Change is Coming.........

Just wanted to let you know that change is coming both to this blog and professionally as well.

A couple of quick updates:

• On the Type 1 Diabetes front, my most recent A1C on September 1st that I was punishing myself to achieve a better reading came in at a very good 7.1%!! In looking back over my numbers over the past 10 years, including the years I was on my Insulin pump, it matched my lowest A1C ever!! I don't need to tell you, but hard work and persistence always pays off in the end.

• With regards to the 5K Buddy Run in Wake Forest that I participated in back on September 16th, I set a goal of completing the race in under 25:00. We were fortunate to have caught a bluebird in that they weather was perfect for the race, only 60 degrees and dry, after a scorching week of temperatures and thunderstorms leading up to race day. I started out with a good pace and maintained it throughout the middle of the race, and only really struggled right at the end due to the nearly quarter mile hill at the very end. But as the finish line came in clear sight with the electronic timer above, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was going to eclipse my goal by more than a minute. I crossed the line in 23:49 and can honestly say that I was pleased with my results. There's something about running with/against other people that always gets my competitive juices flowing. After more than 25 years since my last race, I can assure you that my next race will come considerably sooner than that!!

• More updates and changes coming soon, I'll keep you posted.
  

September 1, 2011 A1C

Well gang, tomorrow is another one of those judgment days.

You know, those quarterly appointments when you go to your Endocrinologist and get your A1C checked to see how you've been doing with your blood sugar readings over the last three months.

You always wonder if you've done enough with your monitoring, diet and exercise to lower your A1C to the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Type 1 recommended number of below 7%.

The following list is my last five A1C's by date and the corresponding average blood glucose number.

• 4-19-2010 7.3% and 165
• 7-21-2010 7.5% and 172
• 10-11-2010 7.2% and 162
• 3-3-2011 7.5% and 172
• 6-1-2011 7.4% and 168

I could give you a longer history with my A1C's, but you get the picture of where I've been for roughly the last year and a half while attempting to gain better control of it.

Kind of like life, the last year and a half of Diabetic control has had its ups and downs. Fortunately for me, the peaks and valleys with these A1C's have been moderate to say the least in comparison to A1C's of years gone by. But over that time period I've recently become more vigilant with attempting to lower my A1C to the ADA recommended level of below 7.0%. One of the main reasons for my vigilance has been the Diabetic Online Community (DOC). Reading and following what so many of you go through each and every day has inspired me to do a better job with taking better care of myself. I know I've never been in this battle of control alone, but it sure makes it easier to read a blog or a tweet and say "Yes, I've been there and I can do this too!!" Another reason for my vigilance has been my family. As you get older with this disease, and I'm now one month shy of a full 26 years with Type 1, it becomes increasingly difficult to get out of bed or up from the couch to exercise or put the fork down when something mouth watering appears before you on the breakfast, lunch or dinner table. But I want to be around a lot longer for my family whether they want me or not!! I say that jokingly despite how it may read!!

So what have I done in the past 92 days since my last A1C? Well, I've exercised on 68 of those 92 days or roughly 73.91% of the time. I've also put the fork down at large meals and I've done better with making choices of eating healthier meals and or snacks which at the end of the day has always been my great undoing. Not surprisingly, I've lost nearly 10 pounds of just hanging around weight. And on top of all that I've monitored more often which should result in a better A1C tomorrow right?

Time will tell. But I do have a lot of people in the DOC to thank for pushing me and I have my loving family to thank for their never ending support.

Tomorrow will give me a number I can work on for the next three months!!

Week In Review 7-21-11 Through 7-27-11

Well over the course of the last seven calendar days I only took one day off from doing anything athletic wise, and that was this past Monday as I was in nearly complete body shutdown. More on that in a bit. I was able to get in four runs, one day of Wiffle Ball (don't look at me like that!!), and one evening of a half court basketball tournament.

