Rollin, Rollin..Ru-Ro

Yes, in the immortal words of Scooby, 'Ru-Ro'. Yesterday I was scheduled to ride for three hours. This time of year it's too darn cold to ride outside. I've got a trainer set up downstairs, and although it's probably easier in the basement I don't always feel like I get a good ride in. So I headed off to the local Y to get my bikin' in.

I was all set. A bag full of glucose tabs, jelly belly sport beans (cause I hardly ever use the glucose tabs) gatorade, and a few power bars. Of course I had my meter, strips, lancing device, Dexcom, extra infusion set (am I forgetting anything?) ah yes, the easy bake oven and kitchen sink.

I was surprised at how well the ride went the first two hours. I began at a pace a little over 20 mph and was able to maintain that pretty comfortably. I had about 8 grams of carb every 15 minutes or so and washed it down with a little water.

I must have gotten a little greedy with the carbs, because when i checked at 1hr 30 min I was up to 198 mg/dl. A good number when exercising, but i started out around 110 mg/dl so that means i was climbing. i questioned whether i should bolus or not, and decided the gym was the best place to do this - if i crashed at least it wouldn't be on the road. So i bolused 0.75u with my pump.
I really began to hammer the last hour, but with about 25 minutes to go I began to get sick of what i was doing. and for me - that's a sign I'm going low. I checked and low an behold, the crash wasn't coming - it already happened. I was 50 mg/dl.

After you bike for 2 1/2 hours and you need another, 1/2 hour, the last thing you want to do is get off, because the whole goal of riding long is to ride long. So I slowed the resistance down and began to force feed myslef the sport beans. I had two packs (25 grams in each pack) of them plus gatorade (22 grams) and after about 15 minutes i felt ok to pick it back up the last 10 minutes.

Not what i had hoped for, but you have to take this kind of stuff in stride; I'd much rather have this happen now then when I'm in a race. I still got the time in, and got to eat jelly belly sport beans - a pretty good training day after all.