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.