Living Well With Diabetes

I didn’t have internet access last night so this is another posting which is a summary of my rides from yesterday and today.

Yesterday, I got an early start leaving Wilsonville because I knew I had a big day ahead of me &mdsh; about 80 miles through the Coast Range — trying to get to the coast in one day.

In the end, I didn’t quite make it to the coast. But, I made it to the Pacific Coast Highway near Beaver, Oregon which is close enough. In fact, it wasn’t until about 44 miles into today’s ride that I got a clear view of the ocean unobstructed by bays, harbors, cars, trucks, trains, trees, private residences, or businesses. It seems there’s always something in the way.

To get to Beaver yesterday, I took the Nestucca River Road from Carlton. The Nestucca River Road has been designated at one of Oregon’s top ten bicycle rides so I couldn’t resist even though it was a little bit out of my way. The last twenty miles or so of it are mostly downhill on a forest road running parallel to the Nestucca River. There was little to no traffic on it once I left Carlton. Of course, there was a price to pay to enjoy the good part of the Nestucca River Road. That price was about 20 miles of difficult riding at the beginning. Just outside of Carlton, there were steeply rolling hills. As I got closer to Meadow Lake, the grade steepened dramatically. I measured four sections where the grade was 10+ percent and one of those was a tortuous 13% and a quarter mile or so in length.

Not knowing where the summit was or how many more climbs there were, I was getting a little worried about my water supply. Fortunately, the 2000-foot summit at Meadow Lake was the only summit to speak of and the remainder of the ride was mostly downhill. When I got to Beaver, I only had about 500 ml of water left.

I stayed last night at a campground just north of Beaver, Oregon. This morning, I slept in to 6:15 AM — the latest I’ve slept in on the entire tour — because it was cold and cloudy outside. Boy, that was something new. Up until today, it has been sunny and hot every day of the tour. The number one priority for me has been to do whatever I needed to do to keep cool. And that meant getting up at 5 AM or earlier in order to get started, carrying as much water as I could, and when I’m done riding, keeping cool in any way I could.

Here are some photos from yesterday’s ride:

Today, for something completely different, I struggled to keep warm as I broke camp. I started riding wearing leg warmers, a fleece jacket and a windbreaker. It wasn’t until noon that I took off the fleece jacket and leg warmers and put on sunscreen.

There was one difficult climb today through the Oswald West State Park. It was not much of a climb compared with yesterday’s ascents through the Coast Range, but it was made more challenging because of the amount of traffic on the road and the narrow width of the shoulder.

The biggest challenge today was my blood sugar. For some reason, I’ve been struggling with keeping them under control today and to a lesser extent yesterday. High blood sugars while I’m riding are so unusual for me that I decided there must be something wrong. The usual suspects when this happens are 1) infusion site problems, 2) insulin supply, 3) an undetected pod malfunction, and 4) human error.

So, I switched to a new infusion site yesterday. Since that involves a new OmniPod, I could eliminate 1) and 3) as a possibility. Well, my problems continued again today. In fact, I did the first 45 miles of my ride today on water, 8 ounces of juice, half an Odwalla bar and a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter (that was breakfast). Still, my blood sugars hovered in the 150-200 range. I’m usually hovering around 100 and I’m eating pretty freely when I’m riding. About lunch time, I abandoned my usual cycling basal delivery profile (reduced by 30% from my normal rate) and went back to my full non-cycling delivery rate. I also started bolusing for everything I ate (usually, I don’t have to bolus at all while I’m riding). Clearly something is not right.

It could be the insulin supply. That seems unlikely though because the insulin I’m using is from a brand-new bottle I purchased in Wilsonville.

I might switch to yet another OmniPod unit tonight. I’ll position it on my hip which is a location which has provided good absorption for me.

Photos from today:

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