A bit of Cycling in Majorca, and Round One to Bob (Graham)

Blimey, time flies yet again, but much has been done since last time.

At the beginning of July I went to Majorca on holiday with wife and daughter and took the advantage to take in a bit of cycling at the same time, so the lead up to that was to get out on the road bike again.  That meant a few rides of 2-3 hours getting used to the handling again as it’s quite a lot different to either the recumbent or mountain bike which I’d been riding since about March.  One of those rides led to the now infamous bee incident which has caused much hilarity amongst family and colleagues.  Riding back up the road into the village after about 75km or riding, with no more that 2km to go, I spotted a haze across the road. On closer inspection, at 20mph, it turned into a swarm of bees.  Now if there’s one thing not to underestimate it’s the impact of a swarm of bees on human flesh at 20mph, and then you have the fact that after having ridden through the swarm, you now have about 2-dozen pissed off bees clinging to your shoes, socks, shorts and jersey, and the little buggers have stings.  I think I took about three stings on one leg before I managed to flap them all off of me, but not without veering over the road almost into the path of a van.  Who knows what he thought when he saw an apparently demented idiot of a cyclist coming towards him waving his arms about. 

My leg was swollen for about a week.

 

On holiday itself, I managed to get some decent rides in, up into the mountains and coasts of North Eastern Majorca.  Three longs rides of 70, 100 and 120km and a short 20km test ride after I’d rebuilt the bike.  All involving a decent amount of climbing and some fun descents, with a new max speed on the bike of about 60km/h (about 38mph).  One thing underestimated was the heat, having left the UK in the middle of a heat wave it was over 40C in Majorca when we arrived, luckily abating to the mid-30s later in the week, but still needing to be on the road by about 7:30 to avoid the heat of the day.

At Cap Formentor, I'd just come down that road 

Near Lluc, taking a break before the descent

All were done with a fairly consistent 30g/hr of carbs with good BG control.  Typical reduced bolus at breakfast to let the BG rise a bit, especially as the reduced basal would not have kicked in by then having only 90 mins from waking to riding.  Typical 30% TBR used as normal.  As an example, the 98km ride, perhaps the most challenging with a decent amount of climb in it went like this; -

Lluc tour reduced bolus at breakfast

Pre breakfast 5.7, 35g carbs and 0.2 U novorapid, pre ride 9.5
45min 5.6 20g early 20g at the test,
90min 5.9 20g,
135min 4.8 10+20g,
180min 5.7 20g,
end 5.0 20g,
+30min 7.3, I think I had grilled squid and chips for lunch that day.

miscellaneous holiday-ness

 

Since then it’s been a bit manic to be honest with two weeks off and then straight back into an offshore trip, and with another one planned today that’s my 5^th this year, and no diabetes issues at all so far.  In fact at my recent pump review, and recent offshore medical the main remark was how healthy I was, still that didn’t stop one client in Algeria declaring me PNG because I’m T1. TBH I’m not that fussed as it’s not the most glamorous of assignments in any case.  

The other thing going on at the moment is planning for a Bob Graham Round attempt in June 2016, that’s 42 peaks and 65 miles in the Cumbrian fells in 24 hours.  I have the maps and have the route fully plotted on paper, but of course that’s nowhere near sufficient for an undertaking like this.

 

So last weekend, after having been working up in Lancashire and Cumbria I headed to my parents in Kirkby Stephen on the Friday, ready to do an on-the-ground recce of sections 1 and 2 of the BGR.  The plan was to start at 8am at the Moot Hall Keswick on Saturday, do the first leg of Keswick-Skiddaw-Great Calva-Blencathra-Threlkeld in about 4 hours, meet my parents in the camper van at the pub car park, restock and set off for the second leg along the ridge to Helvellyn and then Dunmail before heading round to Honister to meet a mate from my village who was attempting a full round, and cheer him on a bit.

First things first though, a cannula change before setting off as the one I inserted on Thursday was catching a nerve, last thing I need is pain from that while running 25 miles.

Let’s just say that was a valuable learning experience.  Probably 3 important lessons there

1)      Nav is key.  This section is going to be difficult at night with little in the way of routing clues and quite a bit of open fell to cover at night with almost no running possible.  Overall three detours cost me an hour, so while my pace was good while moving, going anywhere off route has a punishing effect on the overall schedule even if moving well. Looking at my Garmin trace I spent far too long stationary as well, reading maps, but that’s the point of a recce.
2)      Nav point number 2 – I lost my compass somewhere between Great Calva and Mungrisdale Common, my own stupid fucking fault as I forgot to tie it to my pack
3)      Nutrition - I need to stop carrying too much food, BG control was good even at 5km tests rather than half hour, eating typically 25g/hr on the move but supplemented either end. I basically need to get over the fear of hypos and only carry what’s needed plus a bit of spare. It wont lighten the load much, but is less bulky. During the 5 hours I was out there I ate a few dried bananas, dates and 2 gels.
4)      I will definitely need a new head torch

Overall it took me 5 hours to complete what I was planning in 4.  The main cause being three detours between Great Calva and Threlkeld.  The first when I took the wrong route down off Great calva adding 4km to the route to the river crossing, then another km lost over Mungrisdale common and the final km added by a routing error into Threlkeld.  Should have been 12.25m/20km in total, but I ended up doing 17m/27km on that section, and that 7km cost me that extra hour. 

