Sunday, December 11, 2011

Day 2 Not to Bad

So I started off yesterday planning to circumnavigate Indianapolis on my bicycle. I have done a lot of cold weather riding but all of my road biking in really cold weather has been limited to trips of 10 miles each way to and from work. My longer experiences have been on Mountain Bikes and last year I was out for 6 hours in 5 degree weather.

So I figured a 100 mile trip on a road bike with the temperature hovering between 16 & 17 should be no trick. What I found out were some crucial differences as a result of the speed you travel when road riding vs trail. Read windchill. I have some really good gear that has kept me plenty warm on short road trips and on the trail in the past and I had counted on using hand and toe warmers at some point as well. Next time it will be about an hour in.

My hands started to get cold about that time (1 hour) and so I was pulling them back into my mittons (I have these special lobster claw bicycle specific mittons) to warm them up. Just my fingers and thumbs were cold. The sun had just come up and I figured that even though I was pretty sure any rise in temperature was negligable, that I would be ok to ride about 30 miles before I stopped and put in my warmers. My core was at a perfect temp and my feet were still comfortable by this time, but when I would stop at stoplights my breath was billowing out in clouds that kind of made me feel like I was breathing fire,,,,, only a lot colder.

So this was my second day on my cleanse as you all know and I have to admit to a little bit of trepidation in doing this trip with this recent change going on and not sure exactly how it was going to effect my blood sugar, so I turned my OmniPod down by 60% on my basal rate and I was armed with lots of Stinger Packs of Organic Honey fortified with Bee vitamins.

For those of you who are not familiar with type 1 diabetes, your basal rate is a steady drip of insulin that a pump gives you to mimic the way a pancreas gives a variable steady rate of insulin to your body. When you exercise a non diabetics pancreas will slow down the flow of insulin, I have to do it manually.

So I think the sun had been up for maybe 20 minutes when my Garmin started flashing a low battery indicator to me. Under normal circumstances, I would have kept going, but givin the weather and the cleanse, I did not think it was a good idea to continue without knowing how far I had gone or had to go, plus my heart rate is always a good indicator of how I am really doing and without it I am prone to push a little to hard. So I cut my trip short and headed home netting 30 miles yesterday. Next week I will give it another try.

So I got home and was freezing indicating that I should have stopped sooner for the hand and foot warmers. I only warmed up after a nice hot shower. Melissa came home and had made a trip to the Winter Farmers market so she had lots of cools stuff for us to make out lunch.

We cut up and steamed a wonderful combination of cauliflower, bok choy, butternut squash and kale, which we covered with a yummy lemon, garlic, olive oil dressing, toping off the meal with some Trader Joes Organic Black Beans and Quinoa! It was delish and there was a lot of it.

Dinner was a simple Butternut Zuccini Bisk that we made in the blender and through all of this we had some fantastic herbal teas in our little teapot that our friends Brusce and Elizabeth Tapp brought us over from Britain! We are getting a lot of use out of this teapot lately.


So finally the changes that I have noticed so far. This morning my teeth felt really clean and I think whiter. I have not take a bolus for a meal since Friday afternoon at roughly 3pm. I am having to drop my basal rate on my insulin to keep from going to low. Last night I left it at 55% of normal and still dropped 10 points on my blood sugar through the night.


So far so good, and now I am off to a spin class at LA fitnes and in to day 3


Eat Well

Michael

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