blog – hello! And please shoot me an e-mail would love to hear how your race went.

Sans body glide (yeah I forgot that too) I put on the wet suit, grabbed my goggles and was off to race. I got in the water and thought, well my arms and legs still work, the only thing that is different is I’m wearing someone else’s gear, I’m just lucky to race today, keep remembering that. I got into the water a bit late so had to motor a bit to get through the pack and find some open space to swim. The goggles I borrowed didn’t fit my face too well so I kept having to stop to dump water out of the goggles – I tried to swim through it but my eyes were burning from the salt water. Also, because the goggles fit differently my swim cap kept falling off so I had to adjust that constantly – I think you get disqualified if you lose your swim cap but I’m not sure.

The first of many hilarious incidents happened during the swim as I was full into my stroke on the home stretch of the swim, I swam head first into one of the support surf boards! I’m swimming along and then bam goggles hit the side of the surf board that was supporting some guy who was struggling to get through the 1.2 miles. The girl laughed at me and said the finish line is over there – she was in the middle of the swim course but I was laughing as I swam away, at that moment I knew this was going to be an interesting race.

I exited the water in 37 minutes, a bit slow for me but not a bad time at all. Given all the constraints I was operating under I was totally happy with my swim. As I got to transition I began to laugh again realizing I didn’t recognize any of the gear and had no clue how to fully strap on the bike shoes! At least my blood sugar was 204 when I left the water so I knew I was perfectly set up for a strong bike.

My transition was a disaster. Since I was in a one piece tri suit I had to wrap my insulin pump into the right leg of the tri suit instead of just clipping it onto the waist of my shorts. I also didn’t have the usual set up on the back of my bike because I removed that for transit so I stuffed tubes, co2s, tire irons, gels and other goodies into the pockets of my tri suit in transition. Nate, Jason and the Maloneys watched me in transition and I looked at them and said “well it’s off to an interesting day, I don’t even know whose stuff I’m using!”

I hoped on my bike and off I went. Man it felt good to be on my bike, I stayed out of the aero position for the first 5 miles of the bike – I wanted to warm up my legs and make sure that my shoes weren’t going to fall off. I had to stop 3 times to get my water bottles filled with nutrition as they kept getting ejected from my hydrotail (I bought the cheapest water bottle holders Nytro had). Finally we got to a flat, open stretch of road and I decided it was time to get to work. I dropped into the aero position and just let it go, smile on my face I hammered away in zone 3 at about 24 mph and was having as much fun as a little kid on his birthday. All that training paid off, I was rocking the bike like an all star.

The bike course at Oceanside had everything a cyclist could want. The course presented flats, hills, downhills, cross winds and gorgeous scenery – I freaking loved this course. Finally we reached the first of 3 major hills on the course and I was psyched to see how I would handle it. Eric warned me to just get in a rhythm early, not to force it too much and just scrape away at the hill. As I climbed I passed about 20 or 30 athletes who were walking their bike up the hill. I simply got into a small gear and spun up between 6 and 8 mph – no big deal, easy climb, pretty long but I got it done.

Around the same time my stomach really started to kill me. Usually I have some protein in my sports nutrition mix but couldn’t find any to buy in the scavenger hunt leading up to the race. I added a little extra carbo-pro and EFS to make up for the difference. I add the protein to assist in the absorption of the carbohydrates in the mix and without them a ton of sugar was just sitting in my stomach. Given that I tried to take in extra water but it was pretty clear that was doing the trick – this was just going to have to be an area that I had to roll with.
I continued fighting the hills on the bike course and by the middle of the third hill my hip totally acted up. Instead of getting off the bike I slowed my pace a bit and tried to loosen it up. By the third hill my cadence had dropped way down and I was starting to struggle – little did I know there would be a 7 mile stretch of downhills and flats after the third climb. Salvation!

During the downhills I was able to stretch out my right hip to ease the pain and by the time I reached the flats I was ready to go. Over the last 10 miles of the course I averaged close to 27 mph and felt like a mad man. If I can identify how to maintain that focus and intensity throughout the entire bike I can really improve my times; I have a tendency to zone out during certain periods on the bike and need to figure out why. Over those last 10 to 12 miles I biked more confidently, more smoothly and faster than at any point I had before and it felt incredible.

