So, this weekend we went back to Minnesota for my dad’s birthday, and for the relatives to meet our new son (well, at 10 months, he’s hardly new to us anymore). And during our visit, there was a race held nearby that I signed up for, the Fools Five, raising money for cancer patients. Like so many races, a nice course, good turnout, and great cause. This race was held in Lewiston, MN, and the number of registered runners (around 1800 between the two races they held) was greater than the population of this rural community.

I had been looking at the weather forecasts prior to flying back, and the weather during our stay looked like it would be GREAT, with the exception of race day, where it was likely to be in the 40’s and raining. EWWW, so I brought all kinds of cold weather gear with me, ready for whatever Mother Nature threw at us. As it turns out, it was cool, not quite cold, and while it rained all the way up to starting time, it did stop for the race - nice! The wind however did not!

I lined up and started out pretty strong, though this was helped by the slightly downhill, tailwind aided first half mile. Stopped for a quick sip of water (later wishing I had more than a sip) at the first mile marker. And then it got windy. From mile .75 to 2.5 it was rolling uphill into a serious head wind. I kept hitting the pavement, but was slowing the entire time. At the turnaround I took another sip of water and started off the downhill, tailwind aided return - ah nice. Then, what the heck is this!!! A cramp in my calves? At 3 miles? It turns out that drinking lots of wine and a shot of tequilla the night before, while celebrating papa’s birthday was not such a good idea afterall. I knew it would be a “hangover” event, and I wasn’t expecting a fantastic finish, but now I was paying for my miscalculations… Kept running, and at the 4 mile marker, I stopped for two FULL glasses of water, knowing I would appreciate the relief later, probably not during the final mile, but certainly after the race. I figured at that point that I was looking at a finish of about 43 minutes, which was fine by me - right around the 45 minutes I had told my family I would likely return at. As I rounded the corner for the final .5 miles, I realized I still had a lot in the tank, so I picked it up, and finished strong with a final time of 41:34. Not too bad for a hungover runner.

It was nice to be back, and kind of fun running out in the heart of this farmland, where the smell of cow manure was my biggest challenge. In the end, it was worth while, and at only $8 to register, it was a great training run with a thousand others by my side. Fools five - aptly named if you are foolish enough to imbibe the night before as I did.

Foolish, but not fooled,
Jamie, The Diabetic Runner

I was planning to run my virtual race on Saturday, the day after the media folks got together in Miami to run their race. The weather was bad, and we had a children’s birthday party to attend, so in the end it didn’t happen Saturday. Looking back, this was actually a good thing - it was after all just a day after my leg-heavy weight training session. And the requirements were to run sometime on the 22nd through the 24th, so I still had another day, Sunday. Sunday my mother flew in to visit, and the day proved busy, but around 4PM she, my wife, and the kids all laid down for a nap, and it had been at least 3 hours since my last insulin bolus, plus I was running a nice blood glucose, so the timing was right. Quietly, I suited up and headed out for my run with one goal in mind, 3 sub 8 minute miles, NO EXCUSES.

I finally saw my strength training and interval workouts pay off. I knew I could pull 3 sub 8’s, since recently I’ve been running periodically at that pace without feeling overexerted. I decided to run to the point that I felt my breathing become more intense - not out of breath, but certainly more than the relaxed breathing I’ve grown accustomed to. I gobbled up some carbs, as I wanted to avoid a low during my soon to be intense workout, avoiding having to stop for a gel mid-run, and this worked. I started out strong, I would end up increasing my pace throughout the run, but wanted to be sure I would not need to stop and rest. I felt great, and at one point a song came on that had the perfect tempo, forcing my turnover to quicken to keep pace with the beat - I can see this period in my data before mile 2, and looking back I wonder if I would have been even faster if I would have kept repeating the song… I felt as though I kept increasing my pace as I went on, getting more and more confident that I would finish this thing strongly. In actualitiy, I was lengthing my stride, but slowing my turnover, so I didn’t get the huge speed increase I thought I had, but hey, the numbers don’t lie - I had my best 5K race EVER. 22:50, about a 7:20 minute/mile pace. Great for me actually, and the time was a good 2 minutes better than my previous best, so I was pumped. Got out of the shower to a household now awake, and shared the good news with them. I feel like I’m faster these days, don’t get me wrong, there is no way I could have maintained that pace for a 10K, or even a 5.5K, I gave it everything I had, but I certainly see improvement, and can call it a sucessful day just knowing that.

Thanks again to Marcus for putting on the race - I look forward to another one in the future!

PR’d,
Jamie, The Diabetic Runner

I have never recorded a DNF in my running career…. until last night.

I was planning to run the 8 on the 8th run (another virtual race) on Sunday. That morning, I got up late, and because we were taking the kids to the SF Symphony’s Christmas for Kids, I decided I would be pushing it to try to get the run in prior to the event. I would run later in the day, or in the evening I thought.

