we had a nice lunch together and then took a long walk, and grocery shopped . (its amazing how empty stores are during the middle of the week, and now that my husband is retired, he can carry all of the heavy things 
.)
hopefully my night will go well and i will be back into the pool tomorrow.
i plan to wait 2 hours on a 0% TB before i even walk to the pool. hopefully, i will be able to do 2 hours.
DM,
Can you use Excel spreadsheets? I was thinking of putting together a calculator for you, based on your TB time, normal basal rates, planned exercise duration, planned exercise intensity, BG before you go swimming, and the direction your BG is going.
Suppose you donāt have a 2 hour zero TB, you have it for 1 hour. You could plug in the numbers and know how many carbs to take right before you start. Something like that.
We have enough data on you now to put together a swim calculator.
this sounds very doable and proactive. i dont know what Excel spreadsheets are, but i keep such detailed notes, that i am use to filling out sheets of info. and often i will test about 25 times a day (on swim days in particular) remember, i dont use a cgm, so the only way i know if i am trending in any direction, i need to do a finger prick. i can read my body fairly well, but i still need to do a manual test.
BTW, after changing my Basal for 12am - 6am (they were .60 ), my early over-night BGs were excellent, but my early morning BG was 45 at 6am. i lowered my basal to .55 starting at 3am, which is what it was before my ding-a-ling endo started messing with them. corrected and had lg bfast.
after all of the craziness for the past 2 days, yesterday was a good day. i let my BG run a little on the high side (130 -140 ) b/c we were doing a lot of walking around yesterday and i didnt want to go low.aside from the only (early morning) high, my BGs were top-notch all day.
i only ate foods that i was certain about so that i could have a good sense of why and when and where i might have to do some tweaking. it was very helpful. and as i said, i was stable from 12 noon through the following 5am morning test.
after my early morning low and my correction, my BGs are perfect in target range. last BGs were 68, 101, 103, and 114 ; then i prepped for my swim at 11am. took .5 units bolus and turned off my pump. i plan to wait the full 2 hours before i step out of the house. i will be testing again in 1 hour and see where i stand. i am hoping that today will run smoothly. i would really like to do a nicely paced full 2 hour swim. i need it. 
will keep you informed as i go along.
DM
after 2 hours at 0% basal, my BG is 128 and i am walking to the pool for my swim.
i will detach from my pump and, hopefully, will be able to swim for 2 hours.
please wish me well. i am excited, but, as usual, nervous. 
DM
Go get it today!
Yesterday was a rest/recovery day from swimming so your tank should be full today. Enjoy it!
my swim was great today. 2 hours with the kick board. difficulty scale of 1 - 10 : about a 7.5
BUT: my BGs were high and i am not certain why, except that i think my basal, which has been good while i am not swimming, seemed to be low for swimming.( i say this b/c of my BGs, which seemed peculiar for me) ; of course, it could be the longer disconnect of 2.5 hours for my prep as well (total w/out IOB was 4.5 hours). uncertain. (but i am certain that eric will have an answer to this situation )
11am bg 114 TB 0% and manual bolus of .5 units
12pm bg 99
1pm bg 128 walk to pool
1:30 bg 160 in the water (how did my bg jump up so fast since i walked from my home?)
2pm bg 181 (again, ??? why did my BG go up instead of down? )
2:30 bg 168
3pm bg 149
3:30 bg 142 gave myself 2 units manual bolus for 4.5 hours of no basal.
walked home from pool
4:30 bg 140 (and i dont know quite what to expect bg-wise from the bolus i gave myself at the gym)
all in all though, it felt great to be back in the pool without crashing. i felt rested and strong and, as its almost 100 degrees outside, the pool was very refreshing 
.
waiting for some feedback,
DM
Hi DM!
A few things come to mind.
Are you still using a lower basal? Perhaps a shorter disconnect or a little more pre-bolus would help that. Also itās simply because you did not exercise yesterday, your BG would tend to go up more than it would under the same conditions if you had a hard workout the previous day.
See what happens tomorrow with the same disconnect time and pre-bolus amount to compare!
This could just be the higher heart rate from doing kickboard. Just a guess because I am not sure what your HR is. I know that for me (currently) when I get to 96% of my lactate threshold pace, my BG spikes. 96% is hard work for me. A higher heart rate means you are working hard enough to cause a spike. That might be what happened.
Or it could be an invalid test. Sometimes a meter will throw out a wonky number. If I get a number that is unexpected, I will double test it!
If you just look at beginning and end, thatās only an 18 point drop. Thatās pretty darn good!
i was working my heart out doing these kicks. my legs felt like they were on fire. (but still not an Advil night )
also, the 2 unit post-swim bolus was too much. i crashed rather quickly (w/in 1/2 hour ).
i need to be more conservative tomorrow. however, aside from that, i will repeat todays routine and see how my BGs stay or change (specifically b/c of my exercise today ).
