Like you I had a T1 parent. My mother died at 78 in 2012 and I'm pretty sure it was the smoking that killed her, not the diabetes (she finally managed to quit when she was 70 but it was twenty or thirty years too late). I've had varying levels of control during my 49 years of T1, and varying levels of testing. (Eight months of self funded libre was awesome but I became allergic to the sensor and am now back to finger pricks. I also lose hypo awareness once my hba1c goes too low....)
So.... if you don't test before running, what's going to happen
1) nothing (hopefully)
2) you go too low. I assume you carry glucose? If you've got hypo awareness it hopefully shouldn't be much of an issue. Start feeling a bit shaky and knock back some glucose.
3) You go to high from the stress of running. Correct next time you inject before a meal?
You have to strike a balance that you can live with. What's right for you may not be right for someone else. Personally, I loathe hypos with a passion, plus I know I'll lose awareness if I have them too often, so I do usually/often test before exercise. But I've had years in the past when I tested far far less often, and just lived with the hypos (and the hypers
). I tend not to think about levels unless I'm injecting./carb counting.
Give it another few years and most T1s may have a cgm, which will take off the hypo pressure. The technology will be there to help us, and hopefully not rule us. Modern insulin regimes allow us to inject for what we eat and do, rather than having to have our actions ruled by our injections (well, that's the theory even if it doesn't always work
).
Those of us posting on these boards tend be to self selecting - I'm pretty sure we do a lot more testing than the average T1 at a diabetic clinic. And we think about diabetes quite a bit. Plenty of folk manage to attain reasonable diabetic control without testing ten times a day, they just won't be posting much on these forums.