Afternoon came, and nope - that wasn’t going to happen.

Evening came, and I was hovering a bit low, but it was about 3 hours after giving insulin for dinner. I try never to run within 3 hours of a bolus because it will almost guarantee I bonk with a low. I drank some juice and ate a slice of peanut butter bread to “get it up.” It didn’t really do anything… I still went over and started with a gel before running… my basal, by the was, had been turned down to 30%, a bit lower than usual, but I couldn’t get my BG up, so I thought this was okay.

I started off on the treadmill, only to 1). see the Golden State Warriors lose to the Lakers, 2). have lots of cramping and fatigue in my calves, 3). get low by 2 miles. Another gel, and actually a bit of walking to let it work its way in… I felt a bit better, and started to run again, but with some doubt that I would be able to finish… I’ll just keep running and walking I thought… something I usually don’t do. Another mile in, and I was feeling low, and the CGM let me know that the last 2 gels had NO effect!!!! Another gel, and another walk… then started up again… STILL feeling low, and still no movement on the GCM monitor…. I thought, Okay, mile 4 and I’m out of here… I hit mile 4 and packed it up - DEFEATED! and still in the low 70’s.

Of course as I headed home and showered, the gels started to kick in - lots of good you are doing me now I thought, then I bolused 3 units to keep from bouncing all the way to 200!

My first DNF - well at least I didn’t pay for this race I thought… I do worry however that one of these days, a day like this will present itself during a BIG, IMPORTANT race for me… then what? Will I have the common sense to stop running like I did last night? I hope so.

BONKED,
Jamie, The Diabetic Runner

Ah yes, the turkey day run. As I did last year, I woke up early on Turkey Thrusday and headed to San Francisco for a pre feast run. This year was a bit different however. Because of the oil spill in the San Francisco Bay, the usual venue of Ocean Beach was closed, and thus the race was moved to Golden Gate Park. Additionally, because of the short notice, permitting the race was a challenge, and they were not able to obtain permits to close roads, so the distance was shortened from the usual 6 miles to a 5 K race. It was still a great time.

I headed out the door around 7AM for Golden Gate Park, and found fantastic parking near the check-in. It was chilly, so after getting my bib and t-shirt, snapping a photo of the turkey for my son and daughter (scheduled to run the kids race, but still at home sleeping in this year) I headed back to the car with my complimentary Starbucks brew to stay warm. Around 8, I headed back to the polo fields where the race would start. I enjoyed the sunny morning as I stretched out and watched the few hundred kids run 100M to claim their candy! It was fun, but wasn’t the same without my two superstars in the race.

After this I made my way up to the starting line, on the track circling the polo fields. We were off without much fanfare, and it was a glorious morning… It was still pretty packed, so I just kept pace with everyone around me, slow at first, and then picking up to a comfortable pace. I decided to stick with this pace, around 8:30 mile/minutes. Around the track, then out around the park, and back to the track on some singe-track dirt path, with a few hills thrown in the middle… It was a nice run, and I was pretty happy with the pace I was running… Certainly one of my better 5K’s but not breaking any land-speed records. I finished without the ususal break-neck sprint at the end - for some reason I didn’t feel it necessary to jump a few spots in the finishers list at the expense of someone else’s feelings of getting passed at the end - it was a day to be thankful after all, and that is what I was - thankful for a beautiful Thursday morning run with a thousand others who enjoyed the run, and were about to enjoy some TURKEY!

Final time was 26:55 about a 8:40 pace.

Incidentally, my training called for 6 miles this day, so when I returned home I went for another 3 miles with my daughter in the running stroller - the combination of these 2 runs kept my blood sugars in check all day despite all the food.

Gobble, gobble,

Jamie, The Diabetic Runner

P.S. It turns out it’s not the battery causing issues with uploading my BG readings… it was a bad USB cable that connects the meter - I have a new one on order and will upload when I receive it.

Well, I can officially say I am a finisher, but I think I’ll be in the books next to Barry Bonds with a nice little * Details below…

Decided to run the half marathon Sunday morning at 7:30 AM with my “long run” partner Asako. We met at Ryder Park where we begin all our long runs. It was a bit chilly, and VERY VERY windy. It was so windy that we decided to start by running north (instead of our usual south-bound departure), through Coyote Point Park, and along some of the hotels near SFO. This would have us start into the wind, but more importantly it would have us running through more tree and building sheltered areas than if we had started running south. As it turned out, it was a great idea. For one, the end of the run had the wind at our backs, two, there were more sheltered areas where there was some calm, and three, the wind seemed much more tame as we neared SFO. As we reached the turn-around point we thought, hmmm the wind is dying down, but as we returned to the starting point, we realized that it hadn’t settled down, it was just calmer further north, and things were still blowing like mad where we started. The run was decent, mostly because the anti-inflammatory/analgesic I took in the morning was keeping my right foot in check - until mile 5 anyway. I figured the foot would be an issue, but decided firmly that I would finish this race before I started the healing process -which is now underway. It never got to all-out pain, but it was reminding me the second half that I need to do something. But I also had a bit of luck on my side….

