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Long Distance Hiking

S

sjmiles

Member
Messages
9
Hello

I am looking at doing some long distance walking, starting at 30miles and building up to a 60mile / 24 hour walk. However, I am very unsure about how to manage by Diabetes. I am type 1 (diagnosed 10 months ago) and take NovoRapid and Lantus.

The recommendations I have read include
- taking in 25-30g of carbs every hour
- or taking 4/5 dectrose tablets every 2 hours
- reducing both types of insulin

Has anybody got any experience in long distance hiking and managing it successfully? Also, I feel stupid but what kind of carbs (25-30g) would be best?

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
 
Thanks Nigel.

Have had a look at the site and found some suggestions from one blogger. Am very interested to hear if anyone using this forum has experience in this kind of thing?

Simon
 
Not done any endurance event of quite that duration myself as I'd be going shorter and quicker over a marathon. But thebasic needs can't be that dissimilar. I assume that you'll be carrying some kind of kit bag with you for the duration so you will be able to take supplies with you and your testing kit?

I never went as far as carrying my testing kit with me for a marathon, but I do always have a bunch of energy gels on me and I off the top of my head they would tend to work out as about the 20-30 g of carbs. Your options for eating and digesting whilst walking would be slightly more varied than when running, digesting solid food when running is never going to work well. :mrgreen:
I would think that you should be looking at a similar "diet" to regular walkers doing the hike, but with plenty of emergency quick acting carbs on standby such as Lucozade and gels, or even Kendal Mint Cake.
You should test taking the various things whilst on the move though and see how your stomach copes with them, I know that after 3hrs of eating gels I feel sick, but some people wouldn't be able to cope with one of them and I had to train myself to down them on the move. Stop, test, eat, hike should be workable for you though and a slight reduction in the previous days dose of Lantus may be worth trying out as well. I reduced my lantus by trial and error to deal with marathons, mostly by error though and I can't quite remember exactly which change worked the best for me previously now as I'm messing around with learning pump setting instead now.
 
How has is been going? I'm interested as after being diagnosed myself last June as late onset type 1 am now walking 30miles a week preparing for possibly coast to coast. I find though that I have to take on carbs every 5 miles and am starting to look like a banana! Any tips welcome.
 
Hi Imogen70

Last October I completed a non-stop 50 mile hike in 20 hours. The hike was in Wales (near Church Stretton) on and around Long mynd so was up and down throughout.

Through trial and error practising before hand I found a system that managed my blood sugar levels to stay around 4-5 which worked really effectively during the walk.

For the day prior to the walk I dropped my Lantus by 10%. During the walking I take my blood sugars every hour (I have got very adapt at testing while walking!) and then usually take on around 20g of medium to fast acting carbs in the form of a Nutrigrain bar or equivalent (other brands are available!). If my sugars are a little low (say < 3.5) I would also take on 4/5 dextrose tablets. Every 4 hours or so I had a small meal such as pasta and would have my Novorapid insulin as usual (but around 10% lower). The only problem with this is that after 20 hours you can get very bored of Nutrigrain bars, and it is a lot to carry around!

The thing that really worked for me while practising was to write down my test results as I went so I could spot patterns and develop my coping strategy.

I also have a rucksak with pockets on the belt strap and an extra small pocket bought separately that fits onto the belt strap so that I can have all my stuff (bars, tablets, testing kit) to hand which avoids stopping every hour.

All the best with the walking.
 
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