Alone with My Blood Sugar

I’m one week away from the Tel Aviv marathon and me and the guys from my running group are starting to get very nervous about our up coming event.  It’s not the distance we’re worried about (we’ve all run marathons before) but the weather. 

On Tuesday (the 5^th), ten days before race day, we started looking to see what kind of weather we could expect. The 10-day forecast predicted that Friday would be wormer than usual, but much better than the rest of the week, which is supposed to be hot with highs at around 90. But as the days have gone by, and the forecast has become more accurate it looks as if Friday is going to be pretty bad, with highs in the mid to high 80’s.

It’s true that the weather may change and may turn out to be better than predicted, but after months of training none of us want to find ourselves running a bad race, slowing down trying not to dehydrate.

So we’ve started thinking about Plan B, another marathon somewhere else. Although most of the big marathons are closed by now there are some – Milan, Hamburg, Zurich… – that we may be able to get into. This is far from ideal, since it means postponing the marathon by a few weeks, but it may be better than trying to run a marathon in a heat wave.

The nice thing about all of this is that I’m not alone in this and if I do decide to go abroad to run, I won’t be doing it alone.

What I am alone in is my crappy blood sugar control. The last few weeks have been a little bit of a blood sugar roller-coaster ride. I’ve had more morning highs, most of which felt like rebounds from nighttime lows, than I’ve had since going on the pump. I don’t know why this has been happening but it has been frustrating me and making me feel like a bad diabetic.

This morning when I woke up my blood sugar was 230. An hour later, before I started running – I didn’t take any insulin – It was up to 265. As expected my blood sugar dropped after I started running, and after 5 miles I felt fine, not good but fine.

This has been happening so often that I’ve stopped telling my running mates about it. I feel as if it’s turned into an excuse, something to say so if I don’t run well it isn’t my fault.

Unlike the weather, which is out of my control and shared by all, my blood sugar is mine and mine alone and although friends may be understanding and sympathetic. I feel alone in my worries and frustrations. 

Michael Aviad

Michael Aviad is co-founder of ASweetLife. He was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2002. Michael was born in Santa Barbara and grew up in Jerusalem. He studied law and after passing his bar exam went on to get an MBA with a major in finance. Michael worked for many years as an economist. He and his wife Jess, also a type 1 diabetic, have three sons. Michael loves to run and is always training for the next marathon.

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