Dual Wave & Exercise

The trials and tribulations of a newbie diabetic triathlete continued yesterday with some experimentation of a dual wave bolus prior to working out. My Dad had a doctor's appointment in the city and wanted to take me to lunch afterwards. With my acceptance to Darden a whole lost sense of responsibility has occurred and while I'm technically "still working" one could say my motivation and workload has decidedly dropped off :). Given that, there was no way I could pass up a free lunch. So he took me to Delmonico's Grill where I had what I believe is the best philly cheesesteak this side of Pats. Delmonicos places delicious strips of finely cut NY Strip on a french baguette and covers it in perfectly melted artisinal chedar cheese; I estimated the sandwich and french fries to be 80 grams of carbs. I used a 70/ 30 dual wave bolus to cover the meal and had the second wave last for 2 hours.

After the dual wave finished my blood sugar was 127 which I thougtht was perfect, what didn't occur to me was that my lunch time bolus lasted 2 hours longer than usual and would have a dramatic impact on my run. Prior to my run I had a clif bar and a Starbuck's yogurt parfait, in the locker room my blood sugar was only 165 so I popped an accel-gel pre run. During my run I sipped on Accelerade (25g of carbs), 29 minutes and 3.1 miles later my blood sugar had hit 68 and I could tell it was trending down.

When I first got off the treadmill I was really disappointed and thought it was back to the drawing board to figure out my nutritional needs. After careful consideration I realized that even though my basal rate was turned down to 10% 2 hours pre-run there was an additional unit or 2 of insulin floating around in my system then I had accounted for. This small change rendered all the usual metrics I use for calculating nutritional needs for exercises useless. Lesson learned.