With about a mile left to go on the bike I heard a buzzing between my legs and a bee hand landed on an area that a guy totally doesn’t want a bee to land! I shooed it away and it came back full force to sting me in the thigh – honestly I got stung by a freaking bee, what else could happen during this race!

My final bike time was 2:56, an average of 19mph and a PR for me in a half Ironman; not bad on borrowed cycling shoes that were a half size too big! I pulled into transition laced up the sneakers, tossed on my visor and headed out to the run. Within a half mile I knew that the shoes I was running in were just “wrong.”

I have run exclusively in Nike Frees for the past 9 months, in those shoes my foot is allowed to act naturally and I can totally get on my forefoot as I stride. The Sauconys I borrowed were forcing me to mid-foot or heel strike which didn’t allow me to rotate my hips like I normally do. I headed out at a 7:45 to 8 minute pace but a mile and ½ into the race my legs and feet were in a tremendous amount of pain. At the 3 mile mark my back had spasmed so much I could barely breathe. I pulled off to the side of the course to stretch for about 5 minutes and then trotted off at a 9:30 pace. Anytime I tried to stride like I normally would I simply couldn’t – it would feel like someone was shoving a knife into my lower back.

At the 5.5 mile mark I felt a ton of pain in my heel. I looked back and noticed my ankle was covered in blood. I took off my shoe and saw that my sock was covered in blood. The shoes beat up my feet so badly that I had 3 cuts across the top of my foot and a huge cut on my heel – I sat for a moment on the curb and contemplated what to do. I decided to take off the sneakers and walk for a bit to figure out a strategy. Should I stop? Am I going to really injure my feet? Is running a 2 hour plus half marathon worth it? Those were the thoughts that went through my head. Then it dawned on me, so many people helped get me to the starting line of this race, so many people who I will probably never see again. Finishing this race is the best way I can thank them for being incredible individuals, finishing this race was the only way I knew how to show my appreciation for all they did for me. With that I laced the sneakers back up and trotted off, never able to crest a 9:15 pace for the rest of the race.

I struggled throughout the rest of the run, my feet were destroyed but I was just thankful I could race. I was racing in red a color I can’t stand for athletics because it was the color of our big rival in college. I was racing in shoes that were killing me, I was getting burnt to no end because I forgot sun screen and I was hungry. To be honest none of that mattered though because being able to race California 70.3 was a gift from some really giving people.

My final race time was 6:03, I grabbed a Triabetes t-shirt from Nate as I came down the chute and tossed it on, I race for such a bigger cause than myself and wanted to make sure that cause was apparent when I crossed the finish line. 6:03 means nothing in the grand scheme of things, I had more fun during this race than any race I had done in the past – this race was an adventure, it was about not freaking out and just being thankful that I had the opportunity to compete, this race taught me to stop freaking out and to just have fun.

On Friday Coach Orton text messaged me and asked me what the “one thing,” I wanted to learn or accomplish during the race was. I replied, “That there is no such thing as a perfect race and my only goal for any race should be the same as any training day – to smile knowing that pushing myself athletically is what I love and what makes me feel alive and the only difference between a training day and a race is a few more people and a couple beats per minute of heart rate.” Saturday’s race and preparation was anything but perfect, I didn’t follow an exact nutrition protocol leading up to the race, I wasn’t neurotic about my gear and I didn’t care if something threw off my plan – I just had fun. I hope I finally learned that the people in this sport and the cause I race for is what makes all this worth it and that in the end nothing will ever be perfect and the only thing that matters is enjoying every second. I guess bloody feet and borrowed gear can make you think about stuff differently. Plus I got to share the experience with some really great people – more to come on the Triabetes festivities of the weekend…..

Thank You – Triabetes & San Diego Tri Club

2010-03-26T21:18:00.001-07:00

The warmth and love of the triathlon community never ceases to amaze me and Triabetes continues to be one of the most amazing and touching organizations I have ever had the privilege to be a part of. Peter, the head honcho of Triabetes rallied the troops and sent a mass e-mail to the San Diego tri club. I’ll write a full post when I’m back in VA next week thanking everyone for their support. But – I GET TO RACE TOMORROW! I’m going at it bad news bears style and breaking every rule in the book – nothing new on race day – ha! I just can’t believe how willing people are to help out someone they hardly know, or don’t know at all – this sport and community is just great. See you at the finish line.

