Ride for a Cure

aching body, icy winds and a sore heart

2011-11-01T00:58:00.000-07:00

I never did do the 2009, 2010 or 2011 Ride events, but here I am, back again training and fundraising to to do the 2012 event. I've been bold and put myself down for the 160k ride, however some days I wonder if I'll ever get fit enough. I'm about 15k heavier now than I was in 2008, and battling a lot of depression as a result of an absolutely terrible few years. I've had awful things going on in my extended family and in my personal life, and it seems the only way I can outline it is to do a chronology. It has been a battle to keep training and at times I have stopped completely for months at a time.

September 2008 My sister has bowel cancer. The shock waves ripple through the family. She is treated and recovers, but it's a warning to us all.
October 2008 My brother Chris has had to leave his wife as she has become violent to him. He is suffering from both Haemochromatosis and Type 1 Diabetes. He moves in with me, initially to look after my house and cat while I go off ot Spain & Morocco for a month (see the 'Its something else' blog).
December 2008 I meet a man I like very much, however he is depressive and this makes for an uneasy start to the relationship.
January 2009 Chris & I volunteer at the AAC ride in Bright. While we are away my cat is run over.
July 2009 Someone rear ends my beautiful 12 month old car on the freeway when the traffic is bottle necked. The car is a write off. He is uninsured, I am out of pocket by $3000, the gap between insurance and pay-out of the finance on the vehicle.
I spend the next 3 months cycling and taking the train the 30k's to work while I pay off the $3000.00
August 2009 I ask my brother to move out, he is not managing his illness or behaviors and life has become intolerable with him in the house. I feel awful, I have thrown my own sick brother out! Within a month my older sister with whom he has gone to live, says"Oh I see why you were having trouble dealing with Chris."
September 2009 Mum has a fall and breaks the top of her thigh bone. She drags herself into bed, gets up in the middle of the night & puts a pack of frozen peas on her hip to try and stop the pain, but won't call anyone until the next morning, she calls Sal, just as she gets to work. Mum has hte hip pinned and recovers.
November 2009 Chris has become very ill with severe back pains, we take him to hospital where they x-ray him and discover multiple old fractures along his spine. We think they are probably from all the falls he's had off his bike when he has had hypos.
December 2009 Chris has sclerosis of the liver and liver cancer. The hospital starts a radical new form of treatment where they inject the chemotherapy chemicals directly into the lesions. Chris spends Xmas on the couch at Sal's to ill to move. In January they tell him that they will have another go. I go to the AAC on my own, my friends and I plan to ride the Petit Oppy in March.
February 2010 Chris is not recovering.
March 2010 I sit with Chris as the doctor tells him `It's probably time to start seeing your family. If you want we can arrange to take you outside in the sunshine" The next morning I go in to see him and he says to me, "Now I don't want you to cry...."
He resigns himself to dying and we spend March and April continuously with him. I have stopped riding. He dies on April 6th 2010.
April 2010 The pain in Mum's hip has come back and become so bad she shrinks into a tiny little old lady, unable to do anything. Her surgeon is on holiday overseas, and nobody will do anything for her.
I have a lump of grief stuck in my throat. I start seeing a counsellor. Work is toxic, I wait out the days until they make me redundant.
June 2010 I finish the job and find a new one. I take a week off between jobs and go bush with my 2nd brother, photographing sheep and shearing sheds, it's a wonderful escape. he has been recovering from a late diagnosis of Haemochromatosis and slowly getting back to work as the treatment begins to thin the iron out of his blood.
July 2010 Mum has a hip replacement. We all take turns with helping the medical process. The operation is a great success.
December 2010 My 2nd brother, Andrew, suddenly becomes more ill. Within a matter of weeks he is gravely ill, in hospital before Xmas, sent home over the Xmas break & back in by new year.
January 26th 2011, My 2nd brother is taken into ICU with pneumonia. He doesn't come out until March. Andrew receives his donor liver literally at the last moment. He was sedated for 5 days before one became available. The doctors told his wife on the Tuesday that he had about 2 days to live. The liver became available in the very early hours of Thursday morning, the 10th of February. The day before I had attended the funeral for a workmates Father and as I sat listening to the Latin service and looking at the Altar, it came to me that this wasn't about my brother, my brother would live.
March 2011 I ride the Petit Oppy with a team of wonderful friends. When Andrew became ill, I told myself that if I kept training, he would live.
It took until late April for Andrew to be allowed home. He had suffered massive damage to his kidneys, with finally only 12% capability remaining.
August 2011, My sister has a 2nd bout of cancer. I can't stop crying as she goes through all the testing. They tell her is is very treatable, but it will be a long haul.
September the 8th 2011, Our Mother dies suddenly, unexpectedly. My sister calls me at work, they have found my Mother on the floor beside her bed, unconscious, not breathing. When my sister sms's me to let me know they have Mum in the ambulance, stabilised but very sick, I see a vision of Mum sitting up in bed with a cup of tea and light all around her, saying to me, " I don't know what all the fuss is about, I'm perfectly alright." I know she is dead.

