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| Entry for February 05, 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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| I had a visit with the sports nutritionalist last Tuesday. We talked primarily about whether I should raise the dosage (and the food), the use of rehydration powders for electrolytes and the fact that I nearly threw up last weekend on the way to my mum's. On the subject of raising the dosage, she asked me if my sugar has been balanced. It has, so the answer was yes. Then she asked why I wanted to raise the dosage. I told her that it would be good to increase my weight, so raise the dosage and eat more food accordingly. She advised that my current weight is good, even if a touch on the light side, so it wouldn't be a good idea to eaise it before the event. Therefor, no extra dosage. The key word is BALANCE, and that's what I have. Next we spoke about the rehydration. This is a general word covering the replacement of salts and electrolytes that are lost through the exercise and sweating. I learned that it is absolutely vital to replace what is lost on an extended event like this one. So the powder that I used last weekend was why I recovered so well, and it is now a part of my routine. I won't bother mentioning the name until they get on board and support my fund raising for JDRF. Raising funds for JDRF (check the link on the left <<<< is an important part of my effort. Lastly we spoke about the fact that I nearly threw up. We concluded that it was probably a combination of the heat and the fact that I am eating so much of the same thing. So we decided that it is vital that I introduce some variation into the mix. We talked about a number of possibilities, but they were all rejected due to weight or robustness. The final choice was ..... wait for it you diabetics out there ..... sports gels. If you are like me 2 months ago and have never heard of them before, they are almost pure glucose gel (26 grams) in an easy to manager squeeze tube. PLEASE DON'T TRY THIS WITHOUT SPEAKING WITH YOUR DOCTOR. This is extreme stuff for a diabetic, but that's what I'm going to be eating from now on during the training, in conjunction with the fruit strips. I'll start on Saturday by introducing one each 2 hours and allowing 30 minutes for that item of food. I allow 20 minutes for each fruit strip, which are 16 grams of carbohydrate each. Saturday? I'm going to do 25km with a heavy pack in 43C temperature. That's over 110F !! |
| Entry for February 07, 2009 |
| The training today again didn't go as planned. But this time wasn't my fault. I'm oncall and got paged after I'd covered 17km, so I had to end the walk there. Today's premature end, combined with last week's unfinished walk, have played havoc with my confidence. It's going to take me a couple of weeks of training to get my head back in the right place. Even though it was a shorter walk, I still learned some vital things today. With the temperature at 45C, which is about 112F, it was the dominating feature of the walk. I also introduced some variation to the food by including 2 of the special sports gels. Now, I must put in a disclaimer here. ANY TYPE 1 DIABETIC READING THIS, PLEASE TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE TRYING ANY OF THE THINGS I AM DOING. The sports gels are designed for serious sports people and endurance athletes, to replace lost energy quickly and easily. But here's the thing; they weigh 35 grams and contain 26 grams of glucose. I'm not a serious sports person or endurance athlete, but these gels offer the variation that I'll need to my food in the desert. They are small, light weight, packed with carbohydrate and easy to eat. They are also expensive, can be messy and could become sickly if I have too many of them. But they appear to work. They provide 30 minutes of food, so I had one each 2 hours, to break up the flow of fruit strips. I again felt that I was going to throw up, so I'm putting that down to the heat. Even though I've experienced walking in the extreme heat before, it was almost 10 years ago and I need to get used to it again. I took along the rehydration stuff and it certainly helps. Now I need to work out how I'm going to pack and transport it over to Morocco. I also need to work out the details for mixing it while there. It shouldn't be too difficult. Finally rest stops. I had 3 rest stops today and I believe they enabled me to keep going when the temperature got to 45C. I can't stress enough how bad I felt, but I was able to keep going, even if at a slower pace. The important thing is just to keep going. The repitition, repitition, repitition is proving very beneficial. Now I need to adjust my head and realise that I'm going to be doing this over and over and over for the next 14 months, but I'm improving all the time. Training - 4 hours - 17km - 45C - full pack Medication - increased normal dosage by 4 units in the morning |