Will Not Start - Baggage

2010-03-26T12:15:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was on Continental Flight 602 from Newark to Los Angeles. On that flight a 70 year old man had a heart attack and we had to make an emergency landing to ensure that individual's health. While the flight attendants will tell you they are trained for your safety in flight – do not believe them. The flight attendants had no idea what the protocol was to stabilize this individual when he had the heart attack and thankfully there were passengers who were doctors aboard. At one point a woman passenger who was a doctor or nurse screamed at the flight attendenant for the epihinedrin because the man had no pulse.

We landed at 4-corners air field in Farmington, NM. This airfield serves local pilots on mainly non-commercial flights; after we landed and the man was brought to safety the workers at this airfield were snapping pictures of themselves next to the plane most likely because they had never seen a plane so large before. The manager at the airfield said to the press that while the plane could land at the field safely, taking off was not safe. All the bags and cargo needed to be removed from the plane for the plane to be able to take off safely again.

During the emergency landing the pilot rushed through turbulence; let me tell you those jets can go through hell and back and stay together, it essentially felt like we were in a nose dive. We came onto the runway steeply and at a very fast speed – everyone was thrust completely forward in their seats when the pilot slammed on the breaks as soon as we hit the run way. It then took the EMTs about 20 minutes to figure out how to get the sick man off the plane – Albuquerque, New Mexico with a full commercial airport and safe runways was just over 120 miles away from the air field we landed at; a flight time of less than 15 minutes.

I have no way of knowing if landing at that air field saved the individual's life or not, I do know that by landing at that airfield the pilot risked the lives of the 185 individuals who remained on board when we took off again. I do know that Continental has handled this entire situation awfully; we were grounded in New Mexico for 3 hours yesterday as the brains that be at Continental tried to figure out the physics behind taking off again. To do that we needed to lose 3,000 lbs – or the luggage and cargo. With the amount of time Continental spent figuring out the physics behind taking off again one would think they were advancing the thought of string-theory. One would think with all the time they spent doing that math they would have figured out a way for our luggage to get from New Meixco to California in less than 36 hours – it is a 17 hour drive (I google mapped it from the runway).

My bags will not arrive in Los Angeles until 5am tomorrow morning. My bags contain my wet suit, race nutrition, bike pedals, bike shoes, triathlon kit, fuel belt, running shoes, heart rate monitor, sun glasses and race hat. My bags contain everything I need to race tomorrow; the only thing not in my bags is my bike helmet. I am unable to race tomorrow because Continental could not figure out the logistics of getting the passenger's bags from New Mexico to California in less than 36 hours. Oceanside is about 2 hours from LA, the earliest I could have my bags tomorrow would be 7 am, after I get my bags I need an hour and ½ for pre-race nutrition prep, the earliest I could start would be 8:30 am; I will not race tomorrow.

I am at the end of my rope when it comes to facing adversity and persevering. I am mentally and emotionally drained and have nothing left to give. Before I continue, let me clarify, my heart and prayers go out to the man who had the heart attack and his family; I want no one to confuse me being emotionally drained for that – it is the adversity after that incident and the way Continental handled the incident and aftermath that has me spent. I have yet to do a triathlon which has gone off smoothly. Sure people face flat tires, injuries and obstacles everyday in triathlon; but I have poured my heart and soul into this sport, I have sacrificed so much, have given so much for a cause and I feel like the wall is just getting too big to scale any longer.

I had never worked so hard for a single athletic event before. I had believed I finally overcame the mental hurdle of just going out to have fun in triathlon, just seeing what happens and just letting the day come to me. This weekend cost me close to $1500 between flights, shipping my bike on tri bike transport, rental cars, the hotel, and the race fee – that is $1.5k that stretches my student budget about as far as it goes. Last year the crash in the Patriots Triathlon cost me $2000 to replace my bike; this sport has me essentially broke in my last semester at grad school. I give up nights with my friends for this sport, have had many sleepless nights so I could look for my post-MBA employment while training for triathlon, have spent weekends traveling just to find dry roads to bike and run on. I have nothing more to give. I don't know if I have the strength to keep scaling these walls, I'm a fighter but I don't know how much fight I have left.

