Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Diabetes & a Multi Stage Ultramarathon

I have type 1 diabetes and have had for 14-15 years now. I am 45.

I run a lot as you can probably tell from this blog and I have run marathons and ultra marathons as events and also self supported. In April I will be part of a team that is attempting to run, over a period of 4 days, the distance of 136 miles from London to Cheltenham. It breaks down as...

Stage 1 - Westminster to Slough - 28 miles
Stage 2 - Slough to Reading - 34.5 miles
Stage 3 - Reading to Swindon - 43.3 miles
Stage 4 - Swindon to Cheltenham - 30.7 miles

My question is, on the face of it pretty simple, I have type 1 diabetes and while I can get into shape for this (and there's an element of running into shape as you do an event like this) I am concerned on the mpact this will have on my blood sugars. Currenyly I use Novorapid and Levemir. I am not concerned about the waking hours as I can manage this as I normally do, basically I can eat pretty much anything during the effort and not have to worry about insulin. It is overnight and what my blood sugar should be before I go to bed and what I should do for my levemir dose. Currently I split my levemir in two with 3 units at 8:30am and 3 units at 8:30pm. When I have raced long or done long training runs I have had to go to bed with a blood sugar of 10-12 to prevent waking up hypo. This will be the same but with a cumulative effect over 4 days.

Can anyone point me at a resource I can refer to or someone or some organisation I can perhaps talk to? Post on the comments here or contact me via twitter...

Keep on running...