A Diabetes Exercise Success Story

I write so many blog posts about my difficulties with diabetes and exercise that I feel the need to share an actual success story. Yesterday was a beautiful fall day in Pennsylvania, and my husband and I decided to take part in the annual Covered Bridges ride in Bucks County — a gorgeous, if hilly, 33 miles through fall foliage. 

I’ve done a lot of biking with diabetes; in fact, I was diagnosed with Type 1 just three months before I was scheduled to take part in a cross-USA bike ride for Habitat for Humanity. I was likely still honeymooning, but biking 70-80 miles a day for 63 days with newly diagnosed diabetes was a challenge, to say the least (I’ll admit that I got pretty good about finding people who’d let me hitch-hike with my bike). The upside, though, was that exercising for eight to nine hours a day gave me tremendous leeway with what I could eat.

Suffice to say that the 13 ensuing years have not involved spending my workday biking, but I always think of that experience whenever I’m going to do a long period of exercise, and I take a couple of steps to try to get a good outcome. Namely: 

1. An hour (or ideally 1.5 hours) before I start, I set a temporary basal rate of 50 percent for the time I anticipate exercising, plus an hour or two afterwards. 

2. I test before I start and every hour or 45 minutes into the exercise (and I carry my CGM).

3. I eat more carbs than normal for breakfast and I under-bolus for them. I normally also eat several tablespoons of peanut butter, though I don’t know how much of that is a diabetes tactic and how much is a sign that I welcome excuses to eat peanut butter. 

4. I carry a variety of sugar sources with me — yesterday I had glucose tablets and weird Gatorade chew things (I also usually carry vanilla bean Gu), and I make sure to drink a lot of water. 

5. If I eat carbs at rest stops (which I recommend doing because I, at least, can definitely feel the energy boost when I start biking again!) I take a very, very, very small amount of insulin to cover it. Yesterday for example, I ate two Oreos, a random cookie, and half a banana at a rest stop (note: I do not normally eat cookies) and took 0.4 units for them, and was fine. 

6. I keep testing after I finish, and I continue to slightly underbolus for several hours afterwards. 

As always, this represents my personal experience and is not any sort of medical recommendation. But yesterday it actually worked perfectly. After slightly rising after my peanut butter and strawberry breakfast, my blood sugar remained between 70 and 110 mg/dl for the entire ride (my Dexcom thought I’d gone low at one point, but finger sticks showed it was incorrect). We went out to brunch with my parents afterwards, and I ate — wait for it — a piece of a bagel (!!!!). I mean, like not a whole one, but more bagel than I normally would consume (which would be 0 bagels). Blood sugar was totally fine. 

We finished our day by going to an orchard to pick apples (Stayman Winesaps are in season, which almost make winter worth it). It was a fantastic weekend, and such a relief to have diabetes behave itself. Now, if only the Covered Bridges ride were *every weekend*. . . . 

(Anyone else have suggestions for how to handle longer-than-normal exercise sessions?)

Catherine Price

Catherine Price (www.catherine-price.com) was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. She has written for publications including The Best American Science Catherine Price is a professional journalist who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. Her work has been featured in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Men’s Journal, Health Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, and Outside, among others. A graduate of Yale and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism

View Author Blog

Catherine Price

Catherine Price was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. She has written for publications including The Best American Science Catherine Price is a professional journalist who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. Her work has been featured in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Men’s Journal, Health Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, and Outside, among others. A graduate of Yale and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism