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| Entry for April 02, 2009 |
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| Help support Alex's efforts |
| Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation |
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| Some travel stories |
| Facebook group Marathon des Sables (requires a Facebook logon) |
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| Facebook group Jelly Baby Campaign |
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| Fundraising permission letter |
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| Sun Valley True Fruit (fruit strips) |
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| Sadly, the damage I did to my right foot when I did the last 55km walk is worse than I thought. It is starting to heal, but it seems that I have badly bruised the ball of my foot. Therefore I've decided to have this week and weekend off from the training. I'll be back to the training next Monday and will do a 30km or 35km walk the following weekend. BTW, this year's event is underway. I'm keeping close watch on it as it unfolds - http://www.darbaroud.com/index_uk.php |
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| Entry for April 09, 2009 |
| It's Thursday night before Good Friday. I'm planning on doing 3 walks over the Easter break. Tomorrow I'm doing 20km, followed by 25 or 30 on Saturday. On Easter Monday I'll do anything from 20 to 35 - I haven't decided yet. The 100km WildEndurance is looming in 3 weeks. Everything is coming together well and I'm getting quite excited about it. |
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| Entry for April 10, 2009 |
| What an excellent walk today! The week off has really helped. Today's learning was to do with taping my foot. I needed to stop along the way (I've learnt a lesson from the walk to my mum's place) and tape my right foot to ease a pressure point. It all worked well and added less than 10 minutes. Practising these things is an important part of the training. Training - 4 hours - 20km Medication - increased normal dosage by 5 units in the morning |
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| Entry for April 11, 2009 |
| Another great walk today. The big deal about today's walk is the fact that I did 20km yesterday. I was interested to see how I felt, and I felt good. There were 2 learnings from today, but I can't think of what the first one was. I'll come back to that one. The second learning was to do with the medication. Even though all of this walk was going to be before lunch time, I decided to move 2 units of the dosage increase to the long acting, away from the short acting. I thought that I would need it more after the walk and wanted to lessen the chance of a low while walking in the late morning. I was wrong. Two units was too much and I could feel the affect at about 11 o'clock. So I should have moved one unit only to the long acting. That's a lessen for next time. The other learning was ...... um ....... I can't think of it. I do know that it wasn't vital; more interesting than important. I'll tell you when I think of what it was. I'm having a walk free day tomorrow (Easter Sunday) and will do 30 or 35km on Monday. Training - 5 hours - 25km Medication - increased normal dosage by 6 units in the morning |
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| Entry for April 11, 2009 |
| It was a wonderful walk today. There were no new learnings with regard to diabetes or gear. It was more a case of just bedding in the processes and routines that I have developed to this point. The weather was staggeringly beautiful. I started in the dark and cold and walked into the sunrise. As I walked through the morning mist, there was no place more peaceful or beautiful in all the world. The 100km event is less than 3 weeks away, so we are now fine tuning the organising for that. Life is good. And there is an interesting and important learning opportunity that will apply to the main event in Morocco. And that's the medication regime for the overnight section. The 100km event goes non-stop for about 28 hours. I need to work out how I'm going to do the insulin without adding too much danger and yet to allow me to keep going. My choices are to continue with the standard overnight dosage or to increase the dosage either a little or significantly. I won't give detailed amounts as I don't want anyone out there trying to do what I'm doing, because this is potentially dangerous. But my leaning at this point is to increase the dosage significantly and eat the food to compensate. perfect solution? Probably not, but it's a starting point for working it out. Training - 6 hours - 30km Medication - increased normal dosage by 7 units in the morning |
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| Entry for April 18, 2009 |
| Brilliant walk today. I felt great and didn't have any problems what-so-ever. Sadly, I'm currently on call and got called at the worst possible time and place. This almost brought the walk to a crashing end, but luckily I was able to get the problem solved without having to cancel my walk. It is situations like this when mobile phones serve a very useful purpose. I can't think of anything to tell you as everything went well. All of the planning and preparation and experimenting is now paying off. In 2 weeks from today I'll get a very real chance to test it rigorously, as it's now less than 2 weeks until I do the 100km WildEndurance walk. I'll do another 30km next weekend, as I don't want to break anything with just a week until the WildEndurance. Training - 7 hours 20 minutes - 37km Medication - increased normal dosage by 8 units in the morning |
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| Entry for April 25, 2009 |
