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| Entry for December 02, 2008 |
| Well it had to happen eventually. I'm having regular problems with my sugar each morning while walking to work. I'm dropping the morning dosage by 1 unit to try to get it under control. I nearly stumbled in front of a truck this morning. |
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| Help support Alex's efforts |
| Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation |
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| Some travel stories |
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| Fundraising permission letter |
| Entry for December 05, 2008 |
| I've managed to get my sugar under control, but it has meant that I've had to drop my dosage by a couple of units each morning during the week. So now I believe the new pattern is to raise the dosage on the day of the walk, then lower it back down to the normal base on the Monday OR Tuesday. I'll experiment with that next week. This weekend I plan on doing around 40km on Sunday, with a slightly lighter pack. |
| Entry for December 07, 2008 |
| Today's was an important walk. For a start, it's the longest I've done so far. Secondly, it takes me over the 40km (25 mile) mark for the first time. And finally, there is a chance that I now have all of the main equipment that I'm going to need for the event, so I'm now testing the gear vigorously. The food went brilliantly. The dietician, Vicky, has really helped me to get on track with the food. There were no hypos at all today and if last week is an indication, I shouldn't be high tomorrow. The question that still remains for the food, and which may end up going under the heading of "endurance", is the nature of the food I'll be eating. Unless I can find other food that has the carbohydrate required, is tough and can withstand the rigorous conditions and is easy to carry, I'm going to have to eat a heck of a lot of the fruit strips over the 6 days. I ate 27 of them today and to be honest, 6 days of them is going to be hard to do. But having no other choices at this point, I'm just going to have to "suck it up" and do it. The distance today was equal to a marathon, ie 42km (26 miles). The nature of the event and the walking I'm doing makes this a pointless achievement, but it's sorta cool to know that I did a marathon today AND did it in less time than expected. But the point most heavily on my thoughts right now is, could I do it again tomorrow, then the next day and the next etc? Oh the pain, the pain. :-) Training - 8 hours - 41.3km Medication - increased normal dosage by 3 units in the morning and by 1 unit in the evening |
| Entry for December 15, 2008 |
| It is now Monday night, and this is the first opportunity I've had to write about yesterday's walk. Why? Because I was utterly exhausted yesterday afternoon. The walk, which was the same as last week only in the opposite direction, was quite difficult. The pack was slightly heavier, though not worth noting. The weather was awful for the first half, and I found myself walking in light rain for 2 hours. I suppose it was good for "managing adversity", but not much else. I was dragging my feet by the time I got home and spent the rest of the afternoon looking after my sugar. I suddenly went low a couple of hours after I got home, so I had to eat more. It was surprisingly sudden and unannounced. Was the walk fun? No, not really. Was it worth while? Yes it was. Next week will likely be a long one. Training - 8 hours - 41.3km Medication - increased normal dosage by 5 units in the morning |
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| Entry for December 20, 2008 |
| Today was the longest walk yet, by a little bit. It was 43.5km (27 miles) and the weather was perfect. I decided to leave everything the same as I was increasing the distance. So the food, dosage and pack were all the same as last week. I feel better at the end of the walk than I did last week, but I hurt. My feet, my shoulders and to a small extent my back, are simply sore. I've kept myself awake this afternoon, as I think that was a big part of the problem last Sunday. As I was walking along today, enjoying the perfect weather and the incredibly peaceful scenery, it occurred to me that the non-diabetics reading this don't really know what it is like to have a hypo, and what it does to the diabetic's life during and after. So over the next few days I'm going to attempt to explain what it means for the carbohydrate in your body to fall below the necessary minimum level, in a way that will enable you to get some idea of what we diabetics live with day after day after day. Have you seen the Jodie Foster movie "Panic Room"? There is a scene in there that I thought was overly exaggerated, until Donna told me that it is precisely the way it happens. That came as a shock to me as I've never seen what it looks like. Why? Because I'm out of my head at the time. More over the next few days. Training - 8 hours 45 minutes - 43.5km Medication - increased normal dosage by 5 units in the morning |
