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Managing sugar levels during long distance cycling

R

Rose Harmer

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Morning all I’m doing the Lands End John O’Groats cycle in September this year and will be cycling around 110 miles per day. My cycling partner (Type 2) and I (Type 1) are building up the miles and now regularly cycle 60 plus miles at the weekend. We’re very determined to train sufficiently so we get to enjoy the final ride!
Currently I reduce my fast acting insulin from 8 units to 2 the morning of the ride, and have porridge and juice for breakfast. It means my initial blood sugars are high but they gradually reduce during the ride without that awful need to keep eating jelly babies or energy sweets which I hate needing to do. If anyone has experience and advice about this sort of cycling I’d be very grateful, especially since we’ll be needing to up the distances from now on….. Thanks all
 
@Rose Harmer that sounds amazing.
I have not done anything as extreme so my advice is limited.
You may find something useful on runsweet.com.

Regarding the problem of continuously eating jelly babies, I overcame this by adding a small amount of sugary drink (e.g. a very dilute fruit juice or squash)to my water bottle so I was constantly refuelling my falling blood sugars rather than needing the bulk top ups,
Whilst I have not done long distance cycling, I have been on some long walking holidays (10 days in the Himalayas walking for 10 hours per day). I found my basal needed to be reduced more each day for the first week until it settled down to about 40% of usual. It was as if there was a gradual depletion of liver glucose stores until it plateaued. I definitely find my body adapts.

You don’t mention whether you have a pump or using MDI. I think a pump would be easier because you can adjust your basal at short notice rather than realising you got your morning basal dose wrong and are stuck with it for 12 or 24 hours. If your ride is in September and you are on MDI, you have plenty of time to badger your DSN and tune a new pump.

Good luck with your adventure. I am in awe of you already for planning it.
 
I think there are a variety of different approaches and you seem to have found a starting point that works. I dirty fast until the end of the day, drinking only coffee and cream, and eat dinner when I've arrived. I'm not a fan of running my blood sugars high or having fast-acting on board when exercising.
 
Thank you both for taking the time to reply. Adjusting my basal is something I hadn’t considered for the actual ride and is something I might need to try in the coming months. No I don’t have a pump sadly, I’m not eligible apparently as my BS levels are too good
 
“Too good” - is that even a thing??
 
Rose
Before I used the Omnipod Dash pod system my T1 management for training was as follows :
Humulin I as background and on a non-training day would take 2 doses of 12units, say 8am and 8pm. On a training day for a 4 hour cycle I'd reduce my morning dose by 75%. I used 1g CHO per Kg of body weight per hour to fuel on the bike. So on a 4 hour ride I'd need 320g (4x80kg body weight) CHO in total. I found this gave fairly good control. Occasionally had to use 0.5u of Novarapid per hour during the ride if sugars started rising too much. I've found TORQ products to be very useful and easy on the stomach etc.
Always about trial and error and individualised responses.
Happy miles... Well done and good luck.
Ross
 
Thank you Ross - that’s been good to read. My control seems to have improved every time I go out so maybe I’m getting the hang o this. Now I need to start back to back cycling on consecutive days, could be more of a challenge… thanks for the advice
 
Not specific to cycling but it contains some useful references:
THE GUIDE BOOK TO OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE WITH TYPE 1 DIABETES: A quick guide to your optimum endurance performance with type1 Diabetes Kindle Edition
by Anders Forsberg
 
Hi beautiful people on bicycles, thought i raise my flag that I'm here as well. Been type1 for 30+years and my favoritest hobby is long distance cycling. The longest I've done so far was Singapore UK that took 18 month and ended up being just over 10.000 miles.
I don't like pushing it too hard tho, prefers stopping for a stretch and bite every 12miles in average. Despite the amount of experience i have no go-to carb fuel, i just eat whatever they sell at that random place where i happen to be.
I understand our styles are somewhat different as I'm not doing it for the sport at all, I'm doing it to explore cultures, to make corrections with locals all around and to see everything.
This summer's fun will be cycling from Lithuania, through Latvia into Estonia. I'll have 2 weeks to cover the 550km. Can't wait.
Tailwind and Peace
 
Hiya, I love to cycle as well but the longest distance I’ve done is [emoji[emoji6
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and can’t go wrong with natural foods or even some elite energy bars and gels. Little and often is the key. Nothing too fibrous or fatty as these will take too long to digest.
 
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