June 28, 2008
Mari

My journey toward completing a Long Course/Half Ironman Triathlon in 2009 with the newly formed Team WILD Triathlon Team has officially begun! On June 14, 2008, in Portland, Oregon, in the fabulous company of my brother Marty, who also has Type 1 diabetes, and my sister Maureen, who doesn’t have Type 1 but who gets assigned to teach every 3rd grader in her school who has Type 1 because she gets it, I completed my very first 13.1 mile run. YEE HA!!!
We participated in the absolutely gorgeous Helvetia Half Marathon, put on by a local running group called Run with Paula. I didn’t get to Run with Paula myself, but I sure did enjoy starting the run next to my siblings. They of course, are much faster and more accomplished runners, so I smiled and cheered them on, as within moments of starting they bounded off ahead. I knew I would see them at the finish line and that gave me strength.
I used a 20 week training plan for novice runners put together by Hal Higgins (you can find these plans easily on the internet). My Denver triathlon club, CWW, recommended I use his plan to train. The longest run I had done up to the actual event was an 11 mile run. Turns out, the plan and me following it, had me ready for the day of! I woke up feeling excited and ready. Out on the course, I knew I was strong enough and totally physically capable of completing the event. Even me, slow runner that I am!

RUNNING STRATEGY
My goal was to finish in under 3 hours. I did it in 2:55. I used a negative split strategy, because I wanted to be able to run the entire last 1.5 or so miles and not be completely trashed at the end. Since I’m so slow, doing negative splits meant walking a good portion of the first 4 to 5 miles. Which I did, and it worked well. I generally kept my heart rate low, in zones 2 and 3, and I walked, if running was causing my heart rate to get too high.
At every mile marker, I calculated what time it would be in 15 minutes and my goal was to get to the next mile marker in under 15 minutes. I thought of Terry Fox, the Canadian runner who ran across most of Canada with an artificial leg, his real leg lost because of cancer, and who ultimately died from cancer while attempting to complete his cross country run. Terry Fox used to say to himself, “I’m just going to run to that tree.” Then when he got to the tree he’d say, “now I’ll just run to that signpost.” And so on, until he’d ended up running a marathon every day for months at a time. It’s like anything in life, just break it down to a bite sized amount, then do it. The strategy worked for me, because my average pace was 13.24 minutes per mile. Really fantastic for me!
DIABETES STRATEGY
My diabetes strategy on the day of the event was the result of lots of trial and error from my long runs I did in training. Trying different foods, different basal rates, different bolus amounts for the food I ate before the long run. And of course, writing everything down and analyzing it. I absolutely love it when the trial and error work pays off and the day of the event things go practically perfectly.
Here’s a run down:
Got up at 5:15 AM. BG was 146
Ate 40 grams carbs of oatmeal, fruit and 3 egg whites fried, took 10% less than my normal bolus, so I took 4.1 units.
I was wearing a CGM, (continuous glucose monitor. It measures glucose every 5 minutes and charts the trends of one’s glucose) so I watched my glucose levels and they held steady at about 140 – 155. At the start of the race, the CGM said I was 145, but to make sure, I tested using the meter and I was 95. I ate 27 grams of gel, drank a bit of the Clif Bar booth sport drink and I turned down my basal rate to 70%. (my plan had been to go down to 75%, but I thought, hey, things are a bit exciting, I’m going a bit longer, I’ll try dropping the amount a little more.) I had originally planned not to drop my basal rate until about 15 to 20 minutes before the start of the event. For running, I seem to need more insulin on board than I do for cycling. Knowing this has been the result of lots and lots of trying things out.
Then for the entire rest of the run, I was in diabetes heaven! The CGM essentially flat lined at between 100 and 126 for the 3 hours I was out there. It was absolutely amazing. I tested using the meter about every 30 minutes and was between 85 and 119 every time. I ate 3 more packets of gel, one about every hour, which is ideal for anyone, diabetic or not. Plus I drank a gulp of Glukos sport drink that the event offered about every 2 miles or so. It was pretty tasty and was a little pick me up boost. I never felt like I ran out of fuel and I never felt like I was having to eat too much. Again, my version of heaven on earth.

Best of all, my blood sugar never even came close to feeling or being too low or too high. And what a difference that makes to athletic performance!! It’s so crazy fun to be figuring this out, little by little. Year after year, it does get easier and make more sense. Not that one can ever get cocky or too confident, as it does change and the body is always full of surprises!
The rest of the day I watched my blood sugar and kept my basal a little bit lower than usual (about 10% lower) but didn’t do much else different. I didn’t have any lows until Sunday morning, but even that one I anticipated as Dr. Matt Corcoran has observed in my charts the tendency to have exercise induced lows about 16 to 20 hours after completing the exercise. Go figure! (And, Matt, thank you for your insight and support!)
CROSSING THE FINISH LINE
The last stretch of road coming into the Helvetia stadium was actually rather lonely. There wasn’t any action of any sort, so at first I kept wondering if we really had another bunch of miles to run, but my watch and the mile markers said, no, I was getting close to the end. I felt really strong and I was able to meet my goal of having enough gas in the tank to run the final stretch and not walk.
Then all of a sudden, there were a whole lot of people cheering and I saw Mo and Marty screaming and yelling and smiling and jumping up and down and calling out my name!!!! They had finished in 2:04 and 2:05 respectively, and thus had been hanging out watching people finish for a while, but they hadn’t run out of cheering power! Seeing them there made my heart open up just a little bit more, they are such amazing people, I am so lucky to be related to them!
At this point, the now familiar and powerful surge of joy and excitement that comes upon nearing the completion of a really challenging goal flooded my being, and gave me just that little bit of extra kick to just run like the wind all the way to the very finish, which was inside the stadium. I could tell and feel that I was strong and doing just what I had set out to do: get comfortable with running 13.1 miles. It still amazes me: I am an athlete. (can you believe it???!)
We then ate some fantastic hamburgers and chips and sat on the grass in the sunshine and told each other our race stories. It was incredible to be able to share this amazing athletic experience with two of my most favorite people in the world. The family that runs together, stays together! We’ve already promised to do our next half marathon together in Denver in October. Want to join us??!