You it nailed! Awesome!.
One more run this week on Saturday and then I can’t wait for next week!
1 Like
Excellent numbers, @T1Allison!! 
Thank goodness your pup is better and you get to take him for nice, long walks! 
I had a hard time getting my hounds to walk during this past heatwave! They have long, silky hair so prefer sub-zero temps!
2 Likes
Thanks, @Trying!!!
Yeah, he’s not big on long walks during the humid heat either, but we caught a break this week! He had surgery a few weeks ago to remove a huge, stagnant grass ball from his stomach. They had to make three different incisions to get all of the grass removed!! It took him a few weeks to bounce back. I was boiling chicken and rice for him everyday just to get him to eat something. Now I can’t let him outside unsupervised bc he sure loves eating grass and obviously that’s not working out for him!
I’m actually cracking up at this🤣
2 Likes
OMG, I’ve never heard of this before, poor baby! Good thing you discovered the problem! I bet he’s going to want to stay on this chicken and rice diet!! 
My hounds also eat grass, usually just to help them throw up! But I do try to watch them, too, because so many of my neighbors user pesticides.
1 Like
Btw, there’s been a nice unintended consequence to all of this running stuff…I’m much less worried about being active with my kids now. We’ve been doing a lot more biking and swimming together the last couple of weeks. 
6 Likes
Week 3 Run 4: 21:00, 1.63 mi, 5.0 RPE for 2:00 segments, 6.5 RPE for 5:00 segment
ZB 30:00 prior, 3:00 after breakfast
Starting bg: 99 (and was super stable going into the run, thought about carbs but didn’t take any)
Ending bg: 117
5 Likes
Great stuff! Week 3 is done. You are halfway to habit!
Awesome BG too!
2 Likes
Week 4 Run 1: 31:00, 2.54 mi, 5.0 RPE for the first few sets but by the end it was feeling like a 6.5 RPE. I really want to lie and say it felt easier than that, but by the end it was a 6.5 for sure.
ZB 30:00 prior, 3:15 after breakfast injection
Starting bg: 91
17:00 mark: 101
Ending bg: 101
After today’s run, I went ahead and took a 2 unit injection and gave it a 10 minute head start since 5 minutes and 7 minutes ended up in a 100+ point spike every time I’ve tried those post-run when refueling. Today it dropped me 24 pts in 10 minutes so I chugged 22g of choc milk carbs. I kept testing every 5 minutes and it kept going down so I threw 2 glucose tabs at it…and then a 3rd…and then it reversed direction.
I am seeing more lows overnight. I generally use 10% extra basal during the day these days to support eating, and +0% overnight. I wonder if the cumulative effect of exercise is starting to come to fruition? I should theoretically be fairly resistant to insulin right now.
Test strips have been used aplenty today. Keeping tabs before, during, after the run…but especially after the run has been critical via testing. My Dexcom is a lovely tool but it cannot pivot as quickly as my bg can. Just noting that for the purpose of exercise and my decision making.
2 Likes
New stuff this week. 3:1 is a change in your run:walk ratio. You are breaking new ground this week. Good stuff today!
Perfect! Nailed this today!
Today’s run was a little bit further than last week’s, and stressed your body a bit more because you had longer intervals.
A lot of the post-run dosing comes down to how you interpret your RPE and total distance. That’s why formulas don’t really work. It’s better to ask yourself how hard it was, how far you went, how you felt, etc. And then adjust.
If you compare to last week, where you hovered around 140 the whole run and had more resistance the night before, today’s lower numbers and then the post-run drop makes sense.
Take it all in context, the entire picture. The previous night, the RPE, the increased run ratio, the BG during the run, etc. All those things together, and the drop you saw today fits perfectly into that picture compared to last week.
I think you will find agreement about Dex and exercise from @Nickyghaleb and @daisymae and certainly from me. I don’t use it at all for exercise, other than the occasional trace used for posts or info sharing to display something. I’ll PM you a funny Dexcom story that let’s you know where I am with it. 
5 Likes
@Eric, @daisymae, @Nickyghaleb, @Trying: is it your experience that you are most sensitive to insulin in the hours immediately following a workout and then the crazy sensistivity fades a bit as you get further from the workout? What I’m trying to figure out is how much to scale back my meal boluses and for how long relative to my runs? In the prior weeks, I was back to normal dosing by dinner time (7 hours after my run) but I don’t know if that will hold true today.
