Don't Complain To Me About Blisters

The worst day in my parents' lives was the day I was diagnosed with diabetes. Or so they've told me. Close to that would have been the day long term nerve damage was discovered in my feet.

I remember my six monthly visit to the specialist quite vividly. The doctor, the room, it was a different part of the hospital, my dad sitting beside me...even my "poo brown" and khaki school uniform. It's the mood of it that I remember most of all. I hated my relationship with my parents for a long time because of the shame their reactions, to what were essentially my "character flaws", made me feel. Grade three to eight were the most miserable of my life and it turns out this day was a watershed moment.

My parents weren't able to control my diabetes themselves by the time I'd hit grade three because I was pinching extra food and not telling them, so they put the responsibility onto me. I had full control and they asked for verbal and occasionally written results and feedback. I had a knack for numbers and they knew I was smart enough to play the numbers game that diabetes is. Over time, my immaturity and laziness had overcome my own control of my diabetes leading to that day.

My average blood sugar level for the previous three months had been dangerously high.

The doctor needed to do a few exercises. One was to test the nerve endings in my foot. I had to close my eyes so that he could run a cotton ball over the top of my foot to see if I could feel it (similar to the following video).

I could only feel it half of the time.

This is called Neuropathy. This is what I could look forward to if I didn't immediately fix things (and I am forever susceptible).

A triathlete's feet are two of the most stressed parts of their bodies. Not wearing socks when you race tear your feet up with blisters regularly. Overtraining can easily lead to stress fractures amongst other things.

Not having feet that are fully functional would stop any dreams I have in the sport.

This last few months I have been fighting off plantar fasciitis. Through excellent management by my Physio "team" and daily self treatment, I have been able to prevent it from becoming more than a minor restraint from large volumes of running and only minor losses of speed. Of course, strictly maintaining good blood sugar levels is crucial to optimal recovery too.

Last weekend when I raced, I forgot to strap my right foot. If I don't strap it, the sole of my foot, where I strike blisters badly.  I was once racing the Noosa Bolt, which has the biggest crowd for a running race in Australia apart from perhaps the the City to Surf. Not even 2k into the 5k race, I felt my foot tear open and spent every second step of the rest of the race in agony. This was the aftermath:

Last year I copped a bit of flak at work for having to take a day off due to blistering. I don't think there was any appreciation for the fact that the severe blistering I had on my feet after the World Championships in Auckland had become infected. Simply walking from the bedroom to the kitchen was causing my feet to swell to the point they didn't even fit into shoes anymore.

I have a very thick skin, but when it's assumed I am faking my diabetic problems it cuts me deeply. I don't ask for any extra respect because I'm diabetic, in fact I don't like it. It does irritate me though when the fact that I do have diabetes and despite how strong and capable I am, sometimes I do need help or at least patience is ignored.

So to the damage report from last weekend's race. By Tuesday I was able to cut away the bulk of the torn, blistered skin that had by then hardened almost like a callus. It split a little bit by Thursday, but I've been able to take care of this with ointment.

I've been lucky and haven't missed a stride ;) this week because of it, but I am very nervous about their fate. Put it this way, if I looked after myself as poorly as I did when I was in grade five, my blistering feet would always be infected and I would take a year to recover from plantar fasciitis.

Awesome

There is a name out there "Aussam". I may or may not have taught a kid with this name bringing it to my attention. It is said "awesome". It also describes what I think of the name too.


I have been doing a lot of supply work at a school with roughly 800 students. As far as I have been made aware, not one of them have diabetes.With all that we hear about Diabetes in Australia, I've just come to assume that if I meet 1000 people, one will be a Type 1 Diabetic. Particularly with stats like the following:
An estimated 280 Australians develop diabetes every day. The 2005 Australian AusDiab Follow-up Study (Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study) showed that 1.7 million Australians have diabetes but that up to half of the cases of type 2 diabetes remain undiagnosed. By 2031 it is estimated that 3.3 million Australians will have type 2 diabetes (Vos et al., 2004).

http://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/Understanding-Diabetes/Diabetes-in-Australia/

So I found it weird doing the numbers on this school, I hadn't met a diabetic student. Then I discovered something remarkably unexpected, but ever increasing in Australia:

There was a type 1 diabetic at the school.

It was a teacher.

Type 1 Diabetes, also being known as Juvenile Diabetes, is so often only considered to affect children. But if we broke down the age groups for people with the disease, there would be an overwhelming majority as adults.

I didn't get the chance to share with this other teacher that I'm a diabetic and what I do to change how diabetes affects me. This is gnawing at me. It is such a good feeling to reach out to someone with a similar problem to you and help one another or even listen to them, so I honestly can't wait to speak with this colleague.

