Hello community ! My name is Arndt, I'm a type I diabetic for almost my whole life.
I'm 46 years old and live in Hamburg/Germany. I enjoy some
sporting excercise. Cycling is one of my hobbies that I enjoy many
times. After a serious bike accident 3 years ago, I rehabilitated
and discovered long distance cycling as a new 'adventure'.
Perhaps somebody knows the 'Vätternrundan' in Sweden, a 300 Km
ride around a wonderful lake. Vätternrundan in Sweden
I did write a little article of the event in June this year. You can find
it here: Cycling with a cgm in sweden
And also made a Video in 2013: Vätternrundan in 2013
(Hope, that automatic translation won't hurt this article much).
For preparing, I also took part at some Brevets and heard of an
event, that takes place every 4 years: IT is the super brevet
Paris Brest Paris - a 1230 Km long ride from Paris to Brest at
the Atlantique and back again to Paris.
You can get an impression of the event here: What is Paris Brest Paris ?
You have to qualify for it with 200 Km, 300 Km, 400 Km, and 600 Km brevets
next spring. The super brevet PBP takes place from august 16-20th 2015.
I've only done 300 Km rides until now and for the brevet I have to
repeat it in four following days.
As I'm using ICT and probably a cgm during the brevet it will be a long way
that only can be achieved with constant training and preparing.
One question that I'm really interested in is how many type I diabetics will also take part at this event ?
Does anyone of you also plan to cycle PBP 2015 or knows
other type one diabetics who want to be a part of it ?
It would be great, if we could share experience for preparing, or even meet
in Paris next year. Until now, I'm in contact with a second cyclist in Germany and one in Austria.
I'm not planning on PBP next year - just too much time and money for making the trip from the US for me. I did do a grand randonnee this year though, the Cascade 1240km in Washington state in the US. It was extremely well organized, and made for a great experience as a newcomer to randonneuring. Diabetes hardly mattered, as my sugar levels are generally great while I'm on long rides. Since I reduce my basals, I rarely get lows and if I do they are very slow and subtle. I mostly eat small amounts over the day, and never need to bolus so long as I'm still going to be riding farther.
If you've only ridden 300km rides, you should really consider starting your training immediately if you plan on doing PBP. There's a very big difference between a 300km day, and doing four of them back to back. PBP with 5000+ riders will have very long lines for food, bathrooms, brevet card stamping, showers, etc. and each of these will eat into your time that you could otherwise be using to ride. People tend to say that this will take 10 extra hours on it's own from the lines.
I was "fast enough" on my 1240km ride that I could get an average of 5 hours of sleep per night, but many people barely got an hour each day if they weren't riding fast enough, or used up too much time at controle stops during the day. If you can do one day 300km ride in 13 hours, than you shouldn't have much to worry about. But expect the consecutive days to take significantly longer, as you'll have little sleep and not have come close to recovering over just a few hours!
Hi Andy, many thanks for the fast answer. It's great to get knowledge from real experience.
I did start training in December by cycling on a spinning bike for 6 hours 4 days in a row. I did it with almost the same resistance that kept my heart frequence in moderate levels. I gained experience for adjusting my basal rate and when and how pain did occur in my body. I think I will repeat it in February, then in March I'm starting with the brevets.
My time for cycling around the vättern lake was 12 hours 30. ( We were a team of 7 riders with changing leads ). I feel a great difference of cycling alone or in a Team also for adjusting blood Glucose Levels. In Sweden, we hat to cycle 150 Km against the wind, which was really rough.
