Hi everyone, so looking for a steer please for all those fitness gurus who like endurance sports. I'm doing 6 Adventure Cross bike rides this year to raise money for my local cancer support charity ( went through the whole lymphatic cancer thing last Year). My problem is when I did one when I was first diagnosed as being T2 I didn't eat enough as it was all carbs at the feeding station and being paranoid I 'bonked' and really struggled to complete the ride. With that in mind I'm I'm just thinking of eating what I like as I'll burn around 6k calories.
What do you think guys, plus what do you do prior to the event carb wise?
I found the following post by Chris Hamilton helpful, even though he is a T1 using insulin and I am not. I have struggled to train without adding carbs to my usual meagre total, but find I get on better by eating a chocolate peppermint cream (10g carbs) after my 15 minute warmup and just before leaving the house to walk half a mile to the park for my run. I then consume another half ch. pepp. cream after my first mile of running and maybe another half to fuel the third, after which I walk the half mile home. All this is in addition to my normal mealtime intake, but I see no sign of those carbs when I test after getting home. I hope that if Chris can run an ultra on half his usual basal insulin and no boluses before eating, I too can take quite a lot of leeway in eating carbs when training (or racing, obviously) intensely. By contrast, when I am doing resistance training I can't get away with anything more carby than cheddar cheese! Here is Chris's post:
"I've done a few 400-600 km audax cycle events in recent years.
After a bit of trial and error, I found reducing basal by 50% keeps me reasonably level for rides up to 33hrs.
They generally involve checkpoints every 50-100km. Between checkpoints I generally eat a few biscuits, or flapjack on the go to keep me ticking over and at the checkpoints test blood glucose etc and do some proper eating 80-120g of carbs (usually in the form of sandwiches, cake bananas etc...). all of this is done without the need to take any fast acting insulin. Only if I have a blood glucose reading greater than 12 will I take any insulin (and only half a unit, which under those conditions is enough to lower blood glucose concs by ~9mM (so has to be partially counteracted with a few sweets about 1hr later).
On this type of regime I've managed to go 33hrs just on 50% doses of my usual twice daily basal insulin.
It took me five big rides and a few mistakes to get this right. Once I'd gained the confidence of not using any fast acting insulin for such long periods whilst partaking in what is effectively an uncomfortable eating competition, the trick was tailoring the basal insulin levels that would be enough (but not too much) to keep me in reasonable range."