What was your carb intake after you finished? Did you have at least 40 grams?
no. i had only 36gms. but the chocolate was really good.
also, yesterday at the market i was able to get fresh chocolate covered espresso beans. OMG, they are devine. a little bit of heaven that goes perfectly with my post dinner (decaf) Bustello espresso. mm good. 
36g is ok. As long as you had a decent amount!
yes. i made a modification on it this morning, b/c i woke up at 45, but it is still much lower than it had been. now i have only 2 basal settings:
12am - 3am .60
3am - 12am .55
so this could deff be a contributing factor. yet, i will still repeat the test tomorrow and see what kind of results i get.
I was thinking of a table like this in an Excel sheet.
With all the factors (intensity, duration, BG, up/down, etc, etc.), it is hard to make something like this on a piece of paper. It really needs to be in a spreadsheet where you just enter your numbers and it gives you some pre-swim carb suggestions.
This is just a mock-up of the idea:
i forgot to set a reduced TB before bed last night and i woke up at 5:30am at 45. had 2 Gtabs and some Peanut Butter and went back to sleep. woke up at 6:50 at 92 and made some bfast and by 9:15 was 121 (with .8 units IOB ).
i like to eat at 7am b/c then by 11am, when turn off my pump to prepare for my swim, i no longer have any bolus IOB.then i can give myself the .5 units before turning my TB down to 0% for the 2 hours before i leave for the pool.
i am hoping that today will go smoothly. i plan to use the kick board again, as it is a great work out.
Have you tested when your basal insulin first becomes active, and how long your basal insulin it stays active? I was surprised that you had tested only one hour after your post-swim basal shot, and that you say your basal is all gone in three hours. Iām not sure what insulin you use in your pump, but I inject Humalog, and find it is only really starting to be active at one hour, so I donāt expect much movement from a correction until 90 minutes after a bolus. If I"m steady or going lower at one hour, that can mean that I over-corrected. I also find that a Humalog injection is mostly gone at three hours, but retains some activity that can give a kick four hours after injection.
i use NovoLog in my pump. when i was writing about setting a lowered over-night TB, it was b/c my exercise tends to make me very insulin sensitive and i dont want to crash while i am sleeping.
my insulin (basal or bolus) stays active for 4 hours. it kicks in at about 15 minutes after taking a bolus. but i tend not to see any change for at least 1 hour if i am trying to correct a high BG.
yesterday i began trending down after 1 hour of my bolus (2 units post 2 hours after exercise and 4.5 hours off my pump (receiving no basal at all). today, i only bolused 1.5 units after my swim, and i will see soon enough how that effects me.
How were your numbers today?
EXPERIMENT#27:
today i tried to replicate what i did yesterday so i can try and find where i can make some realistic tweaks in my program.
i learned something interesting today: at 2 hours of 0% basal (during my pre-swim prep ), my BGs dont rise higher than about 115. BUT just 15 minutes after that my BGs rise substantially. this happened yesterday and it repeated itself today. AND, after another 15 minutes, they rise even more; so i can go from 115 to 161 w/in a 1/2 hours time. this tells me something very important, i am sure; i think that i need to spend less time on the 0% basal and leave for the pool sooner than 2 hours. i will try another experiment next time where i only turn off my basal for 1.5 hours and then leave for the pool. this way, i thinkā¦and i know that eric will correct me if i am way off base here, that i wil be ale to start my swim at a lower BG and then maintain that BG until i plateau in a target range.
here are the stats for todays swim ( and BTW, it was a level 8.5 intensity today; maybe even 9; i swam like iāve never swam before. it will definately be an ADVIL night .)
1:15 bg 137
1:30 bg 161
2:15 bg 165
2:45 bg 145
3:15 bg 145
3:30 bg 123
gave myself 1.5 units of manual bolus, and weāll see how that holds me. (yesterdays post-swim bolus of 2 units was way too much and i crashed about 2 hours later when i was home. loved having the chocolate pick-me-up, but i didnt want a repeat of yesterdays over-zealousness)
DM
How long was it before you got in the pool? Was it 2 hours?
Did this jump happen 15 minutes after your started swimming?
i got into the pool at 2.5 hours exactly after having my TB at 0%. it was weird though, b/c, while i was home waiting to leave the house, i turned off my basal at 11am and at 1pm my BG was 115. then at 1:15pm, my BG was 137 (thats only 15 minutes between checking, b/c i felt ready to leave the house) so, at 1:15 i walked from home to the pool and checked at 1:30 right before i went into the pool and my BG was 161. (so, basically w/in a 1/2 hour, i went from perfect target range, to 161 and it took 2 hours in the pool before my BGs came back down to 123. ) when i re-connected, i bolused 1.5 units, and w/in 1hour and 15 minutes, my BG went down to 114, then less than an hour later, down to 76 and still crashing. (had some devine chocolate, but am still going down and i have .7 units OB from my last bolus)