| The walk today was a slight variation from the pattern I've been following. Today was a shorter walk, at 25km, but I increased the weight of the pack by 2 or 3 kg. Also today was a little warmer than it has been, although still no where near what it will get to in the Sahara. I'm guessing today got to about 26C while I was walking. There's not a lot to tell about today's walk. The extra weight was noticeable, particularly on my feet. But my energy level after the walk is good, so I can get other things done this afternoon. Compared to 3 months ago, that's a huge advancement. An interesting point today was with the food. Since changing my dosage and food regime, I've been doing the longer walks. So today was a test to see if a change of distance is easy to adjust for. It was. :-) Training - 5 hours 5 minutes - 25km Medication - increased normal dosage by 3 units in the morning |
| Entry for December 26, 2008 |
| It was an excellent walk today, although I am quite sore and sorry for myself now. The big deal about today's walk is that I did 25km just the day before yesterday, and today I've done more than that, ie. 30km. I am learning to adjust the dosage according to the distance walked. Only time will tell (the next 12 hours) if I've adjusted correctly for today, but so far it feels good. The temperature was a little up today at around 28C. I need to have some high temperatures to practise walking in the higher temperatures. My experience from our desert treks in Saudi Arabia ia that the heat is quite acceptable up to about 38 or 40C (100 to 104F), but then after that it changes dramatically. The heat in the desert is exceedingly dry, and if you aren't used to it it can do some devastating things. The easiest one to imagine is severe dehydration from not drinking enough. When it is 45 to 50C, it is like walking in an oven with the sun pounding down relentlessly. I've gotta remind myself of the heat and adjust again. I think the pack was at about 13kg, but I'm going to have to get more accurate soon. Training - 5 hours 55 minutes - 30km Medication - increased normal dosage by 4 units in the morning |
| Entry for December 28, 2008 |
| I know, I know, it's New Years Day so why did I go for a walk? Well the main reason was in order to test the new water carrying arrangement. The weather was cool with a touch of occassional light rain. There was also occassional sunshine, so I had it all. The pack was the same as last walk at about 13kg. And the distance was 20km. All went well and the sugar was good. Let me expand on that a little. Let's not forget what I am walking with. The fact that I have been able to figure out how to walk long distances while carrying up to 15kg on my back and not have a problem with low sugar during the walk or for the 24 hours after is a bit of a hurdle I have overcome. For the past 8 months it has started to become expected that the sugar is almost a non-issue, but that covers up the reality that this is really quite an achievement. Every time I step outside the door for a training walk, 8 months of planning and a lot of micro management comes in to play. The doctors still find it a little surprising that I am able to do this at all. So when I say "the sugar was good", that means that I am having some success in all of the investigation, planning, management and learning that goes in to making it so. The new water carrying arrangement replaces the small water bottle that I needed to refill on a regular basis. I still don't have it fully working, but it is a combination of catches and tubing that allows me to have two 1.5 litre bottles of water available for drinking as I walk along. This will be important during the event. Training - 3 hours 55 minutes - 20km Medication - increased normal dosage by 3 units in the morning |
| Entry for January 01, 2009 |
| The weather today was utterly perfect. No place anywhere else in the world could have had better weather than us today. The main focus for today's walk was to do a rigorous test of the new water carrying arrangement I have made. It worked excellently and is a great success, once I fix up one small part of it. I'm using some tape, sort of like velcro, to secure one part of it, and it started to wear away just in one 20km walk. So that will need to be replaced with something more durable. The learning today is entirely to do with diabetes and sugar. I must, must, must start anticipating the lunchtime low sugar period instead of waiting for it to strike. Today I was 40 minutes from the finish and the time was just coming up to lunch time. Over a period of no more than 3 minutes I started to feel a little wobbly on my feet and was no longer able to maintain a straight line while walking. I wondered if I was tired or being affected by the sun, but then I looked at my watch. That's when I realised what was happening. I quickly ate an extra fruit strip (16 grams of carbohydrate) and came good within about 20 minutes. I was able to keep walking through this, as the whole episode wasn't that dramatic. But it is something that I need to avoid in the Sahara. Training - 3 hours 55 minutes - 20km Medication - increased normal dosage by 3 units in the morning |
| Entry for January 04, 2009 |
