Complicated Spin training day - need advice

Sports & Exercise
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I am going to a class to be certified to be a Spin instructor on Saturday. We are going to be doing 2 one hour spin sessions in a 9am-6pm class. I don’t know exactly when the two sessions will be, and I am not quite sure how to plan for this. I usually try not to have any active bolus insulin when I spin, and have not been successful at changing my basal amounts for this in the past.

For a single class, I usually raise my BG to 200 and watch it during the class. I was thinking that I would try to not eat anything on Saturday (no bolus insulin). I would then manage the BG levels with glucose stuff.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!

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Hi,
It’s Kim, right?

Glad you could join us here!

You have a number of difficult challenges. So you don’t have any idea what time the exercise sections will be? Do they not give you any kind of schedule or anything?

Is it possible to ask for an idea of what time you will be on the bike?

Since we don’t have much time to work with here, I can start with a few very general rules. A lot of these will take time to get customized to your body.

First, no IOB. If at all possible. Since you don’t have any idea of time of the spin, I think skipping breakfast might be wise, if it is something you are comfortable with. OR getting up very early and eating breakfast well before you start, like 6am.

Second, for anything over an hour, I have no basal. No IOB, no basal. And this also somewhat depends on intensity but I assume you will be working through different zones.

I would assume they won’t make you spin right after lunch, right? That would be cruel! So I am going to guess 10 or 10:30 will be your first spin, and then lunch. And the second one later in the day.

So for your lunch, hit your bolus as soon as you get off the bike from the first spin and also turn off your basal to minimize IOB for the second spin, which I am guessing would be an hour or two after lunch. A smaller bolus and smaller lunch will be your friend there. But try to bolus as soon as possible so you have less IOB.

For carbs, do you ever use gels? Those are easy to get to, small, quick. GU brand gels are good, or anything like that. Transcend makes a good one also, but those are hard to find in stores, I think you need to order them online. I wish we had a few more days.

How comfortable are you riding high or low? Overall, if you are okay with a bit high, a general lowering of your basal for the whole time 9-6 would be good. But I think 0% basal as soon as you bolus for lunch would be smart.

How are you for testing on the bike? Can you do that at all? I can help you with some stuff I use when running, for your future. It’s all about strip management!

Do you have CGM?
And what type of pump are you using?

Anyway, sorry, lots of questions. See if you can get some details on the schedule. That would help us a bunch!

And, lastly…

Welcome!

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Hi Kim,

my name is Daisy Mae. i know exactly what you are going through. i have been D for 30+ years and wear an insulin pump as well.

i ama swimmer and need to detach my pump (since its not waterproof) when i get into the pool. i was told by my CDE to raise my BGs to around 200, and deff not to go into the pol under 180 BG. i swim in the afternoons (same time every day) and thought i could eat bfast at 7am, skip lunch, which would keep all bolus insulin out of my system and that i would have no IOB when i went into the pool. but i couldn’t swim for more than an hour, b/c every time i swam, my BGs would go from 200 to 100 w/in the hour. i would rather often go even lower than that (one time down to 40 ).

when i started posting on this site, everyone was here to help me. but of all the wizards and wonderful people on this forum, it was Eric who changed my life entirely. he was patient with me, and always supportive.

if you want to know my story, just look up Daisy Mae’s Swimming BG thread. i went from living your story, to living mine. now i swim for over 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. i was at my endo yesterday. my A1c is 5.8 % and my doctor was in shock when he downloaded my sensor. 80% in target range. practically a flatline of BGs. OMG. never would have believed that that would be possible. and, to put the icing on the cake: Eric never said “i told you so.” :wink:
so, don’t give up. help is here, and you will find your way. i promise.

(we also have several Exercise Threads on this site)

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Welcome aboard!

A spin instructor? Very cool! What are you using for basal? I’m a big fan of tresiba and have found I don’t have to worry about bumping up my bg with it before hard exercise near as much as I had to with Lantus… then again I’m not spinning 5x weekly (by a long shot) either. Glad you joined here.

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I was reading about your swimming adventures right after I wrote my post. This is fantastic!!! I will try the path that Eric gave me. No matter what, it will be better than what I have been doing.

I bring a big towel with me to the gym and make a pocket meter and my glucose on the handlebars. It works well for me. I have little bottles of glucose from Walmart, glucose tabs, and Shot Blocs jelly cubes. It is easy to measure my BG this way.

I will skip breakfast, no IOB, hit my lunch bolus right after the first class. (Very small lunch) no basal after lunch.I will get a schedule or ask the instructor when we will be on the bikes, and stop basal 1 hour before the first class.

This is wonderful - I learned so much from you both!!!

(yes it is Kim - wasn’t sure what to use for a username.)

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I spin because I really enjoy it. I also spin because I do not want my Diabetes to control me - I control it.
I have had Type 1 for 35 years. I was 22 years old way back in 1982. My last A1C was 6.1.

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Eric, just sent you a PM re:new endo. :sunny:
DM

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Hi Kim, you are welcome! Glad you are here.

At some point we can get into some specifics for you. Can you tell me roughly what your carb intake is on a normal day? Just a general ballpark?