One thing I found fascinating was something the teacher and the class had done to adapt to diabetes. They have "munch and crunch" time. At 9:30, the students get a piece of fruit from their lunch box and eat it while they do their schoolwork. Not staring outside, not comparing food, not eating chip packets or sandwiches, but eating apples and bananas, while quietly working.

Amazing on so many levels.

Thus, the students learn that the teacher can then also do this at some time during the day and still be able to work. It is a brilliant way to do so many things with the students:

• teach them that diabetics sometimes need food at times other than meal times,
• expose them to diabetic treatment and how the disease does not need to be restrictive,
• demonstrate the benefits of healthy eating, &
• it also gives the teacher a chance to overcome low blood sugar levels.

I've had a couple of low blood sugars while teaching and it takes the wind out of your sails. All you do is hope desperately for the next lunch break. I actually carry sports gels with me to get me through, but they can only get you so far. It's a terrible place to be in, especially when responsible for 20-30 children. Not only are you devoid of energy, but it affects your judgement and particularly your ability to control your emotions. What this teacher has done, without knowing it, has given me a real helping hand continuing on as a teacher. I am looking forward to thanking her for it.

She also had jars of lollies on her desk that were absolutely mouth watering...I resisted!

Race Report

When I first wrote this, I had the writing in italics at the top, but then realised I'd hold the suspense until the end ;)


First of all, I rarely race in the afternoon. Though I prefer it, this race was in the afternoon and requires tight monitoring of my diabetes. A lot of guesswork is involved for me as my blood sugar levels are very sensitive between 1pm and 5pm, the slightest bit of food or insulin can ruin afternoon sessions and normally the following sleep.

I went for the bland lunch of rice followed some time later by yoghurt for lunch. My stomach struggles under race conditions with a lot of foods, so fried rice and variants of, are my regular pre race meal, but I'm very lazy when it comes to cooking and didn't have the effort to do anything more than rice with salts mixed through.

An hour and a half before my race I took a blood sugar level that was far too high.  If you take a quick look at the list of symptoms of this on the Diabetes Australia website here, you will see that this is disastrous for racing. So I did the taboo thing to do at a cycling track and took some extra insulin.

Half an hour later I checked my level again (my last chance to effect a change that wouldn't be too rapid and severe) to find my level was still quite high, but had dropped minimally. Here's where the almost 24 years of experience in sport with diabetes comes in. If any doctor or nurse had come into the situation and seen the numbers I was putting in and getting out, they would have instantly called for a little more insulin. While I was nervous that I was about to ruin my first multisport race since quitting my job to train full time, I had to stick to my educated guess and go ahead without any change.

It's hard to tell what your blood sugar level is doing in the hour before a race because the same sensations of pre-race nerves match those of high blood sugars. It was now time to wait and see, trust my instincts and race my best.


Did a Duathlon yesterday. Run 4.4/Bike 9.6/ Run 3.~/Bike9.6/Run 0.9~k. It turned out to be a really good hit out and pleasantly surprising. I went in with 4 goals and thought that to achieve each of them all at once was going to be an impossible task. I ended up destroying one goal, narrowly beating two of them and only just missing the other.

One awesome thing was that my first 4k time was much faster than the two running races I had done over the last two months. I have been struggling with a plantar fascial problem since March and have only recently been able to lift the training (from minimal to moderate), so to be running 5-10 seconds quicker at this time than last year off much less training is incredibly valuable to my confidence and hopefully my performance.

With the usual boring tri blog race report things out of the way, time to get into the unique perspective I bring, being a diabetic.

My blood sugar level immediately after racing was absolutely perfect.

Fortunately I was right. There are other methods out there, but I can't stand getting plugged in like a poor version of Darth Vader. When I am capable of getting things so right myself.

His SRM must be off the charts

Two things to take away:

1. Training is going very well, &
2. I'm in control of my diabetes.

Checkers

Yesterday I had to spend a bit of time teaching and supporting the teachers of a "special" class of students from grades 1-3 (6ish to 8ish). I had to take one of the kids to the library for half an hour to do some assisted reading. We made a deal that if he read the books, we could play Checkers afterwards.

He was able to read most of the books alright, even though he was picking most of the nouns from the pictures. I almost started a war though by correcting him when the picture looked like a seal (turns out their only notable, visible difference in a stationary, black & white picture is that sea lions' ears are out and seals just have holes).

It was a sea lion. I showed him the word for lion, back a few pages and showed him how the words were the same, but one had "sea"out the front. Nup, I was wrong, he was right. It was a sea lion. I think eventually he just said sea lion to shut me up.