The runs will be documented below, but I wanted to specifically get into the wiffle ball and the basketball activities which took place over the weekend. As I mentioned in a previous post, this wiffle ball tournament that I participated in started off on Saturday morning and finished up early in the afternoon. Now normally, this would be a good thing in North Carolina in July as it doesn't usually get hot until the mid to late afternoon portion of the day. But being as this was the fourth of five consecutive days with the mercury climbing above the 100 degree barrier, there would have been no real good time to start anything outside as it never cools down when it gets that hot and again more specifically, humid. The good news is that we all survived the heat and humidity. Our team actually made it out of pool play for the first time in three years but the best news of all is that $1,500 will be donated to the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke. And at the end of the day, raising money for a great cause is what its all about. For those of you interested in what it is that we did on Saturday, I encourage you to visit the site angelsamongus.org

Now the basketball event was held the next night at Wake Forest Presbyterian Church as a sort of recruiting tool/alumni game for guys who have fallen out of favor by playing basketball on Sunday night's with us for whatever reason. All I can say is thank the good Lord upstairs that these two events were scheduled on different days on the same weekend, unlike last year!! It was all I could do to play half court basketball for two hours with as much pain as I was in after pitching four complete games of wiffle ball the day before. My left leg, and specifically my left butt check, hurt sooooooo much from pitching that it was indescribable!! My right arm also felt like jello after throwing a wiffle ball as hard as you can for literally like 150 pitches!! Not only did I feel horrible, but our gym at the church had blown its AC unit on Thursday thus leaving it feeling only slightly cooler inside than the real feel temperature outside!! Someway, somehow, 22 guys out of the anticipated 24 that we "recruited" showed up and had a good time reminiscing about our very own "Glory Days". Since we were short two guys, two of the teams had only three players and they had to pick different players from whomever was sitting out when it was their turn to play. I had the good fortune of being chosen to play on one of the teams that was in the finals, and we ended up winning the championship. Now and also like to brag and say that I had a LOT to do with the final game, but that would not be very Christian of me!! This team just happened to have the best player of all 22 guys in the gym, an 18 year old with unlimited range on his jump shot and tremendous driving ability, and we let him (read: forced him because we were all exhausted) score 5 of the 7 points needed to win the game!! All in all, we got some great positive feedback from the night and we'll look to do more of this as some of the guys seemed to like the half court environment.

Now, what did all of this mean as far as my Blood Sugar readings were concerned. Amazingly enough, I ran slightly high on Saturday playing wiffle ball despite loosing a lot of water weight. Sunday evening was a train wreck though. I had an unbelievable low of 32 five minutes before we were to start playing!! Way to stay on top of things when you're helping co-organize an event!! Needless to say, I got through everything thanks to the juice I had on hand but it's always a difficult proposition when you take your eyes of Type 1 Diabetes for even a little while.

Results of my exercise:

• 7-21-11: 3.30 Miles in 30:09

• 7-22-11: 3.26 Miles in 31:15

• 7-23-11: Wiffle Ball

• 7-24-11: Basketball Tournament
  

• 7-25-11: Rest (very much needed!!)

• 7-26-11: 3.45 Miles in 31:01

• 7-27-11: 3.56 Miles in 33:15

Results for the running week: 13.57 Miles in 2+ hours.

I'm back on the bike riding road again tonight with my first trip out on Goose II, can't wait!!

Week in Review 7-13-11 through 7-20-11

Hey, summer's here!!!!!!!!!!

In case you didn't know, it's hot outside. Not only is it hot, but that other nasty "H" word has crept its way into every weather sentence issued locally as well, Humid!!

While I really don't mind either one for long stretches of time when I'm outside doing something, my Type 1 Diabetes sure does seem to mind. I always seem to be in a good zone Blood Sugar wise prior to leaving the house for exercise, but when I return I seem to have more crazy lows than when the weather is in a more comfortable range. Can the hot weather really affect you that much more than when it's nice out?

Anyway, my four results from last week are as follows:

• 7-14-11: 3.46 miles in 32:06

• 7-16-11: 4.03 miles in 37:00

• 7-17-11: 2 hours of full court hoops

• 7-19-11: 3.12 miles in 28:30

The good news is I ran 10.61 miles in a little more than 1 1/2 hours and played basketball for two hours. The other good news is that I'm still not experiencing any pain in my left knee which makes running all the more tolerable.

The bad news is that I still need to go and get Goose repaired. He just sits in the garage and stares at me every time I take the trash out!! Well I'm going this Saturday afternoon to the Sears repair store and get him fixed after I play in the Greater Raleigh Wiffle Ball World Series. It should be a blast all the way around and I'm really looking forward to helping out a great cause at the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke.

Stay cool and have a great weekend!!

Week in Review (Good news, Bad news)

In my last post I mentioned how Larry Bird paid me a visit at the end of my run last Tuesday evening with a Blood Sugar reading of 33. Random thought, I actually met him one time when the Boston Celtics were using UNCG as a training facility before the start of an NBA season back in the mid-1990's, and he was doing some advising for them before he got fully involved with the Indiana Pacers organization. Needless to say, he was much cooler to meet in person as opposed to meeting his rather famous jersey number at the end of a short workout!!