5 Likes
Depends on the workout. I did a 6.5 mile run today and set my temp basal for 8 hours. I know I can probably be more aggressive on the reduction, but 70% means I still get some carbs today. It might also mean I go a little hypo more than I prefer. If I tried to cut my basal down like that after a 4 mile run, I’m probably running in the 140-150s with frequent spikes to 180-190s. So I like this routine. Falling asleep… 
3 Likes
To determine how much of a change you need and how long it will last, look at:
- The total duration of exercise over the past 48 hours
- How intense the exercise was
- How well you refueled after the exercise
From that starting point after exercise - which is the reduced amount you start with, say it is 70% like the example Nicky gave - it gradually scales back up to your normal amount over the course of several hours or a day.
How quickly does it scale back to normal? Well, the more quickly you can replenish the fuel you burned, the faster it would get back to normal. The longer and more intense your exercise, the longer the sensitivity will last.
But generally it could be anywhere from a few hours to 24 hours (longer in extreme cases).
So keep in mind, it’s all the factors - how intense, the duration, how much you replenished, when you replenished (replenishing soon after exercise is more efficient than waiting a few hours).
So it is very hard to come up with a direct formula that always works, because there are a lot of factors.
So just consider all of those things and you can get a feel for it. You can compare today with your last run, and look at what happened after your last run, and adjust it based on if today was a harder or easier workout, longer or shorter.
If you recall, one of my first rules was that you would not do two hard workouts back-to-back, and we’d try to sprinkle in the rest days over the course of your week. That makes it a bit easier to manage - not only from an exercise and recovery perspective, but also for BG management.
Ugh, sorry, feel like I did not answer you. Just complicated it more. 
Yes. It’s a gradual return to normal, after a certain amount of time.
5 Likes
Yes, I concur with both @Nickyghaleb and @Eric, but really can’t describe it in words myself! However, I’ll share one thing that I learned this past week while working on increasing cadence (thanks to your thread, @T1Allison!).
A simple thing as increasing cadence had a significant impact on my insulin sensitivity. I think this increase would probably be described as an increase in Intensity. Over the weekend I essentially ran the same path on the beach, one day at an increased cadence (for me), and the next day at my normal cadence. The run (Saturday’s) that had the increased cadence increased my insulin sensitivity much more. And it lasted for me, pretty much the whole afternoon 'til dinner. Loop ended up giving me ZB on and off during this 6+ hour period.
2 Likes
As a totally unrelated side-note, if your higher cadence is significantly increasing your intensity - if it makes you much more tired - then perhaps it is too high.
A higher cadence should reduce stress on joints. Less extension, less landing force on each step, etc. But if it is wearing you out, maybe it’s too much, and dropping it down a bit will help.
2 Likes
my experience is a little different because i drink my re-fuel shakes immediately after my swim. its got 32gms of carbs in it and although my ICR at that time of day is 1:12, i only bolus 1 - 1.2 units for them. and then i have dinner about 3 - 3.5 hours later which is about 4 hours post exercise. normally my ICR at that time is 1:12 or 1:14, but i will have to bolus at 1:18 - 1:20 instead. (i am also on a lowered TB at the time of 95% )
also, when i swim many days in a row, the sensitivity adds up. after day 3 of strong swims, i need a lowered TB for a longer period of time (sometimes as much as 24 hours or more, depending on whether i will be swimming the next day or not.)
hope this helps. but if you listen to eric, you really cant go wrong. even if he didnt think he was being helpful 
because, of course, he is always being helpful.
3 Likes
Oh, maybe I am using the wrong term, “intensity”, or co-mingling the metrics?? I don’t think I was anymore tired on Saturday, but my HR did increase, while Pace decreased. For example, over the Entire Workout (10 mi):
Sat Avg Cadence: 90, Avg. Pace: 10:14, Avg HR: 131
Sun Avg Cadence: 87, Avg. Pace: 11:18, Avg HR: 118
This is from exporting my iSmoothRun to Training Peaks
Plato’s statement doesn’t describe me, but perfectly describes the Afghan hound!
4 Likes
Too early for me to really conclude anything terribly reputable…but it seems like my super-sensitivity to insulin kept on for 5-6 hours after the run.
I didn’t even take a shot for lunch until 40 minutes after I ate it. And even then I only took about 30% of what I would normally take.
I played it safe on my dinner injection…taking 5 units instead of 7 units for what I was eating…we’ll see how this does.
And mind you…I’m not down in the ideal bg range at this point bc I’m just testing the waters to pull a lever and then see what the heck happens.
4 Likes
That’s awesome stuff!
I posted on Trying’s thread the other day about my 1:368 IC ratio that day.
That’s worth a lot of cinnamon in the cure department.
3 Likes
this is something ive been doing, too. experimenting and giving myself a little slack wheni am not in my target range.
so far it seems like it take 1.5 days AFTER my swim before i am back on 100% basal and my ICRs are back to normal. i know that may seem like a long time from what everyone else is posting, but that’s what i have figured out so far. still, anything could change.
4 Likes