This is where the story of the asterisk comes in… The story starts like this. After the previous week’s half marathon, I decided my shoes were getting pretty nasty. Dirty and smelly. I thought about throwing them into the washer as my mother had done to our shoes when we were kids… but I wasn’t sure I wanted to ruin the shoes… would it ruin them? After my failed 5 miler, I decided that they had to be cleaned - my new shoes are on order, and won’t be in for another week (Asics Gel Kayano - in LIME). So into the washer they went, and I let them air-dry afterwards. It worked. They weren’t ruined, and they were sparkly white and smelling clean…

The * you ask? Well prior to washing them, I had to remove the Nike+ transmitter from the shoe, along with the ChampionChip attached to the other shoe. When I reattached them, I must have put the Nike Xmitter one lace higher than it was prior to washing, making is less horizontal, and now slightly angled. This really tweaked the calibration of the nike device. I didn’t know it would, and found out only after starting the run…. As one who relies heavily on the continuous glucose monitor, and knows that proper calibration is MANDATORY to get useful information from it, I am all for good calibration, but today’s bad calibration of the nike system would have it’s silver lining.

When bad things happen for good reasons. So just before .8 mile into the run, Paula comes into my headphones and tells me I’ve completed the first mile. HUH - that’s odd… when the second mile came early too, I realized what was going on and hypothesized what had caused this. At that point I was feeling great (from a foot standpoint) and convinced myself that even though I would get credit for the half marathon while running less than the prescribed 13.1, that I would follow the GPS until I had actually completed the entire run… After my foot started flairing up however, my tune changed, and I realized that this might be a sign that I should get off the foot sooner rather than later, and decided that I would take the 13.1 miles on nike when my GPS was telling me 10. An episode of miss-calibration heaven! So that’s what we did - I feel a bit small, but since they don’t rank people, or even display the final times, I wasn’t cheating anyone out of a better finishing spot, so I went with it. Just finished to collect my tech-tee and key chain, and went home to begin the icing!

Hell, even when the thing is perfectly calibrated, it always deviates by up to 10% anyway, so I’m not really that upset, and it was a “virtual” race, so I ran a “virtual” half marathon. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it, even if Greg Anderson has to sit in jail for me.

Jamie, The Diabetic Runner^*

Here are the photos from last weekend’s race!

Notice the yellow “Pray for Elijah” wristband on my right wrist. This race and those smiles are for you Elijah!

What a happy looking runner. What wasn’t to love… the weather was fantastic, music was entertaining, water plentiful, and fellow runners all pumped up about a great race. Little did I know that my right foot wouldn’t be so happy the next day. As it turns out, last nights 5 miler was cut to 3 because the pain started back in after completely disappearing yesterday morning. Finished without putting too much strain on it, took some more NSAID’s, iced, compressed, and elevated - we’ll see how this weekend goes, but I have a feeling the missing “R” from the old RICE recovery method will be due next week, so expect to see my mileage fall off for a bit while I get back to 100%

Happy running to all,
Jamie, The Diabetic Runner

2:08:26 for 13.31 miles

Saturday, I woke up and decided that instead of waiting another week to run my Phedippidations World Wide Half entry (also the Nike+ Half), I would register for the San Jose Rock’n'Roll 1/2 Marathon, and get it done this weekend. That afternoon we headed over to the expo and registered, collected goodies and a bib, and headed home to lay out things for the morning.

I headed out the door at 6:00 and drove 30 minutes to San Jose… My wife and kids would meet me there at the finish line. (It was so cool that I saw them as I approached, and managed a few high-fives from my “so-proud-of-daddy” daughter!!)

It was a gorgeous day for running, and the music and cheerleading along the course were great! If you know the Rock’n'Roll Series, you know that they have live bands playing at least every mile! Very cool, and it’s always great to run with so many other “like-minded” people! My goal was to maintain 10 minute miles, which is about what I did the first half. Then the second half I picked up the pace a bit because I was feeling great, and ended with an overall pace of about 9:38/mile. Came in just under my 2:10 prediction…

And the best part… I get double credit! I ran this as the RNRSJ, AND the Phedippidations World Wide half… For the Phedip, I was part of Team Elijah, and thus wore my “Pray for Elijah” reminder band while I ran. I learned about Elijah through a community of online bloggers I follow, and was proud to be part of the team, running in his honor! Here is his site, and a wonderfully motivated runner, Susan, raising money for his cause as she trains for the St. Jude Marathon. Thanks Team Elijah for allowing me to be part of the team!

