Therapeutic Use Exemption

So this week I've had to sit down with a doctor and do something that I have mixed feelings about. To compete and use insulin, a banned drug, I need what is known as a "Therapeutic Use Exemption" (TUE).

I appreciate very much the fight for drugs and the accommodation made for athletes like myself who have to use an otherwise illegal substance. But at the same time, it angers me to have to go through the process, answer honestly rude questions, ask for approval to compete and to have to justify my conflicting interest of being an elite athlete and wanting to live through the next two days.

It's all because of people like Stuart O'Grady who this week admitted to using illegal substances leading into and during the 1998 Tour de France.

Nothing I can do will wipe the smile off his face.

Tyler Hamilton apparently details some of his insulin drug use in his book The Secret Race. He has done me a small favour by saying that it basically messed him up when he tried it.

This is not a problem that only I have faced as prominent U.S swimmer and type 1 diabetic, Gary Hall exposed the same difficulty I face with my need to use a banned substance. A far more articulate report than I could write can be found here. This article brilliantly details not only the science behind using insulin as a means of doping, it also explains why I am not cheating by using it. This post is different to the article because I want to discuss how it hurts me to have to deal with it.

To compete domestically, I must complete an application and have it approved by the Australian Sports Drug Medical Advisory Committee. This form stings on several occasions:

1. Medical/Treatment details asks for the duration of treatment. My doctor's answer is "Life". Thanks for the reminder.
   
2. The next section then requires evidence confirming the applicant's diagnosis. There is a long, detailed paragraph about the standard of evidence required that I won't bore you with. I have had diabetes for almost 24 years. Every single day I have had to inject myself with insulin several times just to stop from falling violently ill and then...dying. This might be over the top for you, but it's my reality. As you can see, it's something that must dominate when I consider my day and my life. Diabetes is as much a part of me as your face is of you. Have you ever been asked for evidence that you have a face?
3. The next question asks why you haven't tried another method if there is one. There is no other method, not even the "I survived cancer without chemo" nuts don't even try to say there is one for diabetes. You know how kids read books and escape into them, imagining whether Arthur would give them a seat at the round table or whether their wolf would kill Joffrey Baratheon? I didn't. I just read on knowing that I would have dropped dead in a few days because there is only one treatment for diabetes and it was developed in the last 100 years. One treatment, one chance.
   

To compete internationally, I must also complete one for the International Triathlon Union. It is very much the same but it gives me an opportunity go over the problem I have with proving that I have diabetes. I can recall several images in my mind of the two weeks when I developed and was diagnosed with diabetes. I could make a picture book of it all the detail is so expansive. 

The logo of one of the hospitals I was treated at.

It must be similar for my parents. They also had to endure it all and every day since. While it couldn't possibly be as integral a part of their lives, the concept of proving my condition is a ridiculous and unforeseeable event to them too. So much so, they threw the initial, key doctor's reports out. All I have for evidence is a report from when I twelve that I had no complications from diabetes and one from when I was twenty-two saying that I had good control at the time. Hardly "beyond reasonable doubt", better on a "balance of probabilities" though.

The generations of athletes that have tried to cheat and use drugs that people use to stay alive have insulted me on an existential level. Nothing reminds me more of how real diabetes is than filling these applications out. There is one true positive though.

I am allowed to compete.

I've heard it argued that there should be no such thing as TUE's as they can also be abused by athletes (if you want to see my blood boil, show me someone using a fake TUE), but given the necessity to fight doping, they are damn great.

My sincerest thanks to those with the intelligence to create and allow TUE's, for all the negatives they expose and flaunt, I would rather face that everyday than not race and receive the joy and meaning it gives me. Maybe when what you love is threatened is when you realise how important it is to you.

Rolling the dice

As a preface I will admit that I enjoy gambling. On a daily basis I will weigh up the potential benefit against the likely loss, decide whether the loss is acceptable and then "roll the dice". I like that I'm brave enough to chance a loss for gain.


When I was a kid, I was an avid reader. The Ashton Scholastic book catalogue was associated with joy for me and mum always let me get a few of the books in it. I was part of advanced reading groups in school and I had to do the reading associated with a Law degree.

It was the law degree that killed reading for me. I was studying a double degree in Business and Law, meaning five subjects a semester for five years. This meant that I would often be set in excess of 500 pages of reading per week. That volume alongside training roughly 20 hours per week for triathlon and trying to be a remotely social 20 year old was too much. By the end of it, I was over reading.

I didn't give it up completely. I am still addicted to trawling the internet for some new information on anything I'm interested in and I think I'm also addicted to reading the news online.