Seal - grey, no visible ear flaps.

Sea lion - brown, visible ear flaps. Also spelt with "lion".

Lion of Flanders :)

Checkers was next up and this is where the "fun" really started.

Rule amendment #1: You put the crown side of the checker face up, even though indicates it is a piece that can go forwards and backwards.

Rule amendment #2: Even though he was the black team, he got to go first.

Rule amendment #3: When you take a piece, you have to hit it as hard as possible with your own piece sending all the other pieces ricocheting all over the place.

Rule amendment #4: If you're about to take a turn that would see you putting your piece in danger, the other person gets to go if you please. Note, opposing playing cannot reciprocate.

Rule amendment #5: The first player to take 6 pieces from the other player wins.

Rule amendment #6: It is ok to beg your opponent not to take your piece and instead take the opponent's piece on the very next turn. Oh, and chastise them for "taking you on".

Rule amendment #7: In fact, #5 is the only way you can take a piece (but again, not your opponent).

Rule amendment #8: If your opponent does manage to take one of your pieces, simply place it back on the board telling them that it wasn't their turn, even if it was.

Rule amendment #9: Only the player making up the rules can move his/her piece backwards without first getting it to the end of the board. I saw this one coming after #1.

Rule amendment #10: Rule #3 can be repeated until amender is satisfied.

Rule amendment #11: If amender's piece is moved so that it is in a corresponding square to opponent's piece, you can take it, since the aim of the game is to make beside then whack it from the board. Opponent must still only take pieces by jumping over amender's pieces.

Rule amendment #12: If you win, you get up and run away immediately.

I was up against it.

I've played against a sibling that would "mysteriously" accuse in Cluedo before anyone had taken a turn and get it right on regular occasions (until they wised up and did it a few turns in), but this was a step above.

I have a problem: I hate losing. Be it a computer game, triathlon, or not perfecting a skill, I can't handle it. I am the type of person who will do it endlessly until I've finally got it right. This is the problem I've had with triathlon: I've never been the winner. It's been the dominant motivation in my life for over 10 years now, my need to get it right.

That's why this is such a big year for me. This is an occasion where I'm drawing a line in the sand and saying if you don't get it right this year, you have to give up. It's been a fantastic motivator. There's possibly only six months left of this sport I love competing in and my very own nature will eat me up if I don't "get it right".

Safe to say, despite my need to win, even little board games, I felt no need to go through another game of Checkers with the kid.

"I resemble a cactus"

I couldn't spend much time with my friends this saturday just gone. I had just pushed myself too far.


On Thursday evening I did a 2hr swim session, followed by 10k tempo run. It's the first time I'd been able to do this for quite some time given problems I had been having with the fascia in my left foot, so it cooked me more than I'd wanted.

Friday was fortunately a recovery day...but I had to teach "prep" (the first year of school, or a preparation year for when school begins the next year - 5 year olds). Kids of this age are fairly easy to teach, but apparently take up so much energy. Especially when your legs are stinging from the previous day's exercise.

There is research suggesting that men respond better to physical reinforcements than verbal. In a teaching context this means high fives, handshakes or my personal favourite (particularly in the lower socio-economic areas I teach) "fist pumps". The action of softly punching each other's clenched fists. As a result, I congratulate the kids with high fives and fist pumps all day long and they enjoy it, regularly running up to me with a big smile and their arm extended, asking for another.

Anyway, when the preps leave in the afternoon, you wish them good afternoon and shake their hand. Well...one kid decided that rather fist pump my fist, while I wasn't paying attention, he would just fist pump my calf, with what was really just a punch! The sad thing was it actually felt really good and he possible released some tightness that stretching hadn't got out of my calf.

I got home and did my hour ride on the trainer and within five minutes, crashed into bed. I was gone. My girlfriend, April, came home to wake me up and ask me what I wanted for dinner and got little response. Next thing I remember was being dragged out to the kitchen for dinner.

The next morning involved the toughest session in my program...

Leaving home at 6, my housemate and I met up with a couple of friends and did an almost 40k loop to Brisbane's bay and on to the criterium track. I ride B grade at the moment which gives me 40 minutes plus 3 laps at an average this day of 41.6kph adding roughly 35k to my ride, as well as some quality riding (top speed in excess of 50kph and from memory the fastest I was leading the group at was 47kph). It's then on home via the coffee shop to shed my companions and on to home for the hardest part of the morning.

Once home, the shoes go on and within 5-10mins I'm out the door for 10ks of running.

1. easy
2. 4:00
3. 3:55
4. 3:50
5. 3:45
6. 3:40
7. 3:35
8. 3:30
9. easy
10. easy

I made it all the way down to 3:35 before I couldn't hold the pace any longer. I have to be happy with the result given the lack of speed and distance since the start of March. I'm especially happy that even with the three easy k's I managed to go sub 40mins for the 10k. 

Given the run is off the back of 90k's in just under 3hrs, I may in fact one day be able to progress to 70.3!

I got through the ride with only 2 gels, but then push down most of a can of lemonade while putting the bike away and slipping into running shoes.  As a recovery, I sit in an actual bath in the backyard with ice and water in it, before having a hot shower and squeezing into compression tights for a calorie packed breakfast.

Shortly afterwards, I pass out: Cactus.

Oh, in case some really stupid person managed to read this far: I don't hit kids or touch them inappropriately...just in case someone really stupid got onto the "interwebs". 

Metabolism?

I live with people who know plenty about the human body. There are also a silly number of medical types in my family. As a result, I have picked up lots of little facts about the human body and how things work. However, my expertise is minimal...


One of the most important things for my care of diabetes is consistency. Consistency brings the ability to predict what my body will do, so that I can nail the food I eat and the insulin I put into my body.

There is one thing that ruins this for me: adaptation.

As my body adapts to a training load, my metabolism shifts. Usually one week into a six week block, very suddenly, the amount of insulin I require drops. This will also happen again late into the block of training. As I go through a recovery phase, it usually resets itself mostly.

This brings both benefits and negatives.

The major negative is that it's hard to tell when these drops will happen, the indicators are often similar to those of much more short terms problems. This means that for one or two days I will get stuck in the middle of a training session (and normally sleep) with a low blood sugar level that requires copious amounts of whatever sugar I can keep nearby.

The major positive is that it is a great indicator of how I'm responding to a training load. It's great rolling into a major race, having only a few weeks earlier received an accountable tip from your body that it's ready to go.

So today I tried to have my morning sleep after training and not getting called in to teach at any schools, only to be woken 40 - 50 minutes in with a low blood sugar. Low blood glucose levels deplete a few things, mainly conscious and coherent thought. Resilience is almost always lost for me in these cases - an athlete's worst nightmare. When I wake with a low blood sugar, it's normally sweating (I promise to divulge the cool thing I've learnt about this another time) and with a desperate desire to down any sweet, sugary food available.

Today, with a second swimming session soon to come, I downed a can of lemonade and two large bowls of corn flakes. My swim warm up resembled the discomfort Ron Burgundy felt as he stumbled down the hot street.

This happens a lot.

Where to with this? Two plans:
1. Make sure I have plenty of gels and sports drink tomorrow for the 2hr swim, 1hr run. Of course, my needle too.

2. Keep on working hard, improve my results and get a chance to spend time with/talk to these guys:
Team Novo Nordisk

Just one of the things I'm going to have to finally grow up and deal with as best as possible this year :)

Why do I run?

About a year ago a friend of mine was looking for motivation to train day in day out as she went through some pretty tough times and asked me "Why do you do run?"

I gruffly responded "It's the goal I set myself."

Her expression indicated that she had taken what I said on board but saw no use from it. The reasons why I pursue my dream in triathlon runs much deeper than that and it had irritated me that I hadn't been able to describe in better fashion these motivations.

I spent a few days pondering it and finally wrote this whilst on the windtrainer.

Running is easier than living. If running is just a part of life, then it simply has to be. So I treat (and believe) running is an analogy for my life.

Every run is a challenge and a challenge with a goal. If I can't get up and go running, put my shoes on and go running, or say "see you in a little while, I'm going running" to my friends, then how can I expect to do that with life's real challenges?

When I run, I have to make sure I meet my goals. If I can't, how am I going to meet the necessary goals in life's challenges?

I will get tired legs, but I'll learn to overcome that. Someone will beat me, but I'll learn to beat them. I will have to run up hills, steep hills... a lot, but I will learn how to run them. As I learn how to do all these things and more, I learn how to overcome challenges and I feel it gets easier to overcome new ones. The more I don't overcome them, the harder I find it to meet new ones.

I run so that when something comes in my life that is like a marathon, a steeple, a flat out sprint or a cross country on Willandra Hill, I am ready to meet the challenge.  

Everyone runs, everyone challenges themselves to run, but not everyone succeeds at running.

Everyone lives, everyone meets challenges in life, but not everyone succeeds at life.

I will run and I will succeed.

This is a youtube clip of the Willandra Cross Country course. It doesn't capture the length of the main hill, nor the nasty little kickers at the far end of the course that makes it the hardest Cross course in Australia, but it gives a some indication and it has better production value than the others.