| Well the Melbourne weather let me down again. It was supposed to be warm and sunny, and I even left later so as to get the warmer weather, but it was overcast for the whole walk. And the final frustration was that not more than 5 minutes after I got home, the sun came out and shone brightly for the rest of the day. I was limited to 20km today because that's all the fruit strips I had left. I'm getting a lot more tomorrow, but today I just had 20km worth. Everything worked well for the sugar, without any problems at all. I'm seriously considering increasing the number I eat per hour, with a corresponding increase in my insulin dosage. I still need to increase my weight and a little more energy would also be a good thing. I'm thinking about it. Maybe I'll wait until I see the dietician again and see what she thinks. I'm currently eating a lot of carbohydrate per hour, so increasing it further would be a challenge. I can tell that the training is working. Three months ago I would have been prostrate on the couch after a 20km walk, but today I maintained an active afternoon doing stuff. So all this training is working. Phew. I'm considering doing a long walk on Tuesday, because the weather is meant to be hot. Let's see. I'm thinking of 40+km with a lighter pack. Let's see what happens. Training - 3 hours 55 minutes - 20km Medication - increased normal dosage by 3 units in the morning |
| Entry for January 11, 2009 |
| I'm sorry that this entry is delayed by a day, but I was utterly drained after the big walk yesterday in the 37C heat. Happily it had nothing to do with the sugar, just a combination of the pounding sun and me no longer being a young man. Six years ago it wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest. There were no dramas on the long walk, none at all. Of course with every kilometer I walk I learn something new about the gear or the food or the mental approach to doing this extreme event. I'm learning that 60% of it or more will be a mental challenge. Take this morning for example. I was lying in bed feeling sorry for myself and almost decided not to do another walk today. After all I am on holidays. But I convinced myself to get up and get ready. My feet were hurting, my back was hurting and I considered that I may just have been an idiot for setting out again today. However 2km down the road after starting and I felt great. The aches and pains had diminished and I was in the groove. If I had not got out of bed, I would have lost a great opportunity to do two training walks in a row. Another small learning from this morning is that most of the aches and pains and niggles will eventually go away if you just ignore them. Either that or the brain adjusts to accept them. This will be an important learning in the desert. Training - 8 hours 10 minutes - 41km / 3 hours - 15km Medication - increased normal dosage by 5 units in the morning for 41km and 3 units for 15km |
| Entry for January 14, 2009 |
| Today was a good walk. The weather was ordinary being overcast, threatening rain, windy and only 20C. So, because I didn't have the heat to challenge me, I increased the weight to 15 or 16kg. The pack is working brilliantly now and the water process is brilliant. There's still room for improvement, but it is all working well. I bought an Australian flag yesterday, as I'll be proudly carrying it across the Sahara. I found how to attach it to my pack so keep an eye open for it next year as I come over the top of a sand dune. The sugar is perfectly fine. There's nothing more I can say because the increased dosage and the fruit strips are working perfectly. I've stopped losing weight, have plenty of energy (more would be nice) and don't have any problems with hypos or highs afterwards. Then again I do have many years of experience to draw on, so maybe I'm glossing over some of the difficulties without even realising it. My wife thinks I do that quite often. Training - 3 hours 50 minutes - 20km Medication - increased normal dosage by 3 units in the morning |
| Entry for January 16, 2009 |
| OK, I've had a rush of blood to the head. I'm ready to take the training to the next level. So I'm planning on doing my first 50km walk 2 weeks from Sunday. I'll make it a light to medium pack and allow 11 hours to complete. The distance is 52km to my mum's place. I'll know when I'm physically ready for the event when I can walk to my mum's house 5 days in a row. I plan on doing that 2 or 3 months before the event, which will be January or February 2010. But for now, I'll do the first one in 2 weeks. The weird thing is that my training has been so successful so far that the medication, the food, the packing of the pack and the timing are not an issue. I know exactly how much of everything and when to do everything. Aint that great!?! |
| Entry for January 16, 2009 (again) |
