A Tale of Two Weekends

 

I'm glad this is a rest week coming up, not because training is kicking my ass like it was just before my last rest week, but because I think I need about a week to recover from this weekend.  This weekend can be broken into two different time frames.  The daytime, and ironically enough, the night.

The weekend kicked off a bit early on Friday, as I was able to leave a bit early from work.  Ron was kind enough to come by with his dremel-o-matic and assist me with the cutting of the steer tube on fork for the new Velo Vie.  After a few quick minutes of math and conversions, we got the tube cut and the headset installed.  Ron then said the magic words "Well, I've got a bit of time if you want to start hanging stuff on the bike?"  Music to my ears.  About an hour and a half later the bike was mostly done.  Big thanks to Ron for the extra sets of hands and some nice tips on cable running.

I ate a late dinner and Traci and I got on our bikes for a evening recovery ride.  Was the first spin on the VV, albeit on the trainer, but it gave me the opportunity to get the brifters setup where I wanted them, and check saddle position.  A few minor tweaks and a couple double-check measurements vs. my Felt and it was time to get the bars wrapped.  Traci has some awesome skills when it comes to wrapping bars.  I think people who wrap bars well can also wrap presents well, and since I can't do either very well I leave this to the household expert and assist by holding the tape while the master works away.  After the bars were wrapped, I spent a few very cold hours in the garage putting the final touches on the new bike, mainly inhaling GooGone fumes while working the sticker glue off my rear wheel.  By the time I was done it was after midnight, 39 degree's in the garage and I had a very sore throat and hands from working with the stuff.  But it was worth it!  The bike was done and ready for its maiden road voyage the next day

Saturday I woke up with a low blood sugar.  This is getting a bit more common as my training load has increased and my body gets used to having amilyn back in its system.  I fuel up and fight off the sluggish feeling in time to head to team ride.  The ride ended up being the hardest of the year so far and I was able to put in some very solid efforts.  Was the first major climbing I've done this year, and I held my own on the climbs.  The wind however was horrid.  At one point the team was climbing Thompson Road and a gust blew down hill and literally sat everyone upright in their saddles.

I will also point out that Amit sent us up Logie Trail from the RT30 side, but decided not to climb due to a "lack of time."  We hate you.

Saturday night we hit the PACE open house and it was a great time.  Big thanks to Dave, Jeff, and Russell for hosting a great evening.  By about 9:30 I was ready for bed, exhausted from the days ride.   I actually had a few folks tell me the next day I looked exhausted. 

Unfortunately sleep decided not to visit for very long.  3am both Traci and I got up and decided we needed to go downstairs to get water / snack.  I woke up again at 6am with a cratering bloodsugar and had to get another snack.  I finally got out of bed at 8am and I felt like, well basically I got no sleep.  Our Sunday endurance ride was quiet and sluggish, and it wasn't until 75% of the way through the ride that I actually felt a bit away.  We spent Sunday afternoon with our good friends and by 6:00 I was on the verge of falling asleep at their house.  Once again, sleep didn't come to me last night either.  I was up at 11:30, 2am, and 5.  What the crap?

I think a lot of the sleep issues will be resolved with a bit of tinkering to my basal insulin levels, which I did this morning.  Hopefully it will result in less late night lows which have been the norm for me on days were I have big workout efforts.

For now, I'll enjoy the rest week. :)

Rest Week Randomness

 

I'm pretty sure a few days ago I rode for 3 hours in close to 60 degree weather.  Although you wouldn't know it from the snow that's falling right now.  I won't complain too much however since the weekend is going to be sunny again, and we had a gorgeous ride this past Saturday with the team.  A few more months and us Portlanders can start complaining about the rain interrupting our Spring sun instead of the snow interrupting our Winter commute.

Training has been progressing along nicely.  Last week was a rest week for me, and I spent about 95% of my in-saddle time in endurance and active recovery zones.  I did my late winter / early spring maintenance to the Felt, changing out the BB (after getting the housing refaced), cassette, chain, and degunking all the other drivetrain parts with Simple Green and some elbow grease.  This week I'm back to threshold intervals, building to the goal to hit Jack Frost TT in two Sundays for a hard effort, and make my 2009 road debut at Piece of Cake at the end of March.   Need to get those 5 to 20min average power numbers up!