Splits:
1 9:54
2 9:59
3 10:09
4 10:03
5 10:01
6 9:55
7 9:55
8 9:34
9 9:50
10 9:23
11 9:26
12 9:29
13 8:35 (yee-haw!)
final .31 2:08 (double yee-haw!)

Average Heart Rate: 162

Chip Time: 2:08:26
Overall Place: 3732/8787
Sex Place: 2427/3985
Division Place: 353/587

Online GPS Data

…Now, time to get ready for next weekend’s half marathon… the Nike + Women’s 1/2 Marathon.

Proud Medal Bearer,
Jamie, The Diabetic Runner

Beautiful Day! See the Golden Gate in the background?

These last 3 are me coming in to the finish line with a little spring in my step!

Cheers,
Jamie, The Diabetic Runner

Sunday I did the Bridge to Bridge 7K race in San Francisco.

I woke up at 6AM, and headed quietly to the livingroom, where everything was laid out the night before, to get my running gear on, so as not to wake up anyone else in the house. A quick kiss goodbye from Kaori, still sleeping, and I’m out the door. I knew where the race started, and had some idea where the parking was, so I headed in that direction… I managed to find the garage where they were offering free parking for race participants, and found parking… I still hadn’t seen all the tents and starting line fanfare, but I knew I was in the right place because I could see other runners getting out of their cars. I thought I was following one up the ramp to get out of the garage, an older man in black track suit. “How are you going to find your way back to your car when we don’t let you walk back in this way?” he asked. I looked puzzled for a second, and he explained that he worked at the garage, and that I needed to use an elevator… I did, and found the check in tents nearby once outside.

I had received my bib in the mail, and just needed to pick up my timing chip - piece of cake. So now it’s 6:45AM, and my race won’t start until 8:20. And it was cold outside! Found a coffee shop that opened at 7 and got a nice BIG cup of coffee - more for the warmth my fingers would receive than the cafeine I would be ingesting once my fingers had extracted the precious heat.

Sat around looking at everyone’s gear, and observed various warm up techniques. Finally I went for a quick jog after doing some group-lead stretches. Hit the toilet and headed to the starting line where Gary Radnich (a local sports-radio host here that I listen to every morning while driving to work) was talking to runners over the PA. BOOM, the 12 race started, and so I made my way to the corral for the start of the 7K.

Saturday I did a 8+ miler with a friend, somthing I had not really planned to do, the day before a race, but hey I thought, I can treat the race as a recovery run, after all, it was just 4.4 miles… and it was supposed to be a great day. It was a great day, and of course I started out with the crowd, a bit faster than planned (faster than I would run a recovery run anyway), but I felt GREAT at roughly a 9:30 pace.

Mile marker 1 came incredibly fast! And I realized that my heart rate was good, I was very loose, and feeling great, so I decided to shoot for sub 10/min miles the rest of the race. I managed, and felt great. I even ran up the 30% grade during the race where most walked for 5 - 7 minutes. My HR climbed as expected during this bit, and I felt it in my legs as I neared the top of the hill, but I knew I could resume a relaxed pace and my HR would follow… it did, and when it came time to descend, I leaned into it, and had a FAST, EASY run down the backside. Not too much to say during the run itself, except that the weather was fantastic, the air clear, and the views spectacular, as I headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge.

I did notice that my blood glucose being reported by the continuous monitor was climbing, so I never reached for a gel, though I did take water at both stops. I finished the uphill finish with a sprint, and headed over to gather some free goodies before finding a bus back to the start - my BG was reporting at 280!!! YIKES…. Sometimes that happens, as the pre-race gel goes in, and if there isn’t enough insulin (because I always turn down the basal rate pre-race) it will go up dramatically as I exercise. Ususally if this happens, I feel the DRAG of not getting energy to the muscles needing it, but I didn’t really feel this…. I did skip some of the goodies (ice cream) at the end because of this, and did something I DON’T ususally do. I gave insulin (3 units) based on the reading of the sensor. Because the sensor can be a bit off from a fingerstick, you always want to do a fingerstick reading prior to giving insulin, but my glucometer was back in the car - I didn’t carry one because I thought it was such a short race.

In the end, I got back to the car, did a fingerstick, and with the sensor now saying 180, the fingerstick revealed I was low at 60. Another YIKES! so I ate a banana, and gel before driving home. Bottom line here is, that while I get some great benefits out of the continuous sensors, they can be worthless during exercise!!!!! I think this is a topic I’ll cover in the future with more detail - perhaps a podcast on it!

Official Time: 00:42:45.6
AgeGroup Finish: 36/102
Sex Finish: 124/348
Overall Finish: 226/833

Unofficial Time: 42:42
Unofficial Pace: 9:39
Unofficial Distance: 4.41 miles
Average HR: 165

Finished!,
Jamie, The Diabetic Runner