Moab

Ran the Canyonlands Half Marathon last Saturday. Whenever I talk about Moab, I really feel as though I'm missing out if I don't share pics, but I inadvertently left the camera behind last weekend. Ran the race with my sister, her boyfriend and his father. They are all multiple year vets of the race, but it was my first. It turned out to be a hot one... good preview for Tempe in November. It reached close to 80 on Saturday as it apparently did in Denver all weekend too. The race organizers bus the 5,000 runners 11 miles up the narrow canyon along the Colorado River and we run down along the river and a couple of miles through the town of Moab. Don't think Moab is officially one of the seven wonders of the world, but it could well be... beautiful red rock formations planted in the middle of the high desert with the snow-capped LaSal Mountains just to the east. Three national parks surround the area. If you've never been there, you owe it to yourself to get there at least once in life.

I had planned to run the miles close to a 9-minute pace and I held that up fairly well. I finished in 2:00:58, which I think was a 9:17 pace. I felt really good through the first 10 miles and struggled a bit with some quad and calf cramps as well as dehydration through the last 3 miles. That being said, I recovered pretty quickly and did get out to ride 50 miles on Sunday around Grand Junction, Colorado. That helped loosen me up a bit too. BG's held up pretty well. I dialed my basal rates back to 60% of normal 1.5 hours prior to the start and set that temp basal for 3.5 hours (which would take me through the end of the race). I downed about 70g of carbs about 20-30 minutes before the start of the race when my BG came in at 114. Aid stations were spaced out about every two miles and I downed a 3/4 cup of water at each station (perhaps not enough). I tested my BG between miles 6 and 7 and it came in at 81. That's lower than I wanted, so I downed a couple of Gu packs immediately (50g total carbs). In opening one of those Gu packs, I naturally got it all over my hands which made their way into my glucose meter. For those not familiar with what that means, I basically killed the accuracy for the rest of the race of my glucose monitor until I could get all the hardened Gu washed off my monitor. What did I learn from Saturday? Well, I'm not yet trained to run a marathon, but it would have been an uphill climb to finish the second half if I had to. I think I need to drink more water. My electrolytes were pretty depleted as well. When I watched the IM Arizona last November, I noticed a lot of the runners were downing salt tablets. I'm going to look into that further... may help ward off the dehydration or even stave off the loss of electrolytes.

What's on tap this weekend? Another 700 mile round trip to Moab. Pete and John are racing a 24-hour race out there this weekend and while I won't be doing anything like that, I look forward to getting out for maybe 10 miles and pacing the two of them. Weather should be much cooler with highs in the low 60's. Another opportunity to get out on the bike in desert conditions too. Will be great to get out there with two of the people who are largely responsible for making this whole Triabetes thing possible.

St. Patty's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! For an Irish Catholic kid, this always ranks near the top of my favorite annual holidays. Found out over the weekend that my high school, the Fighting Irish of Cathedral, now get this as a school holiday... my, how times have changed. Enjoy the day and keep it a safe one.

After a full weekend of training, I've been fighting off a bug for the past 12 or so hours. A bit of a scratchy throat had me cancel last night's run to make sure I didn't make matters worse, but feeling better this morning. Got in a good 10-mile run on Saturday and felt really good afterwards, which was very encouraging. That gave me the confidence that the shoes have corrected my pronation issue. No flare-up's of knee, so I'm crossing my fingers that all that continues. I'll know more this weekend after I complete the Canyonlands Half Marathon in Moab. Weather looks to be great for the coming weekend out in the high desert (low to mid-70's) and very much looking forward to see how I hold up.

I swam Saturday and Sunday and the swim stroke is beginning to take shape. I'm getting in better distances without the effort of a month ago. Contacted a local coach who teaches the total immersion technique and will be following up on that in the coming days. On Sunday, I got in a two hour ride and was pleased to keep a pace of around 18 miles/hour for the two hour ride. I hear that once we get the new Kestrel's, the aerobars may add a couple of miles an hour to the ride. If that's the case, I'd like to shoot to break six hours on the cycling leg in November. Don't know if that is overly optimistic or not, but time will tell. I'd love to finish the IMAZ in under 12 hours, but that may be biting off more than I can chew... again, training will help determine whether that'll work.

Because of a noticeable difference in insulin sensitivities as training ramps up, I reduced basal rates on Sunday night (from 0.8 units per hour to 0.7 units per hour to start with). Over the first two days, it seems to be working better. I'll have to tweak it a little more, but my BG's don't seem to be dropping constantly like they had before. I had gotten so used to just popping carbs constantly without bolusing that I'm needing to break that habit once again... a good thing. It'll all come together.

For those heading out this afternoon/evening, enjoy a Guinness for me this evening.

Off-Day

Today's my off-day, one that's probably sorely needed. I've gotten in about 10 miles of running since getting back to Denver and have been swimming close to 500m a day (swimming's coming along since DTC). I'll be getting in about 10 miles on Saturday as next weekend is the Canyonlands Half Marathon in Moab. Since getting back from Tucson, I've not really unpacked yet. UPS'd several boxes back including my bike, so time to get that reassembled, get organized and get a chance to walk a clean line thru my home. Before I get to that, a quick trip to REI is needed... dividend checks arrived last week! I didn't realize how much I spent there last year, but they made out on me - doing my best to help the economy recover :). I will say that the TriSports store in Tucson may have become my new favorite retail buying experience over REI (I've never shopped in my life, when I go out to a retail store, I go in to buy - don't know how some people go out and shop :)) My dividend check is healthy enough to purchase a cycling trainer, which is probably a bit late to be buying that with daylight savings now on us, but I figure I'll need it in the fall in Oct and Nov as we lose daylight hours. It'll be nice to hop on that for a few hours later in the evenings. Anyone out there have a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine trainer? If so, let me know your thoughts.

