Type None…

So its over once again, the 2016 Ride to cure Diabetes looked so far away when I registered in July last year but it came and went in the blink of an eye, generally that happens when your having fun right? A few of us even came close to missing the plane from Perth to Adelaide, apparently gate 20 is not the same place as gate 20A and 20B, woops.

One major thing I learnt is travelling on a nutrient dense low carb diet takes some effort…chocolate, chips, burgers pies, pastry, ice cream, cake…the list goes on, its everywhere, the world is obsessed with adding carb loaded food to everything!

Anyway, enough ranting, once again the JDRF Ride to Cure Diabetes was a blast and the teams involved produced some fantastic fundraising results and I loved the words on the new event Jersey.

“part of a million dollar team”

2 days out from the ride I was stressing, my blood sugars were going haywire, for months I had them under great control and everyday I was deep in ketosis but those days leading up just ripped it apart for me, I felt dissapointed with myself for letting it happen and pissed off because I thought I would have to change my whole strategy for the ride.

With some help from my friends, I got my head into a better place and minimised the stress, dinner was served Friday night and of course being a cycling event it was a carb loading dinner, pasta, bread, potatoes, more pasta…eventually I talked the lovely staff into getting chef to prepare some raw squash, steamed brocolli and half an avacado to go with the buffet meat selection, I was happy. 🙂

(time is in WST)

The morning of the ride I woke feeling good, bgl was still high but it was manageable.
The warm sun that morning coming over the hills of the Barossa was awesome, such a nice view to get you into a good headspace for the many hours of cycling to follow.

This year I was able to convince my mate Daz to come along and being a JDRF Ride to cure diabetes virgin, he didn’t know what to expect apart from the nightmares I gave him from the stories of Menglers hill…what he experienced over the weekend was clearly a good thing, so humbled by the weekend he has committed to not only doing it again next year but also getting others involved as well, good on ya Daz and thanks for your efforts and company!

Daz and me prepd for the ride

I packed my supplies and life support into my jersey, short acting insulin, long acting insulin, spares of both, a hand ful of syringes, test strips, tester, ketone strips, alcohol wipes, emergency glucose, emergency glucagon and then the actual cycling spares, tubes, C02 cannisters, levers, cable ties (for bush mechanics)…oh and a bag of raw macadamias, man they were a life saver, having a mouth ful of macadamias mid ride is the best feeling ever!

My secret sauce to helping me stay alive for this ride was adding super starch to my water and consuming this throughout the ride, I have discovered that I need this extra fuel for long distance endurance cycling.

At just after 8am the gun fired and a mass of lycra clad adults with shaved legs and smelling of deep heat set off into the Barossa hills, literally the first 500m we turn into hills!!

Around and around, 1 meter at a time, before I knew it we were at the optional turning for Menglers Hill (mountain more like!), this would be the first of two climbs up this nasty hill today, one at 20km and one at 140km.

Second time at the top of Menglers

What about blood sugars? I hear you asking?? Well I didnt even have to worry, after the initial rise in blood sugar at the start from pre ride stress, it plateaued out and stayed around 5.5mmol from the start at 8am all the way untill 12pm by which time I was well and truly over the 100km mark.

2hrs post injecting levemir, I dropped to 3.6mmol, the peak of the long acting insulin hit me…
“I am going a bit low” I said to Daz,
“Do what you have too” he said,
“You go ahead a bit, I am going to do some sprints to raise my blood sugar”
I found out later that Daz was a bit worried about this concept as the traditional fix is glucose and doing more exercise to raise blood sugars is mind boggling but it worked enough to bring me back into range.

At the 130km mark, we arrived at an aid station, whilst waiting for Daz to change his flat tyre my friend Jackie rocked up, she was so overwhelmed with her passion for this ride and how her efforts on this mamoth ride were nothing in comparison to what her Type 1 Diabetic son has to live with everyday that her emotion re ignited my internal fire to not only finish but finish strong for the exact same reason, thankyou Jackie for your passion.

Before I knew it Menglers was over for a second time and we were at the 160km mark, but wait the finish is still 7km away, false advertising haha. Finishing strong with a sprint through the finish, I recorded 167.9km on the clock.

Happy with my efforts and my blood sugars over the ride, I headed in to the Jacobs creek visitors centre for some awesome food and refreshments.

What followed was even better, no post ride blood sugar crash at all, oh and an awesome pirate party.

Post ride trail