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Running (10k+) and Type 2 Diabetes - Experiences

target6point4

Active Member
Messages
42
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Insulin
Greetings everyone,

I am posting this specifically in the T2 forum as I am interested in hearing from people who run longer distances and durations (10k+ or 60+ min) and are managing their T2 condition.

I personally am a 45 yr. old T2 diabetic, diagnosed in 2013. I have weighed between 70 and 75kg for these 13 years and stand at 1.8m tall. I am always mistaken for a T1 by every doctor I meet for the first time.

My last A1C numbers (May 26) were miserable to say the least, I have since switched to a newer insulin plan and started taking running a lot more seriously since June 26. I have always been an enthusiastic runner but never focussed on any particular goals. While setting myself a specific goal, I turned to the Internet for advice and found that there wasn't any particular information about this.

My plan going forward is simple, I am going to corelate the distances run per month and see how my A1c numbers look after that. I plan to keep my diet and insulin regimen constant unless I am advised by my Internist to do otherwise.

I would be grateful if some of you could share your experiences about running longer distances and T2. Till date my longest run has been around 80 Mins. (very slow though) and I have managed all my runs without hypos or any diabetes related issues. My regular runs are at a very slow pace (around 8 Min/km). At a couple of running events, I have managed to go as fast as 6.5 min/km. I have read that most runs up to 90 - 120 Min can be managed without consuming any sugars/gels but how about longer runs? Are there any runners who are much faster or can run much longer despite being T2?
 
Greetings. Thanks for your thread. I, too, would love to hear more on this subject. I cannot run but I like walking at a quick pace (average 4 km/hr). I am 56 year old, male, T2, with a well controlled BG.

I have been thinking of doing a 10-21 km marathon (walk). Should we raise our BG before we start (and during), like eating a banana? And within what time frame (minutes before start)?

Note: The marathons starts early morning, by which time my BG is usually at its lowest, plus I am on intermittent fasting, so I normally start eating at 11 am.

After every walk I have done (longest has been 10 km and always late afternoon), my BG has dropped quite low, and this worries me. So what’s the best method to prevent this from going too low, considering that the marathons start early morning when my BG is normal (within a good low range)?
 
Hi, as a recently diagnosed T2 diabetic I am also keen to find out how T2 runners manage their fuelling. There is relatively little information out there given how many runners there are and how many T2 diabetics there are. From the information which is available it seems that most runners fuel as a non diabetic would during the run and stick to their usual diabetic regime before and after the run. I'm 56 y/o 79kg and 1.78m and my diabetes was flagged up in a routine health check, I had no symptoms that I was aware of. I have been running for 5 years and have run distances from 1 mile up to 50 miles.
I usually only take on fuel if I'm running 10 miles or further.

I was diagnosed a week after doing a 50 mile mountain ultra and the diagnosis came as quite a surprise. I have experienced no symptoms of diabetes that I am aware of when I've been running and fuelling with gels for road runs and proper food such as sandwiches and soup from aid stations for ultra distances. Because there are so many variables with diabetes I'm aware that everyone's experience may be different but I plan on not changing my fuelling too much during runs and managing my T2 diet strictly pre and post run. I will discuss this further with my clinician to find out if they have any further insights. The only advice they have given me so far is to keep on exercising.
 
I have been pre diabetic (family history so sadly inevitable) for 4 years and am an endurance cyclist.

For any endurance activity you have approximately 90 minutes of usable stored energy in your body so if you want to run/walk/cycle much beyond that you need to fuel your muscles accordingly - diabetes or not!

The good news is that when you exercise sugar is transported by your blood to your working muscles which is why medics will tell you to keep exercising. Your blood sugar will fall.

Naturally everyone is different so you will need to experiment to find the level of carbohydrate that will sustain your energy levels but if you try to do longer activities without sufficient fuelling, you will suffer for it! Ideally I would suggest you need to aim to eat something at 30 minute intervals and drink more often than that - real food ideally.

It’s a giant leap of faith, I know because we are told to control our carbs. That is all well advised in day to day life but if you’re doing extended aerobic exercise, ie, beyond 90 minutes, you need to fuel properly and in the long run your body with thank you for it with better diabetes control.

Hope that helps.
 

Your story is much like mine. Thank you for sharing. I, too, do most of my walks, walking my dogs. It’s a win-win (for them and for me). The walks are helping me to loose weight (besides the joy it brings).

