One of the great things about the Dexcom is the wealth of data it provides for analysis. I'm about as big of a data nerd you can find, so if I have data to play with to help identify needed changes in nutrition protocols I'm as happy as a soccer hooligan will be on June 12th. Today I finally had some free time to download my Dexcom data from my long brick on Saturday and the data helped highlight some interesting developments.
The highlighted red area shows the bike portion of the brick, while the highlighted green area shows the run portion of the brick. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the stark drop off in glucose measurements over the last 20ish minutes of my ride. That steep slope coincides with the period of time my crash occurred. Putting two and two together it appears that I had not kept up with my nutrition prior to my last hard climb attack of the day. The drop off in glucose meant that my body would not be functioning at its optimum awareness, so when I waved to the other rider the slight change in balance was magnified exponentially. While I crashed because I'm an idiot for waiving while out of the saddle, the blood sugar dynamic probably impaired my judgement and ability to react.
Prior to starting the run portion of my brick I had to rebound my blood sugar. Two things of note are the double dip effect of the rebound meaning that my body was super efficient in burning off extra sugars, but more importantly during a race if I'm low in transition I will have to stagger when I take in carbohydrates to rebound. For the most part my blood sugars were stable or trending upwards for the better part of the run. I may have to scale back the amount of carbohydrates I'm taking in as I'd much rather race at a blood sugar of 160 than 200. But the Dexcom gives me the data necessary to be able to do that analysis.
Anyway from this I see that my nutrition is in good shape heading into IMCDA and with a few minor tweaks over the next two weeks I should be right where I want to be. Finger pricks don't allow this type of analysis, only a CGM does. In other news, I went to the ENT doctor today, my purple ear will recover to a normal state so I'll be as beautiful as ever!
1 comment:
I love seeing stuff like this, Ed, cuz it makes me realize how different we all are with respect to management/exercise.
My CGM file from my century last weekend is literally a flat line that starts at 118 and ends at 113 with a tiny little dip at mile 90ish. I would feel like crap if I kept my sugars in the 180 range, but I don't need to do that because I don't crash quickly when training.
Interestingly enough, I am partaking in a study (ironically, sponsored by coke) this fall where a bunch of non-diabetic cyclists and diabetic cyclists do various intervals on computrainers with CGMs attached to compare what the body of a non-D person goes thru with respect to performance and blood sugar levels to what we go through. Should be interesting.
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