| Today, which was the first of the 3 walks I'm doing to prepare myself for the biggy in 2 weeks (50+km), was excellent. However it was also very hard. My shoulders hurt, I've a couple of rashes, my feet are killing me but hey, I've now done 2 marathons in less than a week, so I think I deserve to hurt. :-) My sugar was ever-so-slightly high this morning, so I had an extra unit more than I would normally. There were no bad affects. I managed to catch the lunch-time low before it struck today. I could feel it building up at 11:30, so I had an extra 2 strips in that hour, making a total of 5 for the hour, and everything was fine. It's weird actually; after years of fretting about my food and the insulin, what I've learned in the past 9 months makes it all so straight forward. The food is NEVER an issue while I'm walking. Maybe this is because it is a totally controlled environment, sort of like in a hospital. The big thing today was the new fly net that I have bought myself. The summer flies have been driving me nuts and this little net (looks a lot dorky according to my daughters) does the trick. Woo Hoo!! Training - 8 hours 5 minutes - 41km Medication - increased normal dosage by 6 units in the morning |
| Entry for January 18, 2009 |
| Sun Valley True Fruit (fruit strips) |
| I've received the logo from the company that I'm getting the fruit strips from, so now I can tell you more about them. These strips are very nice to eat, but more importantly they have a set amount of carbohydrate in each one. So they are great for topping up if you are feeling low OR for having if you are doing some extreme activity. If you have a need for some easy to eat, ready to hand carbohydrate, I encourage you to check them out as I can vouch that it they are a good source of carbohydrate. http://www.snackfood.com.au/ |
| Entry for January 20, 2009 |
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| The WildEndurance walk. The expected team with my work has evaporated sadly. So I am in the process of finding a team, as it is a team event and I can't do the walk without a team. To remind you about this event, it is a 100km walk in less than 48 hours in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. I am treating it as a training walk. My plan is to complete the course in between 28 and 30 hours. |
| Entry for January 21, 2009 |
| I've had a number of people contact me through Facebook. It is pleasantly reassuring to find out that people are reading my jottins and that some people find them helpful. It is great to be able to show other diabetics and the parents of diabetic children that it is possible for them to still live a full life. |
| Entry for January 22, 2009 |
| Entry for January 25, 2009 |
| Today was possibly the best walk I've had yet, well the first half anyway. The weather does not get better anywhere in the world. It was still, sunny and 25C to 30C. Everything was clicking into place at the start. All of my work on the pack, the water delivery, the food, the boots, the rest of the gear all came together today to just work. It was heaven. I increased the short acting insulin by one unit this morning, as I still need to put some weight back on. When it started getting close to lunch time, I pre-empted any possible low and started having 4 strips per hour instead of 3 from 11 o'clock until 1 o'clock. Of course this meant only 2 extra strips BUT, there was no sign of a hypo and I managed to eat more carbohydrate to help with the weight. The second half of the walk became a bit more hard work. The problem today was my feet and hips. My feet I expected, and I'm starting to wonder if my boots need changing. I'm meeting with a sports podiatrist on Thursday, so that will be one of the things we talk about. I hope I don't need new boots, but maybe my feet will feel better if I do. So I'm ready for that change if it happens. But my hips are another story. This is the first time my hips have given any problems at all, and the only thing I can think to cause it is that everything else is working well now, so extra pressure has been suddenly put onto my hips. Well that's my guess anyway. It will be interesting to see how they hold up tomorrow. Tomorrow?? Yep, I'm doing 43km tomorrow with a lighter pack. This is the first time I've done a shorter walk (31km) followed by a longer walk(43km). Usually it's the other way around. So, let's see if I feel like dog meat tomorrow afternoon. Training - 6 hours 20 minutes - 32km Medication - increased normal dosage by 6 units in the morning |
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| Entry for January 26, 2009 |
| This walk was very important, as it was the first time I had done walks on 2 consecutive days AND did the long one on the second day. Honestly, that was important. I felt excellent for the first half of the walk. The last 8 months of training is paying off because my recovery is now much better than it was. The weather was perfect and warming up, nothing hurt and my flag was working brilliantly. Interestingly, I increased the short acting by an extra 1 unit this morning and felt the effect at 10 o'clock. From 10 until 12 I increased the strips by one per hour, which kept the sugar up excellently. By the second half of the walk I was starting to feel it, primarily in my left foot (seeing the podiatrist this week) and a twinge in my left hip. The foot was the normal uncomfortable pain that has been happening regularly and I hope the podiatrist can do something about it. And as always, the final 5 kilometers was difficult, the final 3km hard, the final 2km traumatic and the final 1km agony. The conclusion from this is that that part of the walk is all in my head. Note to self - don't be a woose and just keep going. The learning from the walk, and which I figured out today (1 day later) is that when doing a long walk, I need to increase the dosage of the long by at least 1 unit and maybe more. Why? Because my sugar today went high. This is happening too often since I've been doing the longer walks and I need to bring it under control. So I'll increase the long by 1 unit and maintain the same food. If it is still high I'll increase it by another one until the sugar no longer goes high the next day. For any non-diabetics reading this, high sugar is best avoided for a number of serious reasons. For me the most important is that I am losing weight when it is high. It's simple as that and I need all the weight I can get. Training - 8 hours 20 minutes - 43km Medication - increased normal dosage by 7 units in the morning |