| Today was the final long training walk before the 100km WildEndurance event next weekend. I didn't want to risk breaking something, so I just did an easy 23km and everything went very well. I can't believe how well I feel now after 20km+ compared to when I started training 12 months ago. I've learned a lot and changed a lot, but the single biggest advance was what I learned from the nutritionist. It is now second nature to work out the required change to my insulin, the amount of food I need to consume and the time it will take me to complete the set distance. The big news today is that I have heard from the organisers for the big event in Morocco next year. At last they are ready to start taking our money :-), so the official planning and organising for the 2010 event is finally underway. Soon I will be able to join a forum of present and past competitors from the MdS and be able to find out more detail about how it works and what to expect. Training - 4 hours 25 minutes - 23km Medication - increased normal dosage by 5 units in the morning |
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| Entry for May 4, 2009 |
| This is the first, but simple, entry for the WildEndurance event. I will elaborate more when I'm at home when I write a story and post it on the web. I'll put the address here when it's done. The WildEndurance event is exactly that. It's wild and full-on endurance. This event is in a whole different league to the Oxfam Trailwalker, and none of us were prepared for the endurance aspect of it. We battled on through extreme hardship until the 48km mark, then had to throw in the towel through utter exhaustion. By then I was suffering dehydration and had hypothermia coming on as well. The other team members, Danielle, Michael and David, were suffering various combinations of blisters, cramps, strained muscles and exhaustion. I have to say though that Michael, who's in the Australian army, was definitely the best out of all of us. David was a close second. The most important aspect of all of this is that my diabetes did not cause any concern at all. What I have learned over the last 12 months about the medication and the food stood the test very well. At no stage did my sugar cause any problems, and I am very, very happy about that. However one of the learnings I take from this event is that I need to figure out a way of looking after myself after each stage is finished. In the Sahara I will be looking after myself, with little or no outside help, for 6 days. At the end of a demanding section I will feel brain dead and I need to be able to continue to manage my sugar and health through this. This time I had 3 team mates to assist and Donna was marvellous after she picked us up. I am going to write a story and post it on the web about our experiences, but I will give a summary here. The weather was perfect; you couldn't ask for better weather conditions. I knew we were in for an interesting time when we got to about 8km and found ourselves in a queue to climb a 15m ladder straight up a cliff face. After that was a scramble over rocks until we got to a fire trail. This led us to the 22km mark where we faced a climb of about 400m up a sheer cliff on what must have been a thousand steps, rocks and ladders. The legs were screaming at the end of that and the will to live took a beating. After check point 1 we descended the same cliff on ladders and steep stairs all the way to the bottom and into the gloom of the coming night. The time was now 5:30 and I needed my medication. This is where the pens were fantastic as they are so easy to use. I warned a couple of people coming down the ladder of what I was doing so they wouldn't get a shock when they saw me. The next part of the walk was in the dark and on slippery rocks, creek crossings, steep tracks, slippery tree roots, every sort of trouble and obsticle you can imagine. And the will to live was slipping. :-) The expected time at check point 2 kept getting pushed back further and further. The original expected time was 7 o'clock. This became 9 o'clock, then 10, which finally became about 11 o'clock. It's difficult for me to know because 4km short of CP2 I had to be picked up by the first aid 4WD. By then I was suffering exhaustion, dehydration and had hypothermia coming on. They wrapped me in a space blanket, insisted that I eat a glucose tablet and drink heaps of water, and then waited for the 4WD to come along. The whole team pulled out at CP2, which was 48km out of the total 100km. Everyone was suffering in some way and all commented on how much more difficult it was than they expected. I don't feel too bad that I didn't make the full distance because it was way tougher than any of the sections in Morocco will be. Plus my sugar held up well and I learned a lot from the experience. One of the things I learned is that my training regime will need to include some weekends when I walk for 24 hours, starting at 6 o'clock on Saturday morning and finishing back home on Sunday morning. This will give me a chance to fine tune the over night requirements as well as the steps I need to take the following day to remain healthy. Oh, one of the things that is now clear to me is that the hit on the sugar from the exercise doesn't stop when I stop walking. The effect lasts for at least another 24 hours after that. And that is an important learning. Good things from this walk - * the shoes, pack and other gear is working * the foot strapping is working * the training is working * the food and medication is working * the approach to a long walk is working Not good things from this walk - * I need to overcome anaemia * I need to learn to pace myself better * I need to take more care when packing my backpack |