By that time I was so thoroughly pissed off with it that I called it a day and had lunch with my parents, went into Keswick to replace my compass and then off to meet my mate.  Turned out he had his own disaster as his support crew was 75 mins late to the second checkpoint and then he had a really tough third leg and stopped there.  We were waiting at the end of the fourth leg.

No bones about it, this will be a tough challenge.

River Ayr Way race coming up in Sept though, but no opportunity to recce that one.  42-ish miles, to be used as prep for the BGR.

TTFN peeps.

The Athletic Diabetic

 

Black and White, Yin and Yang, or Sometimes it all goes to Rat Shit

So far it’s been about 6 months since I started on the Insight pump and I’ve put in quite a bit of hard work in learning how to trim the pump to trim the pump for exercise. Learning the timing of run vs bolus, how much to reduced bolus for imminent exercise, use of temp basal in terms of scale and timing of reduction etc and it’s starting to pay dividends, to the point where I can now consistently manage a 10km run or hour bike session on little to no additional carbs, typically 10-20g and I’ve managed one session of an hour and 15 mins on the bike with no carbs at all.

With an eye on the Autumn ultra marathon in the plan, I’ve started to up the length of longer runs looking at getting back to ten miles/16km for now and then building from there.  I have to say though that it’s not always going according to plan.  Overall the legs, feet, musculature, achilles are all still feeling good and I think I’m being more proactive in massage and mobility exercises which will help.  But sometimes despite all that it just doesn’t quite work, and it’s those failure that are sometimes the most valuable learning points.

Take an example of a recent run after lunch.  The lunch was low carb so no bolus taken and the basal was being managed as expected.  Al that done, I set out on the planned 15-16km run intending to keep an easy, steady pace with a low-ish heart rate, but it never felt right.  Worst of all I felt sick, had to stop two or three times at the side of the road and nearly threw up, I really couldn’t stomach the carbs I needed to take onboard.  I did need to stop for the toilet twice – lucky for public toilets, the HR too high, pace too low, and for the first time in over 6 months developed a stitch.  Overall one of the worst runs of my life, and I contemplated finishing it early more than once, but eventually stuck it out to 14km.  Looking back at it there is nothing specific that I can lay my finger on in terms of activities before it, and the only thing I can come back to is eating too heavy a lunch before the run

Contrast with next few weeks where it all went swimmingly, and last week with 5 days consecutive, totalling 32 km run and >160km on the bike split over 5 sessions.  So what was different?  Not really sure, maybe just taking a bit more time to prepare, I probably had a bigger gap between eating and running by just an hour or so, and maybe that made all the difference. More experimenting needed I think

I’m also starting to plan for my holiday where I’ll be taking one of my upright bikes and trying to get at least two decent rides in, so that’s necessitating training in between.  I’m also putting a slightly lower gearing on it as it’s a bit hillier than the wild Fens, although probably not as windy if last week was anything to go by.

I've bought myself copies of the maps for the Bob Graham Round as well, starting to look at the route, with a view to an atttempt about this time, maybe mid June next year, but first I need to make a plan to train/familiarise.

Otherwise, garden is coming on a treat, veggies romping away both outside and in the greenhouse, and the bonsai are also starting to look very good again.  Here’s an example of a maple that I’ve been growing for the best part of 15 years, from a seedling.  The overall shape is about where I want it now, although the left-right balance needs some adjusting and the trunk needs more time to develop a better taper.  Give it another ten years or so and we’ll be getting there.

This week has been something of an interesting experience, from a running and diabetes control point of view.  I’ve been offshore on a floating platform, so running on a treadmill which is never the best, but made much more interesting when that treadmill is also moving side to side and back and forward as the vessel moves.  Diabetes control has needed a different mindset around the exercise as the evening meal tends to be early offshore, typically 6pm, which is when I’d normally exercise, so it’s swapped the order of things around.  The strategy I’ve adopted, reasonably successfully is to do a normal basal reduction ahead of the run, and minimal bolus at the meal - a typical reduction by 75%, then run about 30-45 mins later before BG has jumped too high.  As usual test during the exercise and take on carbs appropriately depending on where I started and where I ended up.  Starting at 8.x needed carbs mid run, and ended in the low 4.x, starting at 10.x brought me down to about 5.x with no carbs.

The running  this week, more to come at the weekend, was 
8km   / 43:25 / 5:17 per per km, Ave HR 133, Max 144
10km / 51:26 / 5:09 per km, Ave HR 136 , Max 150
10km / 51:19 / 5:08 perkm, Ave HR 138, Max 150

Those of course are all on a treadmill, I'm not going to do laps of the helideck after all.   Today was a mixed on/off road locally and when you take the vagaries of wind and terrain into account, for the same pace the average HR was around 145 over 12km.