But then came along a little magic...Game of Thrones. When I finished season one, I was so hooked and so desperate to find out what happened that I found that it was a series of books and bought the second one. A month later, the third. A fortnight later, the fourth and so on it has gone. In the two years since, I've smashed through books at an abnormal rate for how busy my life is (all apart from The Silmarillion, but if you've read that, you'll know why it took me three months).

"There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Iluvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest harkened; for each comprehended only that part of the mind of Iluvatar from which he came, and in understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet eve as they listened they came deeper to understanding, and increased in unison and harmony." Opening paragraph of The Silmarillion

I have stolen some books from my parents' place. One on sports psychology that gets you to do an activity where you imagine yourself in ten years time and even have a conversation with this version of you.

I got stuck.

I can't get past the next five months. I know what the three different outcomes will be for the following year, but as to which will happen I truly don't know. This is a complete gamble on my life and its future, to the point that I can't even begin to imagine where I might be in ten years. I can tell you where my friends and family will be in ten years, but not myself.

I'm not sure if it's scary or exciting or both. At least I know it's important and it means...well, my life.

School Holidays!

One of the annoying things about being Australian and being almost addicted to watching television shows like Game of Thrones, is that every now and then there is a week where we don't get an episode and have no idea why. There is always a good reason, but given that I'm not in the United States, it isn't obvious. I guess you are all on the receiving end of one of these delays and it was all because of school holidays.

To all the people with real jobs, you might laugh at me and say that I should have even more spare time, it's not quite the case. My girlfriend is a teacher too and so all of a sudden I have a buddy who I must fool into thinking that I spend every moment thinking about her and not about triathlon!

Then there's that whole routine I'm going to keep harping on to you about. Consistency is the key to my success - in triathlon and diabetes especially.

While it's school term my life exists as such:

4AM - Alarm gets hit for another 10minutes of snooze

4:20 - Pre training yogurt. Yep, every morning six days a week I have about 200-300g of yogurt.

5 - Roll out for cycling or drive to swimming

6:45 - Breakfast

7-8 - Wait for phone call regarding which school I may be going to that day. Sometime I get booked in advance, in which case, I can just get ready and go.

8:30 - Either school starts or I return to bed for a 2 hour sleep.

12-1 - Lunch

3 - Afternoon tea before training. Guess what, yogurt again!

4 - Afternoon training

6-6:30 - Dinner (yeah, dinner is cooked for me, but I do have to clean up afterwards as part of the deal)

7-8:30 - Clean up from dinner and try to put to rest all the silly little curiosities my head creates. This is usually solved by surfing the net for ridiculous amounts of time ploughing through race results and news sites for any skerrick of new information. 

8:30 - try not to let myself get distracted and go to bed.

That is literally it. If I'm not teaching, I might spend the day blogging, cleaning one of the 9 bikes at our house at the moment or wasting my life in the latest computer app/game I've discovered.

Now when it's school holidays, this all goes out the window. Just like the kids went nuts in Lord of the Flies as soon as they lost their institutions of civilisation, my consistency went out of the door too.

I was spared the cold morning starts and was able to ride once the sun came up. This also saw me having breakfast two or three hours later. It often meant, that because I felt full, I would have a smaller lunch than normal. After almost a week of this I cracked and cracked hard.

It has taken almost four years, but I can finally start to put my body through enough training that I actually have to start eating to assist my recovery. It has taken so long to bend my body back into the shape that it can handle training hard again, I just wasn't ready for it with my nutrition.

After four days of eating basically twice as much as usual for each meal, I was feeling good enough to push in training sessions without going into a completely fatigued state. I had kept training in the mean time, but more testing how much I could push, rather than going all in with my efforts.

That first day back I was stoked to post season bests for each leg, swimming, cycling and running. I even got through that killer 80k ride, 10k build run, more comfortably than before...and then I got sick. 

I don't know if it's just me being soft, my having a funny sinus system like my mum or subconsciously following what my mum does when she gets sick or if colds actually hit me harder, or even something to do with diabetics poor response to colds, but for what went through my girlfriend in two days, blew me apart for 4 and had me sleeping for about 16-18  hours.

The cold basically shifted my program around and gave me a forced recovery week, one week early. Starting monday I will be back at week one of a crucial six week training block, which will really need to get me up to a level where I can race professionally in Asia in a few months without making a complete fool of myself.

And that is why this week we have that episode like the one in Survivor where they recap then entire season so far, with never before seen footage. Basically as normality returns to my life, so will my training and so will the interestingly unique perspectives.

Next on Tri Being Juvenile:

• I detail some of my training partners, why they are brilliant and why I do all of my training by myself;
• I do a pictorial "One week of training in the life of" brought to you by my sponsors...which is why this will never happen &
• I do a revealing investigation into what happens when the coach is away and you're left with the assistant coach: