Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Wknd of exercise lows

Woke up Saturday with a normal BG of 104. Bolused 4 units for my PB sandwich 2hrs before computrainer class. Running out the door I felt weird so I drank remaining bottle of Revive Vitamin Water, In cab on my way to the bike class I check and BG is a lovely 51. Now I've got 30 min til I start cycling and 3 units on board :(. So I eat 4 blocks have 2 bites of my friends muffin and am on a temp basal reduction of 70%. Start cycling and I'm 113 CGM says I'm 94 and rising. Better but I still feel low and don't like riding with that #. It was a 16.5 mile bike ride. It took me 1hr 17 min. (longer than norm) Avg. watts were 124 (normaly 150-160). The whole time I was riding I felt low. My CGM said I was a steady 114 almost the whole ride but at one point I felt like my vision was going a little blurry my friend looks over at me and is like "dude you ok?" He's also a T1. So I check my BG and I'm 89. I drink some gatorade and he gives me a bag of Jelly Belly sports beans. Later he tells me that my power watts had dropped to 75 and that's when he looked over at me. All I wanted to do was finish the ride. The last 2 miles were an uphill climb of 6.3% and I powered my way through it riding at 9mph pushing 180-190watts.

The whole ride I felt so weird. Like if I had been outside I wouldn't have kept riding but because I was inside there really wasn't any reason to stop moving especially if I was'nt technically "low". After the ride I was 144 (beans started working I guess). I felt disappointed with my bike performance because I KNOW I could have done better. However I also know I felt crappy the whole time I was riding. Zero energy. Next time I won't bolus as much, I had just been concerened about going sky high (as has been the case in the past).

3 hours later having eaten a sandwich I went for a 3.13 mile run. My goal was to do it within 45min. When I started running BG was 156 with 1 unit on board so I temp down 50%. Halfway through I had to pull over and stretch my legs out they were real tight - probably cuz I never stretched after cycling. I resume the run and feel 1,000x better from that stretch. I finished in 40 min. I had hit my mark!!! :) That made me super happy and I felt good after the run. 30min later while sitting at brunch with my girlfriend I was 63...never even felt it. After brunch I went home and showered and just watched TV. I felt so completely drained. But it wasn't even like I did THAT much exercise. I felt physically and emotionally drained from the low BG feeling.

Sunday comes along and I planned on a swim. start the swim with ~1.6 units on board but my BG was 226. I kept my pump on normal basal. I wasn't too concerned about going low since I drop slowly during swims. At the end of the 45min swim I was 70. My focus during the swim was to work on my catch and focus on my rotating. It was like a lightbulb went off during that swim because when I was reminding myself to rotate I felt how EASY it was! I had a continuos motion AND my shoulder blade didn't hurt when I turned to breath (which it has been as of late). It was such an "Oh my god" moment. Of course I won't know for sure if it's as right as I think it is til I see my coach next week. But after all this time it felt right. I was so happy :).

All in all over the weekend I felt low either during or after my exercise. It's almost more exhausting dealing with a low than it is from exercise. I was wearing my CGM the whole week so I noticed on days I exercise I need to change my settings overnight because I drop so much. Days I'm not exercising I STILL need to drop my overnight settings just not as much.

Trial and error right? I do have to say though I'm not swinging as high as I was before but I gotta get rid of these lows. They're screwing me up :).