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| The main purpose of today's walk was to rebuild a bit of confidence. The last 2 walks have not ended successfully, so I needed to at least finish one. I chose to do exactly the same walk as last week, with the only difference being the temperature. Last week it was 45C+ and today it was 25C. The difference in how the walk went was astounding. It was great experience to see what effects the temperature can have. Half way along the route is a dramatic hill that rises very steeply for about 400m. Last week I was gasping for my breath at the top and had to sit and rest for 10 minutes. Today I got to the top and felt quite comfortable. I was breathing heavily, but not gasping desperately like last week. And rather than having a 10 minute rest, I simply kept walking. Brilliant. Apart from the temperature, the main learning today was about the food. From what I have learned recently I have introduced the sports gels into the mix. Today I only had 2 and spaced them evenly through the time. The carbohydrate content means that they give me a full 30 minutes of food, so I get a little rest from the seemingly constant focus on eating. I also took a small bag of almonds. The nutritionist advised that eating almonds during the walking was not a good idea, as the body would struggle to digest them. So I just had, and I know this sounds a touch pathetic, one between each fruit strip. The difference in texture and flavor of the almonds helped to break the constant taste of the strips. I think the almonds will be a good idea. Time will tell. It was a good walk today. I hope to try for my mum's place (52km) again in 2 weeks from now. Training - 5 hours - 25km - 25C - (almost) full pack Medication - increased normal dosage by 4 units in the morning |
| Entry for February 14, 2009 |
| This coming weekend I'm going to do a 35km on Saturday and 15km on Sunday. And just to show the frustration associated with living with type 1, my sugar has been slightly high so far this week. My routine has been precisely the same as usual, and yet this week my sugar has decided to be a little high. What does this mean? Apart from a slight loss in weight, imagine being juuuust a little thirsty and no matter how much you drink, you remain thirsty. :-( I've raised my dosage slightly to try to bring it down gently. |
| Entry for February 18, 2009 |
| Yahoo!! Today was a good walk ... finally. I did 35km with a reasonably heavy pack and everything went well. The new food regime is going well, with a mixture of the fruit strips and the sports gels and the rehydration solution. I don't want to give details here as I don't want to encourage any type 1's out there to try what I'm doing without first talking to their doctor. Frankly, what I'm doing can be a little dangerous and is not recommended without close supervision. If you send me a note (link at top left of page), I'll tell you more details about my new food regime. But I stress it is not to be taken lightly. It has taken me over 9 months of training to learn what I need to know. The big learning from today is really just clarification; you might even say "Well, duh!". The learning is that I need to take a regular, brief rest and a good way of deciding when is when I have emptied one of the bottles of water. It's perfect actually because I'll drink the water more quickly when the weather is hot, meaning I have more rest stops the hotter the weather gets. I know I've been tossing this whole thing around ever since the heat affected me on the way to my mum's a few weeks ago, but today it finally clarified in my head and fell into place. The more of these aspects that I can "automate", the more time I'll allow myself during the event to consider the things that require my time. I know, I know - MICRO MANAGEMENT. But I now believe that's the only way I'm going to succeed in Morocco. Tomorrow is 15km in warmer weather. Training - 6 hours 55 mins - 35km - 24C - (almost) full pack Medication - increased normal dosage by 6 units in the morning |
| Entry for February 21, 2009 |
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| Entry for February 22, 2009 |
| Today was a great walk, even though it was only 15km. Why was it so good? Because it was a "follow-up", meaning the day after a longer walk, and it went swimmingly. I honestly believe I felt better at the end of the walk than I did at the beginning. I also honestly believe that I could have done another 20km on top of the 15km. The training I have been doing is coming together now. I know what to eat, how much and when to take me almost any distance I choose. I have a simple formula for working out how much medication to have, the only criteria being that I must know how far I am going to walk before having the medication. I have worked out that I must have regular rest stops or suffer the consequences. I have learned how to strap my foot to overcome the detrimental affect of the injury I suffered 44 years ago. I have also gone a long way to fine-tuning the gear I need to take, but there is a lot more work to do on this subject before I'm ready to go. But for the non-diabetics reading this, I must remind you that even by walking the distances I have walked this weekend, I am doing something that many in the medical community beieve is just not feasible or sensible. Even one of my daughters is horrified by what I am doing, because there is a lot of risk and danger. Not being the hero, all I can say is that anything is possible, so long as you know what the realistic limits are and managing the tools and abilities that you have to work with. That is why I gave myself 2 years to train for this, and the training is paying off. A marathon next weekend and to my mum's place the week after. Woo hoo !! Training - 3 hours - 15km - 25C - (almost) full pack Medication - increased normal dosage by 3 units in the morning |
