Monday, August 24, 2009

Baker training ride #2

Sunday, we decided to drive up to Mt. Baker and do one last drill from Glacier to the top before the official Baker race on Sept 13th (which is now open, last 2 miles was closed on our training ride #1 June 29th).
Gina was going to watch my son Julien somewhere up the mountain and join us all at the end.
Things started well for me at 6am (wake-up) with a BG at 83 (nice, my targets are 85-95) and a low reservoir alert all freaking night. Ate 104g of carbs for breakfast (eggs, 4 slices of chicken, tomatoes, 3 slices of whole bread with butter and nutella).
Gina, Julien and I took the road to Woodinville where we met up with the boys (and now girl...), arrived at Glacier at around 10am and started the competitive ride up Mt. Baker (24 miles, 4,800ft elevation gain). Checked my BG one last time at the start, I was at 109, my CGM (yeah I am back on it) was reading 94. Right off the bat you start to climb on the rollers when at about 6 miles into comes the one that always kicks my ass. It's about a 2 miles steep roll that brought my heart rate up to 178 which I guess I never recovered from (I usually have no problem recovering from that on our grueling Wednesday rides...). Mike was kind enough (as always) to wait for me and "coach" me on my breathing, and to also tell me to eat and drink more. I let him go at his pace so that he could catch the rest of the group up the road even though Chris was now nice enough to pace me back almost into the entire group. But knowing what was up ahead (12 miles of non stop 7% grade uphill, I let them jump up and decided to conserve whatever left over energy I had (or was lacking) to finish up at my own pace.
And what a crappy pace this was. I could not get my speed higher than 7.4 miles per hour for the most part and my heart rate higher than 155. Not sure why still but it was painful, and very lonely up the side of the mountain. For the first time since I have been riding up baker (about 8 times now?) I did not enjoy this moment.
I finished in pain and little air in my longs in about 2h05min, BG at 137, CGM at 98.
I opted to drive down with Gina and Julien in my car as I was very sad of my "performance" .
Overall on the ride I ate: 4 vanilla GU, about 10 sharkies, 1 and 1/2 bottle of 2 scups each accelerate sports drink, 1 Milky Way. A chocolate/peanut butter bar and banana before the ride.
Jana (Mike's mother) as always was very much motherly and prepared us all an egg salad on bread (no insulin for it). I checked my BG at 148 at 3:13pm and 126 at the "Beer Shrine" at 4:01 (remember no insulin) where we all decided to have a late lunch at 3pm or so. Good thing I didn't inject insulin at time of order because it took them a good 40 minutes to serve our big table.
Spend some time in Bellingham with my Chérie and Julien where I had a cold coffee with milk (I shot .4u for it which I found to be pretty devastating later in the evening).
Drove back home talking about politics with my honey and arrived at home where a Hypo hit me like a bus in the face, testing at 50! CGM reporting a safe 88 trending down (no arrows) to 80 at 8:36.
Decided to go eat something in a hurry! at a Thai place where I shot 4.1u for 92 guestimated gramms of carbs with a BG at now 52.
Went to bed at 66, took a muscle milk to test again before closing my eyes at 64 (do not try this at home) but I had my personal nurse laying next to me for the entire night as well as my CGM alarming me every 20 minutes of a low from 4:22am until 6:42am with the lowest at 47 at 5:22am.
I didn't do anything about them because I wasn't feeling it much. Finally tested when I woke up at 6:48 with a BG at 91 CGM still reporting 58. (trust your body...)
Anyways, I think what screwed me up with the TRUE low at 50 at around 8pm was the stupid non calculated bolus 0f 0.4u I took with the coffee (forgetting how strong they make them with very little milk) and of course still trending down since my body was still on the mountain burning about 2000 calorie.

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