The team is gearing up for the 2009 season,  with a small handful of the team spending the week in Arizona at a training camp.  Check out Heidi Swift's blog for some awesome articles about the experience.  We are already making plans for next year.  The race season kicks off with Cherry Pie this Sunday.  I really would love to join them on the road, but I know I wouldn't be much help right now.  Unless a miracle occurs and we get our Team Edition Velo Vie rides this Friday, I'll probably contribute to the team by lending big Ron my Felt.

Last week I also started up a new medication to work in conjunction with my insulin pump.  It's called Symilin, and its a lab created form of the hormone amylin.  Type 1 diabetics don't make any insulin, but they also don't make a lot of amylin.  Amylin tells your liver to stop putting sugar into the bloodstream, lets your brain know you've had food, and tells your stomach to digest stuff.  Pretty important stuff!  Not having amylin in your system basically means you have a huge appetite even though you've eaten, and your blood sugar will go up a lot due to the intake of food plus the liver not shutting "off" for a short period of time.   I don't know how many times I've had a huge meal and still be hungry afterwards. 

With the addition of the Symilin injections before the meal, I'm eating a lot less, and my post meal blood sugars are very stable taking half the insulin I was taking for each meal prior to starting Symilin.  I'm still in the building phase of the medication, so I have to be very careful about getting super low blood sugars but so far so good!

Help wanted!

 

So on the off chance that someone is reading this who has experience with Metronics CGM's or experience with wireless devices, I'm going to post the following scenario.

I'm currently using a Metronics Paradigm Insulin Pump, and one of their continuous glucose monitor systems which wirelessly transmits data to the insulin pump every 5 minutes.  I'm happy with the combination for my day to day activities, but to me it falls short in one crucial area.

When I'm on the bike, my pump is securely tucked away beneath multiple layers of clothes (typically attached to my HRM strap or the back of my bib shorts).  If I want / need to see my current blood sugar, I have to stop and pull everything out to look at my pump, then put everything back in place.  Not the most productive thing while trying to sit in the middle of a pack of riders.

What I would love is a secondary device, like a watch, where I could just see what the most recent number was.  It doesn't have to do anything other than report the most recent data.  That way I can tell if I need to eat something before my body starts to bonking (which is basically a low blood sugar) while I'm doing activities where its difficult to get to my pump.

Real time data is a huge improvement over what I had just 6 months ago, but as a numbers person it also makes me cringe.  Data is just data unless you do something with it, and having it inaccessible when I need it the most is fairly frustrating.

Oddly enough it looks like Metronics competitor, Navigator, went with a slightly different route.  Their CGM reports to a small handheld unit which doubles as a blood tester.   

Coincidently enough, there is one guy in PV who has one of the Navigator systems, and another guy who just joined our race team who has the same system I have.

I want to ride my bicycle...

 

Ha, ha!  Now you have that song stuck in your head.

Friday, I had a really bad day.  My knee was really achy all night so I didn't sleep very well.  As a result, I was grumpy and tired.  After running a quick errand before lunch, I went to Longbottoms to grab lunch and ran into the PV crew who was just returning from a glorious Friday morning ride.   I ate my lunch and listened to their banter.  I was mad at my knee.

The weather was more than you could ask for this time of year.  Sunny, crisp, cool, little to no breeze.  It's the type of weather that makes you don wool arm and leg warmers with your kit, and maybe pack a light wind vest.

It reminded me much of my youth and the cycling I did in the North East.

I grew up in Andover, Massachusetts.  The school system was such that upon entering your freshman year in High School, you knew half your graduating class for 2 years, a quarter of it for 8 and a good chuck of it since you were pre-school.  Add into it the mix of a huge youth soccer program and friendships were formed at a very early age.  One such friendship was formed with a pair whom I just recently got back in touch with through the magic of this new fangled "internets" and Facebook.

Jim and I became friends through soccer, which his dad and my dad co-coached youth teams together for years and formed a friendship.  Brian and Jim were classmates and friends from school, and eventually Brian and I became friends through Jim and a variety of other activities.  Through much of our grade school and middle school years, the three of us hung out frequently on weekends and in arranged after school get together's.  As we grew older, the introduction to one key thing added a whole new dimension to the adventures we could have.  Transportation!

The bike was the first mode of transportation the three of us would consistently have access too.  No longer would we need to wait for a parent to get home in order to go to one or another's house.  Many a autumn or spring afternoon or entire summer day would be spent on our bikes riding where ever our legs took us.  No hill was too steep, no road too busy for us to travel on, no distance was too far to ride (as long as it was in town limits).  We rode hard and fast, and traded nuggets of cycling wisdom learned from watching the TDF on Wide World of Sports during July.

Jim:  "Guys, we should ride in a peloton."

Brian and I:  "What's that?"

Jim:  "It's when you ride in a group and the people up front do the work and the rest don't have to!"

Brian and I: "Sweet! We can do that with the three of us!"

Ah, the naiveté of youth.

We'd watch American Flyer to the point where we'd recite dialog during our rides pretending to launch attacks too early or sprinting away from dogs, all of whom were named "Eddy".  I clearly remember my first experience with a "lead out train" ending in a narrowly avoided disaster.   I can still see Jim flying through the air after high siding his bike, walking away with nothing more than skinned hands and knees.   (We learned that day that when you corner at high speeds you want your inside pedal up.)

Brian and I undertook one of the most memorable events of my life together.  In the spring of 1990, we participated in the "Commonwealth Classic" which was a 2-day 150mile bike tour to benefit the American Diabetes Association (pretty ironic that 5 years later I was diagnosed with Type 1 eh?).  Brian and I were the two youngest participants and finished with the lead group of ten riders on the second day.  It was on that ride that I learned pace line skills, and how to point out debris in the road.  Simple lessons for skills that I take for granted these days.  The people we grouped up with were impressed with our strength and eagerness, but admonished us on our safety.  I remember being called out for pulling out of a pace line and not looking back to see if there was traffic coming from behind.  Again, the naiveté of youth.

It was many of these memories that drew me to cycling in my youth, and drew me back for good in the recent years.  It was with those fond memories that I geared up Saturday morning and tested the knee out.  I'm happy to report the knee was okay with letting me ride, and the body was happy to have the opportunity.  I went slow on the flats, and glacial up small rises in the road, but I felt better on the bike than off.  What mattered the most was I was riding my bike, the sun was warm, and the air crisp and cool.

I had a smile on my face the rest of the weekend.

Medical update...

 

Few bits of news on the medical front.  Got back from the orthopedic surgeon.  No damage to the bones and he doesn't think there is any damage to my ACL or MCL in my knee, which is good.  He does however, feel there is a fairly significant tear in my medial meniscus due to decent amount of swelling I still have 5 days post injury. 

So, MRI is next on the docket... I wanted that to be first on the docket, but insurance being insurance I have to jump through hoops to get what I need.  Paperwork must be filed and fumbled over before I can get the MRI, then the follow-up appointment to find out what is wrong and figure out what to do about it.

bleh... I just want to start rehab now.  I miss being active and its only been 5 days.

On another note, about 10 minutes ago I connected my "Guardian Real-Time Continues Glucose Monitor".  As a number of you know, I'm a type 1 diabetic, which means my body can't produce insulin to turn food into glucose so my body can, well .. live.  I wear an insulin pump, which can often be witnessed when I'm on my bike. (It's the bulge on my lower back that people mistake for a radio.)

The insulin pump was the first major step for me in the control of my diabetes, as it allowed me to quickly and easily adjust my insulin intake based off of my activity load.  Before the pump, I'd almost always crash a few hours after a long ride.  Now, it can set back the background insulin levels during my ride and have no issues.

The best thing a diabetic can do is have control of their blood sugars.  For a normal person, their blood sugars run between 90 and 100.  A diabetics will range all over the place depending on their control what they've had to eat, how stressed they are, if they are sick, if they are being physically active... Hopefully you get the picture.  For the vast majority of diabetics, 4-6 times a day we stick our fingers and test our blood with these small devices.  We can't do anything without them... until recently.

The real time monitor I know wear tests my blood sugars every 5 minutes.  Two hundred and forty four times a day.  In addition, it wirelessly transmits the data to my insulin pump, tracks it, and alerts me if my blood sugar is below or above set thresholds or if its noticing a rapid upwards or downwards trend.

Bicycling Magazine last month had a great article on Team Type 1, which is a domestic cycling team.  Many of the guys on the team have Type 1 diabetes, and every member of the team rides with a CGM.  They've found that with the information on the body's blood sugar, they can accurate track and predict when riders need fuel and when they need to eat to maintain top performance.    The team doctor went on to say that he expects in the next 5-10 years a CGM will be the training tool for competitive cyclists.

I look forward to seeing the data, making adjustments to my training and diet, and flat out living better now that I have my CGM.