In 14 years of football I don't ever recall having to face adversity like this to compete in a sport. I don't ever recall circumstances outside of my control completely breaking my heart. I pour all that I am into my workouts each day. I finally had believed I was at a place to really have fun with it tomorrow. I finally believed I was ready to just be me out on the course. After I crashed and had an awful run at the Patriots Triathlon last September I considered giving up the sport. My performance at South Carolina re-energized me. But now what? I just don't know if I have enough left in me to smile through this one and roll with it – missing this race hurts, with everything I have poured into preparing for this race over the past 5 months I just don't know how I'm going to find that spark again to challenge myself day in and day out until IMCDA. I just can't deal with anymore adversity – I've had enough.

No Fears, No Doubts, Just Enthusiasm

2010-03-23T07:29:00.001-07:00

On Saturday I'll zip up the wet suit, clip into El Bastardo and lace up my Nike Frees for my first triathlon of 2010. Since the South Carolina half in October I've been anxiously awaiting March 27^th for the California 70.3. This will be my third season of triathlon and I know I am in the best shape of my life. In my first season of triathlons I was worried about my performance, concerned about covering the distance and fearful of how my blood sugars would react. For my second season of triathlon I continually had questions about why my race day performance never seemed to equate to what I had done in training. But this year, this season something has changed; I no longer care what my time will be, I have confidence in my training, confidence in my body and enthusiasm for the sport. I no longer feel as if I am out there to prove something to myself, I'm simply out there to have fun.

It has often been said that "perfection is the enemy of good." I believe in the past I was so concerned about having a "perfect," race whether from a performance or blood sugar perspective that I never allowed myself to just breathe and have fun. For each race I would freak out if I didn't take in my pre-race nutrition at the exact moment I was supposed to or if I couldn't get in a full warm up before the race began. The truth is once you have the confidence in your preparation, training and nutrition it is really easy to not sweat the small stuff and just focus on what's important – an awesome experience where I get to challenge myself athletically. I mean let's face it I know I'm not winning my age group and really my only goal is to just be a little bit faster than in my last race; perfection is a pretty unattainable goal while having fun is easy to achieve.

I haven't yet spoken to Coach Orton about race day strategy. I know that there are 3 steep climbs on the bike, that the run is flat and that the swim is in the ocean. Since it's an ocean swim and since I'm terrified of sharks there is a chance I'll set a world record for a 1.2 mile swim! The bike will be the bike; I've made huge improvements in my ability to pace myself on the bike and mentally feel I am better prepared for the bike than I ever have been before. Last weekend while El Bastardo was traveling to California via tribike transport I took my beater road bike (that I put together myself) for an 80 mile ride, knowing I averaged just over 17 mph on that thing lets me know my legs are pretty much ready to tackle the bike course. But, and I can't believe I'm going to write this, I am really excited for the run! Coach Orton has pushed the cr*p out of me in run training, he's had me run hills, do speed work, go long, go slow, go fast and go steady. He has challenged me with sustained efforts in zone 2 followed by 20 minutes of zone 4 effort; he has had me do mile repeats at paces I never thought I would achieve. He has broken me down to build me back up and has turned me from someone who just wanted to sprint into someone who runs because they love how it feels. I have never before had more excitement for the run of a triathlon than the bike; the idea of running along the Pacific coast at the end of the race has chills running down my spine.

Best of all after the race I get to hang out with the Triabetes crew! Julie who I met out at IMAZ will be doing the race with her husband and pooch cheering her on. Nate has rounded up a bunch of the amazing people involved with Triabetes to come cheer us on. Afterwards we are all going to a bbq in Oceanside and then on Sunday morning there will be some more Triabetes meet and greets. It's just going to be incredible to have a weekend where I'm competing with my Triabetes family cheering me on.

I've put in the work and I've made the sacrifices. I'm more mentally and physically prepared for this race than any I have done in the past. Yeah, the only thing to do is just going out there on Saturday and have some fun – it's going to be a hell of a day.