For the past year I’ve been following an intermittent fasting (16/8), low card, high fat lifestyle, and it is doing wonders for my BG and my gradual weight loss, with an average HbA1c of 6.0 mmol/L (for which I am stoked, as when I was diagnosed in Sep 2023, I was 33 mmol/L). I am 1.83 m tall and weigh 86 kg (was 97 kg a year ago). My weight target is 80 kg.

I do worry about hypos after long distances (partially early morning when my BG is anywhere between 5.4 - 6 mmol/L), as once after a 7 km afternoon walk, I registered 4.3 mmol/L, the lowest I’ve registered. I have tried dry-fruit before the walk, and that helped, but I am not sure how it will pan out if I do a 10-20 km walk.

I like the advice of fueling 30 minutes before and at 30 minute intervals into the walk, with energy bars (which I haven’t tried before). Any other tips will be appreciated. I have heard marathons runners speaking of bananas as a fuel source during the run.

Thanks to everyone for your comments. All your comments have been very interesting and helpful.
 
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Mods want to remind posters that the OP @target6point4 is on insulin - please keep that in mind when sharing & posting advice. The regime will be very different for someone on insulin than to those on non hypo inducing meds like Metformin or diet only keep in mind forum rules B6 & B8 forum rules & ethos can be found here

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Hello again, thanks for all the replies. Let me add a bit of information about how I do things. I generally wait atleast three hours after taking my fast acting insulin before beginning any exercise. Most of my runs are done first thing in the morning. I wake up, have half a glass of water, do some light stretches and off I go. I make it a point to do a proper warm up and running drills before I do my main run. This keeps me mostly pain free after my runs. Also, most runs are done keeping my pulse as low as possible. I have noticed that this does not adversely affect my blood sugars. I have also noticed that when I do more intense workouts then I start feeling my sugars drop about 20-30 mins in.

@RH70: You appear to run a lot. 50 miles is the kind of distance where you need to properly fuel. How do you do that? How high was your A1C when you were diagnosed?
 
For those T2s in this thread not on insulin, I cycle around 20 miles each Wednesday with a coffee stop half way.
In the past I have trained up to cycle 50 miles per day over several days.
I usually cycle fasted, apart from coffee with double cream and butter.
When I cycle my BG goes up high and comes back down after the exercise.
I usually don't take any carbohydrates on my weekly ride, so using body reserves.
If I can get properly into ketosis I am just using fats, which gives a lower energy supply but over a longer period.

On cycling holiday weeks I find that after the first day I can eat almost anything, and don't have to stay keto, but I don't have a need to fuel every hour.

As an aside, on my cycle ride across the Netherlands to Germany with two non-diabetic friends, after an hour I was just getting warmed up and nicely into my rhythm when they became desperate for a coffee and cake stop.
I was still good to go for another hour or so.

My suggestion for those not on insulin (or other hypo risk medication) is to try cycling or running fasted, and see if you can get into ketosis and run on fat.
Almost all people have a far greater fat reserve than glucose reserve, by several orders of magnitude.
It can be harder while your body is adapting, but beneficial in the long term.
 
@target6point4 pre diagnosis I have been fuelling with a breakfast of toast coffee and fruit juice. On trail runs longer than an hour using solid foods, Peanut M&Ms and cashews with a few Voom blocks if I felt a little low. For ultra or long events I eat solids from aid stations such as sandwiches, soup and pasta. I don't intend to change too much about my in run fuelling but I will be cutting the fruit juice from my breakfast and changing to Sourdough toast with peanut butter.
For road runs I use gels for anything over 90 minutes. This may change depending on advise from the doctor.

This is all very new to me so I'm sure I will have to adapt and change things along the way and any suggestions or tips will be gratefully received.

Having just started metformin one week ago I was surprised how fatigued I have felt in the first week. This may also be because I have lowered my carb intake. Hopefully this feeling will change as I adapt to the medication and diet. My A1C was 61 at diagnosis. I have found it a real psychological battle in these early stages, with thoughts that I won't be able to sustain the level of activity that I have in the past, but I think this just me catastrophising and I hope in time that I will adjust to my new situation. My mindset has to remain positive and try to use this as an opportunity for learning and to come at it from an angle of curiosity.
 
I suspect when I was doing longer runs and bike rides before diagnosis I had so much sugar sloshing about in my blood that I rarely needed to fuel up (my hb1ac was 106 when I was diagnosed, without any symptoms). Now it's lower I'm paying more attention, including trying to find ways to fuel in a way that works but doesn't cause too bad an upward spike.