The sad lump is back. It is so hard to motivate myself to train and fundraise. The thought of having to get up and battle with an aching body, icy winds and a sore heart is too much. I don't know how I'm going to do this.

Leave of Absence

2008-04-03T02:33:00.000-07:00

This Blog is in abeyance for a few months whilst I recover from all the fundraising. I will start up again when I start to pump up the fundraising for January 2009.

Until then, if you want to keep up with my state of mental health, you can visit me at
http://itssomethingelse.blogspot.com/ Cath S

Raffle Winner

2008-03-02T03:59:00.000-08:00

David Johns, Cath Stephensen and Liana Moore at DavidJohns Gallery.

Sunday afternoon saw a very happy Liana receiving her photographic artwork from David Johns at David's delightful gallery in Railway Place Fairfield. The whole affair was extremely serendipitious (can I use that word?!) as not only is Liana a keen cyclist from a family of keen cyclists, she is also an Art Historian! So the story of the photo being taken from a hot air balloon as part of a project documenting aspects of the local environment within 6k of the gallery, and then being printed on special canvas that is made by the same family who made the original canvas for the first hot air balloons, caught her fancy, as it did mine.

This brings to a close the fundraising cycle for 2007's Ride for a Cure. But don't despair, I've already started on next years fundraising work, so stand by for more from the blog.

The Things you see while out on yer bike!

2008-02-23T05:33:00.000-08:00

For privacy reasons, I couldn't publish the picture of the guy who built and owns this `bike'. He told me that he built it as his way of getting people to think about global warming and to think about recycling. The item in the middle of the bike is an oil heater and he told me that he was concerned that people just throw them out and don't think about the fact that the oil ends up in the stormwater system and then in the bay. So he built the bike to show that even oil heaters can be recycled! He told me that since he built it he has had 4 people come up to him and tell him that it made them stop and think about recycling and now they contact the council to find out how to recycle things.

And YES he can RIDE the bike!!!!

HbA1c's, cholesterol and blood pressure!

2008-02-23T05:05:00.000-08:00

February and August are `Endo' months for me. The twice yearly checks that uncover all the lies I've been telling myself about my BGL's. `Endo' is short for Endocrinologist, the type of specialist who looks after Type 1 diabetics. Most diabetics have a bit of a love/hate relationship with their Endo's and one of our very clever members in HypoActive made up a postcard advertisement for the group featuring faux advertisements such as "Lost: Log book. REWARD! Endo appt next week." and "Free to good home: Endocrinologist." Part of the reason we hate them is that they expect us to bring in meticulously kept log book records detailing all our blood glucose tests, (4 - 8 times a day) dietary intake and exercise. Ho Ho Ho - how many people do you seriously know who could maintain such a log for more than a week. Not only should we keep such a log, but we should also actually read and analyse it and use the analysis to improve our diet and exercise habits so that we can get our BGL's to flatline as much as possible. Ah gee if only there were an easier way! THERE IS! but I'm not sure that I like it..... It's a blood test called an HbA1c - someone did tell me what it stands for once, but I can't remember, so don't ask me. The HbA1c measures markers that stick to your blood platelets and is able to give an average measure of your blood glucose over the previous three months. No more cheating or making up the entries in the BGL log :-( They know it all. My endo likes to keep a pretty thorough check on me, so for good measure he also requested a cholesterol test. I came through OK, with a BGL of 8 and an overall cholesterol of 4.3 and blood pressure of 100/70 and no leakage of protein in the urine test. (sorry I hope that's not `too much information!') I thought my BGL might have been a bit lower, but then I remembered that you're supposed to have fasted for 12 hours before they do the blood test, & I ate about 7 hours before it... shhh don't tell the endo! Anyway, apparently I'm still alive, so now it's off for the annual round of eye checks, dental checks and financial checks (needed after paying for all the aforesaid specialist appointments etc.) Which reminds me, I need to take out travel insurance for my trip to Spain & Morocco later this year - more about that later!

