Hello Everyone, Just a quick question. Type 1 diabetic on insulin pump. I practice roller derby which is an extreme sport. Everytime I practice my blood sugars are 300 plus at the end of practice. I do not eat before practice and blood sugars are at normal level. I think that glycogen may being dumped and turning to glucose. Does anyone have this problem and what do you do to correct it? Thought about dosing insulin in the middle of practice but I am scared since its Novolog it may make my low??
Zierra I think you’re right. It’s likely that either your liver is dumping glycogen or you are going anaerobic during the exercise, and your body is not able to utilize the current glucose on board the way it normally would (in an aerobic state).
You might try increasing your basal rate during that kind of exercise to see if it helps. Remember it takes 60-90 minutes for adjustments in basal to hit your system, so you’d need to make your adjustments about 1 hour prior to practice. I don’t know if you have the opportunity to step off for a second (maybe sub-out for a minute? not sure…) but you could also check after 20-30 minutes of practice to see where you’re at. If you’ve checked at the beginning, this will give you some info about which way you’re trending…you could then think about giving some bolus insulin to help fight it some (if you’re going higher).
Also remember that when you get done w/ an intense exercise like that, your body doesn’t necessarily know that you’ve stopped (crazy, I know). So it can be helpful to get some sort of recovery drink into your system immediately after exercise to help “flip that switch”…this could be a protein shake of some sort, but could also be as simple as something like chocolate milk (it works well b/c of the carb/protein mix that it has).
After my high intensity track workouts or interval workouts on the bike trainer, I have one of these shakes and I also give a 1-2 unit bolus (depending on my glucose when I end) on top of the amount needed for the carbs in the drink to help prevent a BG whip (spike).
Enjoy your skating and I hope you find a strategy to help w/ those post exercise highs! 
Thanks Bradford. This is very useful.
I have a CGM and when I go for long runs, I’ll turn my basal down but then turn off the %age basal when I’m a couple of miles from home so I mix the running and “higher octane” fuel for a while. I still get some spikiness but more like 120 instead of 160? It probably isn’t nearly as gonzo as roller derby though? I think that it’s also useful to eat some carbs but use a ‘cut’ dose, like if you’d take 2U for 20G of carbs, just take one U? There’s a bunch of charts w/ different forms of exercise in “Pumping Insulin” and “Think Like a Pancreas” that are useful and the idea of “excarbs” can be found here:
http://www.diabetesnet.com/diabetes_control_tips/table1.php#axzz1E4Yoq469
One thing I’ve noticed is that the post-ex spikes that I attribute to adrenaline seem to be much easier to “clean up” than ones from miscounting carbs.