One thing I might do, when I get back to longer bike rides in particular, is get a CGM for a month or two so I can see how my blood sugar is during the rides and how that reacts to the fueling. The energy bars I'm trying now tend to have something like 35g or so of carbs in them - and as a start I'm going to spread eating those out (e.g. maybe half of one per hour or half hour). It'd also be interesting to see what gels did to my blood sugar (I'm assuming the spikes would be higher due to their nature) so might also give those a try if I do use a CGM.
 
Ok you guys are talking a language I don’t understand lol, but I’ve seen in the past this website posted. I don’t know if any of you have seen it? It’s mainly T1 but as the OP @target6point4 is on insulin it may be helpful, also those T2 on meds or even just diet may be able to pick up some tips

: Home

Boost your wellbeing and overall health with in Lower Shiplake Henley-on- Thames.
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I'm some way away from multi hour endurance bike rides or runs so at the moment I'm building those up with shorter outings e.g. 5km runs and 1 hour bike rides.

I am fit enough to do longer walks with the dog though, so am trying my fuelling approach on those first. Today Obi (my very fit Labrador/Border Collie cross) and I did a walk from our cottage to one one the smaller hills (Cnap Chaochan Aitinn) in the Cairngorms. That was 25.35km and 663m of ascent in 4hrs 33minutes (it was pretty much non stop other than taking photos, Obi going into rivers and streams for drinks and various toilet stops for him), at an average pace of 10:47km/h. I had a cheese and tomato omelette for breakfast and during the walk had half of an OTE bar every hour (2 bars in total). The are about 35g of carbs and 245 calories per bar (and the banana one and the chocolate orange one I tried today tasted decent). I checked my blood sugar when I got back and it was 8.7, which is fairly typical for me after exercise. Energy wise I felt good the whole way and we did some of the return at below 10:00km/h pace so I didn't feel tired.

For bike rides or runs I'd probably up that to taking half a bar every half hour, but I think for me anyway that's probably a decent starting point for fuelling given I currently still want a calorie deficit as I've still got a bit of weight to shift.

It'd have been very interesting to have had a CGM on and to see how my blood sugar reacted over the course of the walk. I have had both the Abbott and Dexcom ones on free trial in the past but might invest in a couple of months worth at some point.
 
On Sunday I did another longish walk with the dog - 18km with then best part of 500m of ascent. For that I didn't eat or drink anything during the walk and my blood sugar was 6.7 when I tested it shortly after getting home. So a bit higher the day before when I was fueling - but no real issue either way.
 
Starting Metformin did affect my running as well. But that was nearly 13 years ago. I hope the changes you make will help you improve your numbers. If you haven't considered it already, think about intermittent fasting. A 12-16 hr break from eating does wonders to give the system some much needed rest and stabilize the hormones.
 
I'm continuing to ramp up my exercise levels and seem to be getting good results using the OTE energy bar/flapjacks. On Tuesday I did a 20+ mile walk with the dog into the heart of the Cairngorms and for that I didn't take anything for the first couple of hours then took half of one of the OTE bars on the hour, eating 2 in total. I was still maintaining the same pace (around 10 minutes per km) at the end so had plenty of energy.

I'm still ramping my running back up and did my longest run in several years last night - just over 5 miles (1 hour) at a steady pace. I hadn't eaten yet that day so had half of one of the OTE bars before the run (I took a finger prick reading at beforehand and it was 5.9). My morning test today was 5.8 so I'm ok with that. During the run I wasn't short on energy - just short of decent pace in my legs while they continue getting used to running again!
 
I decided to try a faster paced 5K run last night, to get some idea of where my running fitness is at. I was hoping for around the 30 minute mark but managed to go a bit faster at 29:05. Still not fast, but that's the first time I've run a 5K in under 30 minutes since 2017, so quite pleased with that.

I'm planning to run again tomorrow and I think I might push the distance for that up to 10K, but at an easier pace. I also might fuel for that one - perhaps half of one of the OTE bars before and the other half during the run.

I'll probably head out on the mountain bike tonight if the weather stays reasonably ok.
 
I've done a few 5 mile runs now as well as one 10K, but to give myself some focus I've entered the Edinburgh half-marathon next year. I last ran that in 2017 (my one and only half to date) and I'm hoping to improve my (very slow!) time from then. I think I've got a fueling regime sorted out but will experiment further with that in training for the run.
 
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