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| Entry for February 26, 2009 |
| (sigh) Oh dear. I seem to have injured myself. How did I do it? No idea. What have I done? Stop crying, come on .... I will survive. Don't worry. I seem to have strained a muscle at the top of my thigh. I suppose the sports people would call it a groin injury. I'm seriously unhappy about it, but I'm hoping it will be OK. I'm going to carefully keep walking this week, hoping that the big one on Saturday will be OK. Only time will tell. Stay tuned. |
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| Entry for February 28, 2009 |
| I've successfully finished the 42km. Woo hoo!! This was an excellent walk for a number of reasons. Firstly, the injury didn't affect me at all, so we'll scratch that as a concern. Taking my recent learnings about the need for having regular sit-down rests, I estimated it would take me up to 9 hours. However, the final time was precisely what it should have been with an average walking pace of 5kph. This is the time I've been working at since the beginning, so I was very surprised that I got this time even though I stopped for 3 sit-down rests. I'm guessing that the time is because, by having the regular rests, I was able to maintain a slightly better pace overall. Was I bouncing from toe to toe at the end and ready to do it again? Sadly, no. I was sore, very sore. My feet felt like lumps of meat, my shoulders hurt, my back hurt. But I expect I would be OK to do a reasonable walk tomorrow, if I wanted to. I don't. :-) The food routines I've developed are working well. I've now thought of a way to know how much insulin to have each day during the event. With the daily distances varying from 16km to 80km, the insulin dosage will need to vary considerably. I've worked out a simple way to figure it out. Excellent walk. 52km to my mum's next weekend .... hopefully. Training - 8 hours 20 mins - 42km - 24C - medium pack Medication - increased normal dosage by 9 units in the morning |
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| Entry for March 07, 2009 |
| It doesn't take Einstein to figure out that this was the toughest walk yet. It was tough, real tough, but also successful and educational. I set out at 6 o'clock in the dark, and just took my time. I have the food routine down pat now, so that no longer requires a lot of thinking. But straight away I could feel a problem with my left foot which, with 2km completed and 50km to go, wasn't very good news. Later in the day I finally worked out that the pain in my foot, which I've been experiencing for a couple of weeks now, has been caused by my over-zealous strapping of my foot. I've been doing one part of it too tight and leaving a bony bit of my foot exposed to pressure. So that was learning #1 for the day. Learning #2 was much more important, and was one of those all-too-common " duh " moments. And it has to do with the medication. And please don't be too tough on me when I tell you what it is. I need to learn these things in my way so I truly understand them. It is to do with the morning dosage of insulin. As you know, I have a short acting insulin, which works through the morning, finishing its action at about lunch time. And there's the long acting insulin, which works through until about the evening meal. Well I've been figuring out the total increase in dosage, based on the distance I'm walking. Then (and this is the stupid bit) I've been allocating approximately one third of the increase to the short and two thirds to the long. Yesterday at 10:45, just as my sugar suddenly dipped and I had to have an extra fruit strip to catch it, my mistake finally occured to me. If I'm doing a walk that starts early in the morning and extends past lunch time, which most of them do now, I'll be using the same amount of energy between the start of the walk and lunch time, no matter how long the walk is. A 20km walk will use the same amount of energy until lunch time as a 50km walk. So I need to allocate a set increase in my short acting dosage, because I'll be burning the same amount of energy. Duh!! From now on, for any walk that takes me past lunch time, I'll be increasing the short acting by 4 units. That's it. All the rest of the increase will be allocated to the long acting, and I'll still work out the total increase in the same way. This morning my feel hurt, I have a slight headache and my shoulders hurt. But I could, if I felt so inclined, go out and hobble for 15km. So I'm happy. I plan on doing the big one again in 4 weeks. Oh - I'm convinced that the actual distance is longer than 52km, due to the subtle twists and turns. Training - 12 hours 0 mins - 54km - 22C - medium pack Medication - increased normal dosage by 11 units |
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| Entry for March 14, 2009 |
