I ran 17.5 miles this morning. I set off at 6:00am and met up with some of the runners from my training group about 4miles into the run. All three of them are much faster than I am. (They run marathons at 3:10-3:30.) I ran 6 miles with them until I felt I couldn’t keep up.
I continued to run at a faster pace than I had planned and finished the distance in 2 hour and 26 minutes. I was very happy when I finished the run and my blood sugar was perfect – 113.
But the day did not start off that way. When I got up at 5:00am to get ready for my run, my blood sugar was a surprisingly high 253. I decided I was running anyway and I took my first gel 15 minutes later.
I’d been surprised to see my BS that high because I had taken more insulin the night before than I’d taken in a long time. Dinner was pretty standard and included chicken (in tomato sauce), quinoa, salad and some greens. I took 7 units of insulin to cover the relatively large portion of quinoa I ate. (I was carb loading for my run.) Two hours after dinner my blood sugar was 250. (I started 93.) I decided to take 2 more units of Apidra and hoped that my blood sugar would go down without dropping low.
At 11:30pm, 2 hours after taking my second injection of Apidra, I checked my blood sugar again. It was 270! I couldn’t believe it. I had eaten a small portion of sugar free ice cream (sometimes even cavemen crave sweets!), but with all the insulin I thought I would be fine. I guess that’s what I get for breaking my Paleo diet for a chemically sweetened dairy snack. So I took two more units of insulin and set an alarm for 1:30am.
At 1:30am, like a robot, I sat up, checked my blood sugar and could not believe what it was 255. I had injected myself four times that evening (including my Lantus) and ended up with 255! Too tired and sick of injecting, I went back to sleep without taking a correction bolus, and hoped things would be better in the morning.
What bothered me more than the unexplainable high was the fact that I had poked and punctured myself so many times in the process of trying to get my blood sugar down.
As usual, I had running to fall back on. So if you ever find yourself in a similar situation consider running 17.5 miles. If it doesn’t make you feel great at least it will lower your blood sugar.
Wow. So glad to see that I’m not the only athletic diabetic that deals with this. I seem to have this happen a lot more now that I’m mostly made up of muscle. Perhaps it’s our injection sites letting us down? But yea, just so you know we all feel weird and exhausted after all we do and none of the medicine seems to wrk like it should. Thank goodness for our love of running! :)
I completely relate. I had similar weirdness earlier this week – no amount of insulin seemed to be bringing down my BG, but the one thing I COULD count on was a run. And I love that running is so dependable, such a constant companion in my diabetes management. Thanks for writing!