Here are a few of threads that might be informative:

forum.fudiabetes.org/t/how-does-my-body-fuel-exercise

forum.fudiabetes.org/t/what-should-i-consume-after-exercise

forum.fudiabetes.org/t/post-exercise-wasted-carbs

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The actual spin sessions will be at 11am and 4pm.

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Cool, that makes it easier to plan.

If you have about a 4 hour insulin duration, and you eat breakfast at 7am (6:30am would be even better!), you are basically left with no IOB for the first session.

I am assuming lunch would be right after the first one, maybe around 12 noon. So again, you have 4 hours to get rid of your IOB before the second session.

So the trick will be to adjust your basal for the hour leading up to it and also during the session.

Do you have any experience with numbers that work for you? Without any background data, I would venture out a guess of something like this (adjust depending on whether you prefer to run a bit higher or lower):

  • A 50% basal reduction starting 75-90 minutes before the session, and then when the session starts, going to 0% basal for the whole time on the bike.

  • Correct a high or low at only 30-40% of your normal correction rate (depending on the intensity of the session), as the exercise will be amplifying everything for you.

  • Bolus for lunch as soon as the first session ends, to give the insulin more time to deplete before the second session. Probably a slightly lower IC number than normal. And also following the reduced correction for high BG.

For the second session, depending on how the basal reduction worked for the first one, follow the same plan with an adjustment up or down depending on how the first one worked…

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Thank you. I will follow your plan and report back to you. I really appreciate your help with this.

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Hey Kim, how did your class go? Good BG, I hope!

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It was surprising. I went to 50% at 9:30 and my BG was 110. At 11 it was at 125 when we started the cycling. (1 hour session) 0% at start. I was a bit nervous halfway through and took 1 tablet of glucose.

I continued to do 50% the hour (or hour and a half) before and 0% at the start of any cycling activity.

We then did another session at 12:30 my BG was 205. I guess I should have bloused after the first session, but I heard we were doing it again before lunch. This was a 30 minute session. When it ended I was at 210. I immediately took 4 units for lunch.
At the end of lunch I was at 118.

At 4pm 144 and I went to 0% for the last more intense 40 minute session. When it ended, I was at 208. I took 2 units of insulin.

My BG was elevated the whole evening. It stayed by the 200s until I went to bed. I woke up this morning at 118. I added 3 extra units of a 4 hour square wave bolus to control the higher BG.

Conclusion:

I did not have to eat great amounts of extra glucose to do a very long day of exercise.

I suppose the higher BG at the end and into the evening was a reaction to not having much insulin during the day.

One of the other people in the class works with type 1 teenagers. I gave her the directions you gave to me to show her students how I was trying to manage the day.

Very successful day for a type 1 in a exercise filled event. I was able to work hard without worrying having a hypo.

THANK YOU. I learned a huge amount about my BG levels.

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Kim,

sounds like you’ve already made great progress. learning how everything works is the key to the beginning of freedom. you can learn about how your body works, and how your D reacts throughout your exercise as well as pre- and post.

i have to bolus after my swim b/c i am off of my pump for about 4 1/2 hours. i don’t have the luxury of wearing it during my swim (pumps not waterproof :wink: .). i have learned to take a mini bolus before i disconnect, and a bolus right when i get out of the pool to accommodate all the missed insulin i didn’t get while i was off my pump. if i don’t give myself that bolus, i spike immediately, which is very disconcerting and frustrating.

i eat a big bfast and then skip lunch altogether so that i can have no IOB while i swim. i turn my pump off completely for 2 hours before i swim. before i did this, i was starting at 200ish and crashing after an hour down to the 60s. i didn’t understand that the crash was do to the BASAL IOB, not the bolus which was causing my BG drop. once i learned this, i am able to maintain a healthy BG range throughout a 2 hour swim. starting at about 130/150 and ending at around 110/130.

i learned all of this by working with eric and experimenting experimenting experimenting. it was frightening to me, but perseverance , trial and error and fearlessness goes a long way. also, you mention

this is the entire philosophy we at FUD try to embrace.

keep us all posted. we would all love to hear about your experiences and the progress that you make. :smile:
Daisy Mae

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Sounds like they changed up the 11am and 4pm schedule on you a bit. That makes it tough to plan! But it’s all good experience to see how things work out.

Do you usually spike on the night after a workout? A lot of that can be from the exercise hormones. It can depend on the intensity. I know spin classes can have some intense segments.

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It was a crazy day. We were on the bikes about 6 out of the 8 hours. My legs are sore in new places - I was on a new bike in a new situation. I put my Fitbit on my shoe and got 25,000 steps.

I may never be in this situation again, and I am very happy that I did better than I expected.

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I am very happy to be starting a new path toward better BG control without eating my way to fix hypos.

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That sounds totally awesome! Would love to hear and share with you on your path. I have enjoyed hearing DM’s progress the past few months, it’s wonderful to hear the progress.

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This is FUD.

TUD embraces something entirely different.

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Ooops. Sorry about that Sam. TUD didn’t embrace anything for me :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
and this site is deff where i belong; without any equivocation. wouldn’t trade being here for all the world :sunglasses:

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