Results of workouts now coming mid-week:

Wednesday 7-6: Rode for 10.1 miles in a very relaxed 51:48.

Thursday 7-7: Rode for 6.25 miles in 34:34 then ran 2.2 miles in 20:56

Friday 7-8: Rest (Friday Night Lights 2nd to last show and all!!)

Saturday 7-9: Ran 4.0 miles in 45:00 at 6:00 AM!! Then played soccer, lacrosse and wiffle ball with Kendra, Ryan and Dylan for one hour over at the WRAL soccer center.

Sunday 7-10: Played 2 hours of full court basketball at WFPC.

Monday 7-11: Rest (much needed after being forced to take three weeks off from basketball)

Tuesday 7-12: 3.15 mile run in 29:20.

So the good news in all of this is I've now run four times in the last eight days. The really good news is that my left knee has felt great and I'm not experiencing any pain whatsoever. All of the biking I've done since April 3rd has strengthened my knee back to normal functionality, which is sort of a miracle in my eyes.

The bad news in all of this is that I'm indeed RUNNING more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You see back on Thursday, July 7th, Goose apparently got my prior knee pain transferred to his chain because something is seriously wrong when I stop peddling, and just attempt to coast. I'm not the type of guy who's mechanically inclined to fix anything when things go wrong. Some guys grow up fixing things that break, I grew up playing sports and occasionally reading a book or two!!!

So I've contacted Sears, where I purchased him a few months ago, and I'm now being told I need to call a 1-800 number to determine what I need to do next based on my warranty. I'm ever hopeful that what is probably a quick fix is covered and that I can get back to riding again shortly, because up until this point, it's been a blast.

Working out alone on a bike is so much cooler than running alone because you can take short breaks here and there if need be, but you can still really punish yourself on hills which can be exhilarating.

So my mid-week to mid-week totals are 16.25 miles of riding, 9.35 miles of running, 2 hours of hoops and one hour of soccer, lax and wiffle ball with the family which isn't all that bad!

Start to July

I got off to a good start in July on Goose largely due to the fact that July 4th was on a Monday, thus allowing for three days of riding during the day.

So after taking off the first day of the month, Friday, July 1st, I busted my butt on three very hot days covering the 2nd, 3rd and 4th.

Mileage totals for those first three rides of the month were 13.04 miles on the 2nd, 15.75 miles on the 3rd and 13.56 miles on the 4th. Riding times were 62:48 for the 2nd, 73:22 for the 3rs and 67:23 for the 4th. All in all, three very good rides considering they were all done in the middle of three days that had the mercury in the mid 90's.

I was going to take yesterday the 5th off but I decided to mix up my routine and test out my knee. I haven't run in nearly two weeks, so I went out with the threat of thunderstorms all around us. My plan was an easy three miler at a leisurely pace as to not put too much strain on my left knee.

Well, the weather held off, my knee felt fantastic, but the evil that is Type I Diabetes reared its ugly head yet again. I felt funny out there with my steps at the end of the run, and once I got back in the house I tested and saw my Blood Sugar was Larry Bird. I nice number for a great basketball player, but one that you never want to see peering back at you on your meter, 33.

Epic fail after leaving the house with my number at a very comfortable 100.

Glad I wasn't out on my bike for a long ride or that could have ended very badly.

The good news is I'm still here, the better news is my knee is getting stronger with all of the bike riding, a few miles short of 600 for my first three months on Goose.

But my monitoring has got to improve on runs/rides if I'm going to maintain an active lifestyle, which at the end of the day is the goal.

June Totals

Sorry about the lack of posts recently, but there's been too much stuff going on.

Just wanted to give an update on my mileage totals for the month of June and the overall totals for the first three months with Goose.

The bad news for June is that I got out fewer times than expected, 17, but my mileage per time out increased greatly to nearly 12 miles per outing.

June totals : 202.35 Miles

May totals : 225.34 Miles

April totals : 170.24 Miles

Three month total = 597.93 Miles

If you had told me the day before I bought my bike that I'd have nearly 600 miles ridden in the first three months after purchase, I would have thought you were crazy!!

But after only lowering my A1C from 7.5% to 7.4% at my last Endo appointment on June 1st, I've got a lot of work left to do to see that number get below 7%.

Great Holiday weekend coming up. Everyone enjoy the 4th of July wherever you are and whoever you're with.