Not Ten-ative!

October10th, 2010:   The moons must be aligning.  Today is 10/10/10, the perfect day for my longest training run à ten miles of course!

I usually start my runs late afternoon, but staged the ten miler as a trial for the real McCoy, hitting the road around 7:40AM (the half marathon starts at 8AM in four weeks).  Since I can’t carbo load it is vital to work out how much insulin and food I should ingest before the big lift off.  Opted for my usual morning dosages – twenty units of Lantus and four units of Humalog.  Lantus is background insulin, impacting your body slowly throughout the entire day; while Humalog reacts quickly and is injected just before a meal.  What I’ve read about other Type I’s running marathons suggests increasing Lantus and backing off of Humalog before long runs, but since I only take four units of Humalog there wasn’t much to reduce.

So I boosted the morning calories by adding a pack of cheese crackers, but obviously didn’t want to eat too much and overstuff my tummy.  My usual breakfast is a container of sugar-free yogurt, half a banana (bananas are natural sugar and high in calories so I never have more than a half at one sitting) and a few tablespoons of low-fat cottage cheese.

Duly fed, I hit the road and started the ten miles in cool weather when it is much easier to maintain a steady pace.  Fortunately I had abandoned dwelling upon heart pulse and simply attempted to settle on a nine minute pace.  The awesome part of this run is that the turnaround was just beyond the crest of Snow’s Cut Bridge, so I would finally be able to check out the views on foot!

Of course when I arrived at the base of the bridge I had covered almost five miles and came to the realization that bridges go uphill rather sharply!  Didn’t take me too long to get past the agony of the extra effort and at the crest I savored some excellent views.  This had been a goal since last May and it felt good to realize one step on a long path.

It was, however, a bit unsettling to realize how low the railing was – one hefty stumble and I’d be plummeting to my peril.  Of course that was never a real threat and I was charged to return some sunny evening as Snow’s Cut Bridge is supposed to be one of the best places in the US to catch sunset:  I certainly gained an appreciation for the beauty of this vantage point where the sun sinks into a splendid panorama of water and trees.

But back to the ten miles.  I rarely look at my watch during runs because of some absurd notion that I need to rely on my spirit and not seek motivation from a stopwatch.  Of course I’m not a nut job about that and wanted to see where I was at the half way point.  The good news was that I was slightly under my nine minute target and I turned around in good spirits.

Somewhere around mile seven I started feeling woozy and it was the first time I needed to snack while running.  Tore open my first Hammer Gel with some trepidation because I read about how runners seem to have to put much effort into identifying the “ideal” running snack.  Many complaints that certain brands upset folk’s stomachs or were troublesome to ingest….never consistent, though – it seems to be a highly personal decision.

However, as a diabetic, I found the somewhat sweet taste to be pure heaven!  The only time I eat anything sweet is on my birthday when I indulge in a once-a-year dessert, so you might imagine the unfamiliarity creates an explosive sensation of sweetness.  I probably savored the gel for a half mile and it quickly had me back on track.

Checked my watch at the finish and completed ten miles at a nine minute pace with five seconds to spare!  Of course this presumes I measured the ten miles accurately, but so far as I know I hit my target.  All downhill until the half marathon, so for the moment I am psyched.