| Today was an interesting walk of 25km. Everything was perfectly fine with the diabetes, so that's not what today's learning is about. Today's learning is to do with the psychology of endurance events. Let's start at the beginning. I've been carrying a couple of niggles in my feet since the walk to my mum's. I have a pain in my left foot and the little toe on my right foot feels like it's been hit with a hammer. So when I got into my walk today, my feet started to complain. Consequently I could think of little else and was feeling a bit sorry for myself. Then it started to rain. Melbourne had a rare torrential down pour with me out on the road. The weather forecast had said that it would happen, so I was prepared with my trusty poncho. But being prepared and then suffering through it are two different things, so it took a lot of concentration to make sure everything was covered and working and kept as dry as possible. The rain came down in sheets for about an hour and the wind howled. And guess what ...... I forgot all about the pains in my feet. Before I knew it I was almost home and I hadn't bothered about my feet in the whole time. The lesson from this is that, unless I am causing more damage, shut the mind off to the discomfort and just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Training - 4 hours 50 mins - 25km - 21C - medium pack Medication - increased normal dosage by 6 units in the morning |
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| Entry for March 21, 2009 |
| Great walk today. The learnings are settling in now to become the modus operandi. This morning I used all of the learnings to determine the medication dosage, the amount of fruit strips and sports gels. I also used them to determine when I had rest breaks, how long the breaks were and what "housekeeping" I did during each. Even though this sounds all very anal, it is important that I get as much of this stuff sorted out to the point of not requiring any thinking at all. Conclusions from today are: - the rehydration solution is spectacularly successful - the almonds really help to reduce the feelings of wanting to throw up from too many fruit strips - the scheduled rests WORK - the main issue that I'm going to face in the Sahara is sore feet The sore feet thing is interesting. I've got good boots, good socks and have visited a sport's foot specialist twice. I now think that superman himself would end up with sore feet. By the end of 40km, the feet simply "hurt". It's like walking on slabs of bleeding meat. But when the walk is over, it only takes an hour or so for them to come good. So I don't see a problem from my feet from walking day after day. Sugar? Zero issues. I think I can tick that one off as a done deal. Training - 8 hours 50 mins - 43km - 34C - medium pack Medication - increased normal dosage by 9 units in the morning |
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| Entry for March 28, 2009 |
| All the training is coming together. Everything clicked together today and worked beautifully. I didn't have any issues at all, apart from sore feet. But even with the feet, I've started a different way of tying my boots (this is getting quite intense, don't you agree) that has alleviated the pressure I was getting that was causing me grief. However now I've got my very first blister, this one on the ball of my foot, which must be a result of the loosening of the boot around the bottom part of my foot. Now I expect I will be going through a period where I'll be getting an occassional blister while that part of my foot toughens up. There is no Punch without Judy. Sore feet - Again I was at the end of my string for the last 5 km, but experience has taught me that it's not really pain and to just keep going. I was still walking at almost the same pace, but every step was painful. Yes I had the small blister on my right foot, but that wasn't the pain. The pain just comes from everywhere and with every step. When I do the 100km in 5 weeks, we'll be having proper sit down rests. If we did the whole 100km at the same pace I was travelling yesterday, we'd have it complete withing 22 hours. But instead we'll be taking 26 to 28 hours, so that's more and longer rests. That should make it OK. I need to go out today to buy the little headlamp I'll need for both the 100km event and the MdS. There was one observation that I found interesting. Last time I did this same walk, I commented on the surprising disinterest shown by many of the people I passed on the track. Yesterday I had the Australian flag that I'll be carrying during the event and what a difference that made. Suddenly people were smiling and saying hello and even asking what I was training for. Not many people mind you, but many more than in the past. So the flag is proving to be a great marketing tool. Sugar? Zero issues. Training - 12 hours 0 minutes - 55km - 26C - medium pack Medication - increased normal dosage by 11 units in the morning |
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| Entry for March 30, 2009 |
| Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I got my first blister on Saturday and am suffering hugely. I've had it lanced and am now whining a lot. I hope it fixes itself up before next weekend. Looking on the bright side though, it does give me a chance to work out how to prevent, treat and manage a bad blister so I can do it if necessary during the event. |
| Feb / Mar 2009 |
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| Bridget McNulty - Type 1 and travelling the world |