Post Ride

2008-02-09T03:31:00.000-08:00

We had a great result for the Raffle Draw. 1st prize of the fabulous David Johns photograph `The Path 1’ goes to Leanna Moore. This result tickled me pink, as Leanna's Dad is Peter Moore of Abottsford Cycles, and Peter is one of the great supporters of cyclists and the whole cycling movement. I've ridden quite a few rides where the extended Moore family have been in attendance, always gregarious and ready to lend a hand to everyone. The Path 1, with it's cyclist firmly in the middle of a straight path looking up at the sky seems to me to be typical of the straightforward attitude of this cycling family. Congratulations to Leanna, and I hope she has as much pleasure from the photograph as I do from knowing it is going to a cycle friendly home!

2nd prize of the gorgeous Andrew Chapman photograph `Elms at Sunset’ goes to Carol Iwanow. Carol owns Blue Heeler Boots in Qld., and is a valued supporter of the fundraising campaign.

3rd prize of the fascinating photo-documentary book `Campaign’ goes to James Grahame, a co-worker of mine with a Scots background, so I'm going to have to give him some political history lessons as we browse the books wonderful photographs, ranging from the days of Billy Sneddon to the recent campaign 07!

Don't forget, if you want to know more about any of these wonderful photographic artworks, check out the links to David and Andrews websites on the right and make a date to visit Davids lovely gallery.

I'm starting a new campaign for the 2009 Ride next week, kicking off with a Valentine's Day Card game to pick the Queen of Hearts.

1.1 MILLION Dollars aka The Ride Report

2008-01-21T02:09:00.000-08:00

WE DID IT - WE HELPED RAISE 1.1 MILLION DOLLARS!!!

Cath & Abbott team mate Michael

So here we are at THE RIDE. What's this Ride thing all about? Is it like a race, a competition or what? What have all these months of dodging magpies and car doors been about, anyway?

For participants, the Ride for a Cure is probably one of the best kept secrets around. Ride participants have had to individually raise $3500.00 to be allowed to participate. In return for badgering you to buy raffle tickets attend Comedy nights, Trivia nights, Sausage sizzles, buy sugar free choclates and simply part with your money, we get to contribute to one of the great research efforts in Australia. The money raised goes to support research aimed directly at finding a CURE for Type 1 Diabetes and is spent on research being undertaken in Australia. In return for our hard work in inventing ways to get you to contribute, we get to ride 35, 80 or 160 kilometres of some of the prettiest country in Australia. We also get to join in the celebrations as JDRF announces the fundraising totals for this year and celebrates and commends the volunteers who have contributed personal time and energy.

On a personal level, I find it humbling that so many people, who do not suffer this disease themselves, will dedicate the majority of a year of their lives to raise funds to find a cure for me and the other 140,000 Type 1 Diabetics in Australia. It is heartwarming to see the riders who wear an armband, with the photo of a child on it and the words `I'm riding for Amy' or whatever the name of the child is that they know personally.

After flying into Adelaide courtesy of Qantas, I and the other Melbourne participants, (consisting mainly of BORAL people), were greeted with handshakes, hugs and kisses by Katrina and Mike of JDRF. Soon we were at the beautiful Novotel hotel, Barossa. JDRF goes all the way in making sure we are organised and looked after. I had nominated on my registraion form, that I was prepared to share a room, and it was with some trepidation that I entered my assigned accommodation. My room mate turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip, and we shared plenty of time and laughs over the next few days.
The 80k course ran South from the Jacobs Creek Visitor Centre, through Rowland Flat (flat & windy), Lyndoch to Williamstown, (hilly & windy) then East to Springton, (cross winds & rolling) North to Angaston, (fabulous tail wind & downhill! whoopee!) West to Nurioopta (flat & cross winds) and back South to Tanundra (windy) and the Jacobs Creek Visitor Centre. What a cheer went up as my new friend & I rode in! I had a flat rear tyre about 7 k out of Williamstown and managed to get a perfect image of my chain wheel in grease across the WHITE front of my new sponsors jersey. I did manage to change the tyre very competently, but I just can't get that hand pump to get it up to more than 40psi. Mike from JDRF came by and got it up to 75psi while his partner phoned the wonderful Bernie Jones Cycle Mechanics who arrived in their mobile unit, complete with foot pump and cheerful attitude, and had me spinning on my way within minutes. It took me another 20 k to catch up with my riding partner whom I had sent ahead. What joy that section through to Angaston is. I'd do the whole ride again, just for that lovely bit of road with it's gentle descent and the wind behind your back! Someone said that the JDRF crew and the supporters are the world's best Cheer squad and it certainly felt like it as we came up the incline to the Jacobs Creek Visitor Centre and were welcomed with clapping and wolf whistles and microphone announcements. I think the only other time I have been so welcomed was on an Audax ride, the `Oppy', where a Brass Band oom pah pah's you into the finish line.

The ride is about CELEBRATION. Celebrating the effort throughout the year, celebrating friendship, celebrating the fact that you are alive and healthy and capable of doing such a thing.