Something I've noticed since last week is my insulin sensitivity is changing rapidly. Last week, involved multiple daily training sessions - which is not something I have the opportunity to do during working hours. We had some great sessions with Dr. Matt on this topic and it's time for some basal adjustments. I've been waking up in the mornings with BG's in the 50's, something that always gives me a little pause due to some past issues I've had with severe hypoglycemic reactions in the mornings. As I continue to increase my base training, I imagine I'll need to continue to adjust the basal rates on my Medtronic pump. I've been addressing the past two weeks by eating more, but it's still not always working. I've never eaten this much in my life. Beginning to work on a plan for how to deal with insulin during my swimming competitions (training hasn't involved being disconnected from my pump for more than a half hour). The Medtronic pump is not water-proof, but I've found out the Animus pump is. I hate to disconnect my pump for maybe 2 hours or more as we wait for the start, then swim before the first transition station. I can probably throw the Medtronic in an AquaPak and tuck it under my wetsuit for Wildflower, Boulder and Ironman Arizona, but I won't have the wetsuit for the warm waters of Hawaii in May and there lies my issue. May explore what it would take to get an Animus pump - please help us out Medtronic! Going to talk to Dr. Matt tomorrow on whether experimenting with a Lantus injection the night before is doable - just don't like that option without considerable testing and I kind of hate to start trying that out... part of the whole reason I converted to a pump a few years ago. If that's needed, I'll figure it out, though.

I'm super-psyched to have the opportunity to be able to train with the coaching services of Colorado Premier Training (http://www.coloradopremiertraining.com/) leading up to Ironman. Huge thanks to Dr. Matt and Rick Crawford for getting this set up for the Triabetes team. It's even better for me since some of their facilities and coaches are right on the Front Range here in Colorado. Look forward to getting rolling with that and setting up a formal training plan.

All for now, off to REI.

Tucson

Ever feel like an idiot when you miss something obvious? For the past few nights, I've been trying to figure out what my password is to get signed back into my own blog (oh, the numerous passwords to access anything anymore... ridiculous). Obviously, I overcame the issues and got in.

My first week of March was spent in Tucson and it was one of the great weeks of my life. For those of you who are diabetic, I encourage you to make a commitment to get to a Diabetes Training Camp (www.diabetestrainingcamp.com). For those of you who are not, well, you've got all the benefits of living without this disease :) I had the good fortune to make it to my second camp, this time around with my Triabetes teammates. Words don't do the experience down there justice, you've got to be there to grasp it. I could go on and on about everything that went on down there, but I'll try and summarize a few of the highlights. Sometimes I've got to ask myself if I ever believed I'd have the opportunity to get coaching from a few former members of the Olympic team, a former coach of Lance Armstrong (see his article at http://www.velonews.com/article/89008/training-with-type-1-diabetic-athletes-has-taught-coach) and so many other influential mentors. They were all so down to earth and an absolute joy to spend time with. DTC is the dream of Dr. Matt Corcoran - a doctor, a friend, someone we need more of our population to be like. As a friend of mine once indicated, he's the first doctor who didn't speak at him - Dr. Matt spoke with him. I believe medicine needs to be a collaborative effort between the patient and the doctor and nobody embodies that better than Dr. Matt. He's a pioneer in actively charting a new course in the treatment of diabetes by promoting a healthy lifestyle upfront to ward off the complications. The Triabetes team is privileged to have him as our team physician.

Days typically started at 6AM and ended close to 10PM, so between training sessions, lectures on nutrition, sports psychology and diabetes management, one-on-one consults with coaches and staff of DTC on anything and everything, it was a ton packed into a short week. One of my favorite sessions was the cycle skills session where we worked our way from picking up water bottles off the road to pushing/pulling a teammate to effectively a roller derby on our bikes. As coach Nicole Freedman said, we're going to have to get used to being bumped and elbowed in these races. With the competitive instinct of a group of triathletes, it got pretty intense. Somehow, I always had Reid, the former rugby player, coming at me! I won a few and lost a few :)

We also had the opportunity to get over to the U of A for VO2 testing. This is where they hook you up to heart monitors and a breathing tube while cycling to measure max heart rate and your max oxygen uptake. The results of my test confirmed for me that I've got little athletic DNA :)

We're fortunate to have a great team of sponsors, many of whom we had the opportunity to meet with throughout the course of the week. The great team at TriSports, who put on the TriFest Expo over the weekend was awesome, the team from Fluid, Thorlo, Spibelt, Kestrel, and Polar that we met with were first class and terrific ambassadors for the message our team is aiming to spread.

Last but certainly not least, a special shout out to Denise, Kevin and Grant who labored up the 6,000 feet and the wind and the cold to the summit of Mt. Lemon last Friday. You're all rock stars!