The cyclone before the storm??

So it’s here, the epic adventure is a matter of hours away, it feels like it was only yesterday that we sat down in Dome on that wet and cold Sunday morning and decided we would embark on this adventure raising funds for the Type 1 Diabetes Family Centre…but this previous week has been cyclonic and very nearly resulted in potential disaster.

Trust in the plan?

With 21 days remaining before I set off on the Munda Biddi trail with Richard to tackle the end to end challenge of over 1000km of mountain biking through some of the South Wests awesome bush land, I am quietly freaking out – testing the D plan is simply not working for me!

Resilience

Its a buzz word we hear all over the place and one that apparently we should all have in order to live our lives successfully, but what does it actually mean in the real world?

There are many definitions on the interwebs but in a nut shell I think it can be interpreted as the ability to pick your self up and continue on after events in our lives knock us down, even when those events knock us down hard.

Not to blow my own horn but after a few conversations of late with friends and colleagues, I have realised that maybe this resilience factor currently exists within my personality and I want to share how it came about, from my point of view anyway…

The glory of not giving up

Giving up is the easiest thing to do, it requires minimal thought and zero effort and that is why it can seem like the easiest option when things get tough.

I felt like yesterdays off-road triathlon (X-Adventure) in Dunsborough was a good test of resilience for me, right from the start of the day I was put to the test and it didn’t seem to get any easier as the day progressed.

Tapering with Type 1

Tapering is a well known method used amongst athletes in the week leading up to big sporting events, it allows the body to rest in preparation for a big all out effort at what ever event it is.

If you have not picked it up yet from my ramblings, exercise is a key driver for helping to maintain good blood glucose control and changes to my exercise ‘routine’ can bring about difficulties with control, so now with less than a week to go before I race the off road triathlon, my tapering needs to begin.

Hard reset

Like a computer, the body goes through times where every system process starts to fail in turn creating odd looking system errors and like computers it usually due to one system process failure and then like domino’s they all fall over.

I have found doing a hard reset to the body usually seems to put everything back in place, well most of it anyway…

Flexibility

I have probably rambled on about this before but I think its pretty important for everyone but especially for those of us living with Type 1 diabetes. Having a flexible approach to managing life’s pathways and diabetes in particular is key to having some sort of “success”.

Win / Lose – Round 1 Wrap up

What at crazy couple of months it has been, time has just flown by and although I have been having some great success with the artificial pancreas (AP), there are still areas I can not get under control!

Getting off the food insanity wagon

In 1983 Rita Mae Brown quite wisely said in her book “Sudden Death” that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

I have now been doing fly in fly out work for 16 months in my current role and each time I fly up expecting that the food situation would change for the better and each time completing a swing disappointed in the nutrition available.

Getting naked

It’s been so long since I had a shower naked, that I can’t remember the feeling of being so free.