a case of the mondays.

i am excited to report a MAJOR diabetes success this weekend! on saturday night, eric made pizza from scratch, and i was somehow able to be gluttonous and eat an entire mini pizza (four small slices-- about 88 carbs) and wake up with a fasting blood sugar of 100! the last time eric made pizza, my fasting blood sugar was 371! wooooot to the woot woot woot!

i split my dose 36% upfront and then spread the remaining 64% out over 6 hours. at bedtime, i was at 160, and so i pumped in another .3u (seems tiny, but sometimes makes a big difference overnight) and woke up with the best sugar i have had in weeks. i think in general, i will continue to try that split, and then spread out the square part of the bolus over a loooong period of time, maybe even longer next time. also, i think i may have OVERestimated my carbs on this (i went low a LOT this weekend; i think my ratio is shifting on me again) and that actually helped me in this situation. pizza can be a sneaky mofo.

i probably won't be able to replicate my success in the future exactly, because who knows what variables actually combined to create such diabetic perfection, but whatever. i am thrilled to bits! so thrilled, in fact, that when i talked to my mom on the phone last night, i blurted, "DO YOU WANT TO HEAR THE MOST AMAZING NEWS EVER?" then i had to take it down a few notches, because every time i start a sentence like that, she thinks that i am getting married.

week one of half marathon training is complete. i have 11 more to go. yesterday i did my "long" run of five miles. it was kind of steamy out, and i am an extremely sweaty girl. but i forgot my neon yellow wrist sweatband (it makes me look so cool and athletic!), so toward the end of the run, sweat was running in my eyes and blinding me. but other than the temporary loss of sight, i felt really good. i got a little stitch in my side around mile four, but ran through that. my legs aren't sore today at all, thanks to my stretching afterward.

the only downer was that i ran with my nifty new timex watch (the cheapest one i could find that has a stopwatch on it) and i checked it several times during the run to monitor my pace. when i got home, i calculated everything out, and i averaged about a 10-minute mile. that doesn't take into account the amount of time i waited at lights and spent darting around pedestrians, but still, not quite the pace i'd ideally like to run at-- in my dreams, i picture myself doing around an 8-minute mile. so i was a little frustrated at first. but then i realized that this is really only my first week of serious training, and just the fact that i am trying to DO this while juggling the 'betes is challenge enough. i think i become so competitive sometimes that i don't really recognize my own limits. i think that right now, it's okay to run a 10-minute mile. maybe in the future, i can work on cutting time, but now i should just concentrate on getting through the miles and handling my blood sugar in the best way i can.

in other news, i know i don't exactly have a huge readership here, but if you are reading this and you have any suggestions of songs that are fun to run to, leave me a comment! no song is too cheesy. after all, i do know every word of shoop and tiny dancer. give me another few weeks, and i'll be able to say the same about don't stop believin'.

anniversary.

i have been pumping for one whole year! that's right... 365 days in my life have now been spent wearing that not-as-tiny-as-adversized device on my belt and wrestling with that tangly tubing. over the past year, numerous people have asked me about my pager (making me feel like an early 1990s drug dealer) and my ipod. (seriously, what ipod has huge blue buttons with text on them?!) i've come perilously close to losing it to the toilet a few times (if it's not clipped onto my pants snugly enough) and my helpful coworker has warned me not to jump into lake ontario while wearing it (not the most necessary piece of advice).

despite all of the wardrobe difficulties and curiosity it has inspired, the pump is one of the top five things that has happened to me all year... maybe even top two. it's given me flexibility, better control, and the magical dual wave bolus. it's helped me realize that i CAN have soft-serv and donuts and sometimes a piece of pizza. it's helped me accept the diabetes craziness.

a few months ago, eric and i were driving home to rochester from boston and stopped at a rest stop on the thruway. as we were paying for our delicious roy rogers, the cashier at eric's register pointed to me and said, "hey man, do you know that girl?" eric got a little bit angry, thinking that the guy was going to say something rude. but instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his own minimed 522 and they just smiled.

despite the kinked sets, bubbles in the tubing, infusion site woes, and all the rest, i do love that pump.

day one, day two.

days one and two of half-marathon training came in rapid succession. i went to the gym last night and did my strength and stretching, and then i got up early today to run before work because i am going to see the sox tonight.

ooooeee! some workout-related lessons and tidbits:

1. chocolate milk is the nectar of the gods. i had one of those lil' cartons on the busride to the gym yesterday, and it was a magical experience. it was actually BETTER than i remember. it didn't taste nearly as much like cardboard as it did back in the day. i had about 1/2 of the container (~13.5 carbs) and that was not enough to get me through my workout. i finished up with a blood sugar of 55. booo. but that is actually a yaaaay, because that means that next time, i can prolly have 3/4 of the container, at least!
2. i am the worst/best stretcher in the world. reasons why i am the worst: i am too impatient and don't know any good stretching exercises. reasons why i am the best: there is only one. my incredibly short legs give the illusion that i am far more flexible than i actually am. i can easily touch my palms to the ground without bending my legs... but that would be because my inseam is about 27''.
3. i jog at the exact pace of tom petty's "you don't know how it feels." in other words, i am pretty dadgummit slow.

tomorrow, i am going to try some running at the track... helen gave me some good tips from her old cross country days, and now i am ready to rumble.

go sox.

half marathon training: day one

it's here! today i begin training for a half marathon!

after lots of deliberation (too much, yet totally typical for the sort of person that i am), i finally decided to just go ahead and sign up for a half marathon. i was going to do the boston athetic association half marathon (the same peeps who put on the boston marathon), but then i psyched myself out for the following reasons:

a. there were really fast-looking kenyans on the website

b. i have a hunch that it might cost oodles of money to register

so instead i signed up for the applefest half marathon in hollis, new hamster. it only cost $30 clams to register, it's only an hour from boston, and there is FREE APPLE CRISP AT THE FINISH LINE. even if i don't feel like eating it after running all that way, it's still nice to know that it's there. and they do offer a free long-sleeved tech shirt for registering... and lord knows that those are my achilles heel! i love me a free tee shirt.

if i start training today, i will have exactly three months to prepare for this mofo. after a lot of research (an informal survey of the people i know who have managed to do full marathons), i decided on hal higdon's half marathon training program. i decided to do the intermediate version not because i am a good runner, because i am really not. but the intermediate starts out at a level where the exercise that i am doing will help me keep my diabetes under control, whereas the beginner program's first couple weeks didn't seem like enough of a challenge to keep my beastly sugars tamed. because i do so much of my diabetes management through exercise, this was one of my biggest concerns. and i figure that if the intermediate becomes too much too soon, i can always switch back to the beginner training program.

i am worried/ interested to see how my sugars hold up during this period of training. i am expecting tons of trial and error. eric is helping me design (okay, he's designing it for me-- i am not helping at all) a comprehensive spreadsheet that will serve as my running diary. in it, i plan to track the extent of my workout, time, route, foods eaten, and pre, during (if necessary), and post blood sugars. i think that although i may not be able to come up with foolproof ways to handle the diabetes factor, i'll at least be able to make good decisions based on the data that i record.

so here we go. monday: day one. stretch and strengthen at the gym! (cue rocky theme song.)