| Entry for January 29, 2009 |
| There was a big step forward today (do you get the industry joke?) I went to the sports foot doctor and he was excellent. I intended telling him about the various aches and pains I'been getting in my left foot, and hoping that he would be able to explain where they were coming from and offer some suggestions. But instead he was able to tie them all back to an injury I suffered when I was 8 years old, in which I damaged my foot. He figured out that I had severed one of the vital tendons that control the big toe, and that has led to all of the other problems. Voila. He then went on to show me how to bind my foot to, in essence, create an artifical tendon with the strapping. Wow, what a difference. He also confirmed that my boots are as good as any and probably the sort he would have chosen if he was doing the marathon. He even mentioned something that I have recently read in blogs involving past competitors, and that is the ongoing debate about whether soft soled or hard soled boots are better. Mine are hard soled and the foot doctor says that is the common sense choice. Woo Hoo! Life is good. |
| Entry for January 31, 2009 |
| Well, this was a big one, in more ways than one. Firstly, it's the first training walk I have done that I haven't completed. But let me explain more. The planned distance was 52km, the weather was warm at 39C (102F) and this was my first walk with the newly strapped foot. I set out at 6am, planning on taking 11 hours to get there. At 5kph, it would have taken 10.5 hours, so that was allowing some rest time. Due to the heat, I was carrying 9lt of water, which weighs 9kg, plus a litre of re-hydration solution, giving 10lt all together. With the other odds and sods in the pack, this would have brought the total weight to close to 15kg, which is the maximum weight allowed in the event. The first half went fine. Everything was working well, including the strapped foot. The months of training are paying off in that there's many things now that are just automatic, leaving me to focus on the things that need attention. That's how it should be. I started to weary after about 30km and had to sit down to rest. I wasn't happy about this, but it was the sensible thing to do. When I got going again, I walked on at a slightly slower pace, because my feet now were really starting to hurt. It's a strange feeling which I can only imagine is due to the constant pressure. It's not really pain, but more like uncomfortable pressure. Then I got to a point where the path didn't look right, so I stopped to check the map. I made my decision and took the right hand fork, only to discover a kilometer later after it had dumped me back in suburbia that it was the wrong choice. I was not happy. I contemplated the map again and discovered that I had not get crossed over a particular main road, so the fault was all mine. I found an alternative route that brought me back to the path without much extra distance. But now the heat was really telling. I had to sit and rest numerous times, all the while bemoaning my aching body. When I started again I felt like I was going to throw up. For a diabetic, this is NOT a good situation. When you throw up, you obviously lose the contents of your stomach, so your food has gone and so has your understanding of how much you have eaten. The idea of eating another fruit strip made me feel queasy, so I was in a little trouble. I got out one of my emergency fruit juice boxes to bump the sugar up, but of course I won't have these in the desert. I wasn't feeling happy. Then the phone rang and it was Donna asking how I was. I gave in and asked her to come and pick me up. The arranged meeting point was 45km into the walk, so it was still the biggest walk I have done since starting training, even though I didn't finish the scheduled walk. To make myself feel better, these are the facts. 45km is longer than all of the individual sections in the event apart from the 80km day/night section. Plus my recovery from yesterday's walk has been very, very good, so the training is working. I could have got out of bed this morning and gone for a 15 or 20km walk. I had a full-weight pack and the weather was warm. So all in all, I did OK. But more training required. Training - 10 hours - 45km Medication - increased normal dosage by 9 units in the morning |
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| Bridget McNulty - Type 1 and travelling the world |