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| Today was your full standard marathon, and it went very well. I tried a slightly different approach timewise, in order to inject something new, and started at 8 o'clock instead of the standard 6 o'clock. This meant that I didn't finish until 16:30 (4:30pm). But the change was good as I left the house in a more upbeat frame of mind. Another thing that was different this time is that I didn't do anything the previous night to prepare my gear. So I packed everything in the morning, as well as having my medication and breakfast (and waiting the mandatory 30 minutes before eating). And joyfully after taking this approach, everything was packed well, I hadn't left anything out and I now know that I am getting closer to being fully ready for the mornings in the Sahara. The was, which was just a smidge under 42km (26 miles for our North American friends), was a combination of long, flat gravel roads and low, undulating hills. The only comment I can make about the walk is that I left the top zip undone on my pack after one of the rest stops and lost an item out of that section. So note to self - ALWAYS CHECK THE ZIP. Training - 8 hours 30 minutes - 42km Medication - increased normal dosage by 9 units in the morning |
| Entry for May 9, 2009 |
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| The walk today was a relatively short one at 22km. This is now an easy distance, so I maintained a fast pace for the whole distance. A fast pace means 5kph. My slow pace is now 4kph. The weather today was awful, with light rain, wind and cold. But, it gave me an opportunity to practice managing adversity. As the rain came down and the wind blew, and the time for me to eat came along, I needed to remain calm, think clearly and do one thing at a time. I know this all sounds simple or uninteresting, but when it's 45C and the sand is blowing in my face, I will need to be able to continue to eat my food. So getting some practice is a good thing. It is interesting how straight forward 22km is now. But I won't be confident until I can say the same thing about a 50km walk. Training - 4 hours 10 minutes - 22km Medication - increased normal dosage by 5 units in the morning |
| Entry for May 16, 2009 |
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| It was another short walk today as I'm still oncall for work. Also I needed to try out a couple of minor new pieces of equipment in preparation for next week's 100km trek at Wilson's Prom. There's not much to tell about today's walk. Being a short one I treated it almost as a sprint, maintaining the full 5kph the whole way. 20km no longer presents any issues what-so-ever, which is a good thing. There was one funny situation, which is a lesson to be learned, and that is that I dashed out of the house at 8 o'clock, because that was the starting time I had set myself. 3km down the road and I realised that I had forgotten to bring 2 unimportant pieces of equipment and had forgotten to do 2 reasonably important preparation tasks before leaving. Note to self - DON'T RUSH TO THE STARTING LINE. Take a breath and think. I'm getting quite excited about the big walk at Wilson's Prom next week. If you click here -- HERE -- you'll be able to see where I'm walking. It's pretty cool, let me tell you. Training - 3 hours 50 minutes - 19.3km Medication - increased normal dosage by 5 units in the morning |
| Entry for May 23, 2009 |
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| This is a summary of the training walk I did this weekend. I will be writing a longer, more detailed account of the walk over the next day or so and posting a link here. Firstly, and most importantly, I'm alive and I am healthy. Secondly, and reassuringly, the food and the medication did not cause me any trouble what-so-ever during the walk. There was a problem afterwards, but more on that later. Of all of the aspects requiring attention during the walk next year, it was the food and the medication that I expected to give me the most problems. But fortunately it is those two aspects that have been controlled and managed most successfully. My original intent for this walk was to do a 58km loop around southern Wilsons Prom, taking in the lighthouse, followed by a 40km loop. I was able to complete the 58km loop, but it took much longer than expected, so was not able to also do the second loop. One of the reasons for this was that I have never been to the southern area of Wilsons Prom before, so I didn't realise how rugged it is. At 11 o'clock on Saturday night I found myself at the top of a cliff above the crashing waves, the temperature was 3C and dropping and it was starting to rain lightly. My headlamp wasn't able to show me where the goat track progressed past the rocky outcrop I was on, so the common sense, safe thing to do was to stop. I had already spent 15 minutes trying to find where the track went but couldn't, so I needed to stop before I got lost. It was the middle of the night, the weather was turning nasty and I was 40km from civilisation. Sunday morning, after a fitful night of sleep on a rock, it was still raining. I was able to have my insulin while huddled under my poncho then, by the light of day found where the track progressed. I continued on for the final 18km back to the car by midday on Sunday. You can see where I went here. Sadly, and this is the learning from this weekend (every training walk needs to have a lesson, and this is the lesson from this one), I need to learn how to manage my sugar AFTER the walking session has finished. My sugar was fine all the way from 5 o'clock Saturday morning, through a night sleeping on a rock and walking 58km along goats tracks in the wilderness, until midday Sunday. But on the drive home it dropped, leaving me in the throes of a mild hypo which left me confused and lost. Fortunately the magic of mobile phones and a loving wife at home were able to help me think straight enough to get some food into myself and eventually arrive home 2 hours later than expected. The walk was finished and a lesson had been learned. Now I need to develop a process to help me manage my sugar after the walking session is finished. Thinking cap goes on. |
| Entry for May 30, 2009 |
| Apr / May 2009 |
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| Bridget McNulty - Type 1 and travelling the world |
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