So off to the Novotel and a quick shower then down to the pool ...

Yeah I'm SERIOUS! There is nothing better than floating away those aches and pains, helped along by a glass of the Barossa's finest. Then it was time for the big party - a 70's style event, complete with fluoro table decorations and a 70's band at the Tanundra Chateau. Some of the guys got completely carried away with the 70's theme and I know the privacy act says I should get their permission to publish their photos, but some how I don't think it's a problem this time....
The food at the Tanundra Chateau was absolutely top notch as were the staff that looked after us. We all partied on into the wee hours and on Sunday were treated to winetasting and lunch at the National Wine Centre in Adelaide, before being shipped home again courtesy of Qantas to face the cold hard world of work, while dreaming of our next adventure in the Barossa.

Please consider joining me on next years best kept secret - Raise $3500.00 for JDRF's research to find a Cure and come and ride & party in the Beautiful Barossa!

Thanks

2008-01-12T03:42:00.000-08:00

Thanks again to all my wonderful sponsors and supporters.

Abbott http://www.abbottdiabetescare.com.au/ have offered a very generous package of top-up funding and a great Jersey & Niks for the Ride. - Photos next week! My work colleages have been generous in their support of the raffle, and Liz Swinton of SheSpoke cycle wear for women has both supported the raffle and put an article about me on her website http://www.shespoke.com.au/ SheSpoke has some lovely jersey designs with both creative and femine graphics and great fabrics and cuts. They also make a range of cycle skorts - niks with a skirt over. Lovely for when you have to meet up with people who just don't understand the whole cycling and lycra thing.

Today I did my first 80 k ride in a year. This whole training venture has been a long story as last year, at Easter I went on an unsupported cycling holiday with friends. An unsupported ride means that you carry all your own gear on your bike. Tent, sleeping bag, food, cooking gear etc. Unfortunately the bike I took had a problem with the seat post slipping down all the time, which put pressure on an old injury to my back. This caused my itb tendon to shorten and pull my kneecap out of alignment, causing intense pain. The end result was months of physio & back care classes, a change of bikes (Vivian) as I could no longer ride the road bike with its forward position and stiff frame and a loss of fitness prior to getting Vivian set up. So today was a momentous occasion. Could I ride the roadbike again, over distance? I was excited to find that I managed the distance and that the months of riding Vivian to and from work with panniers and batttling head winds, have paid off. I rode from Clayton to the Mt. Eliza turnoff and back, getting a nice average speed over the distance of 23.9kph and managing the hills without the triple crank I have on Vivian. The Pug (Peugeot) has returned! I won't say that I would ride it everyday, the stiff frame means that vibration & jarring are likely to cause ongoing back problems if I did, but boy it was nice to back on a lightweight road bike. So Vivian - you'd better behave yourself and have no more flat tyres or you'll be put out in the shed!

The Pug will come with me to the Barossa next week, hopefully my back will handle it!

Hot Hot Hot

2008-01-12T03:24:00.000-08:00

The mid week heat last week was a sharp reminder to me of what it could be like next week in the Barossa.

This picture was taken at 6PM on Thursday evening, Southbank, Melbourne. The temperature was still over 42 deg. C. By the time I had ridden to Kooyong, I had a thumping headache - for me, a sure sign of mild heat stroke. I doused myself over my head and back, with water, from drinking fountains along the way and drank two full bottles of water. I took an hour and a half to do what should be an hour & fifteen minutes journey. My skin was dry all the way, & I knew that the hot North wind and the sun were sucking up the sweat, but didn't realise how much until I got home and went inside the house. I was soaking wet within a minute or two of going indoors and my face glowed red for the rest of the evening, even after a cool shower.

I'm also in the middle of house-hunting at the moment, and last weekend spent some time cruising around Altona area. How about a place within a 5k ride of this spot????

OMG It's the last week!

2008-01-11T19:34:00.000-08:00

Wow, I don't believe it. It's the last week and I'm on the final countdown. There's been so much happening in the last couple of weeks, it's been hard to keep the training going over Christmas and New Year. On Boxing Day I rode to Mordialloc & was pretty happy with myself until on the way home, I found I was really struggling. I battled on, thinking to myself, "I'm sure I'm fitter than this!" and arrived home and just DIED. My legs were killing me and I had to lie down and have a rest. It wasn't until the next day, when I had to remove Vivian from the hallway, where, in my exhausted state, I had propped her against the wall, that I found that the front wheel was buckled again and jammed hard against the brake. The buckle from the car door incident had sprung back. (St. Kilda Cycles very kindly fixed it again - no charge)

I had a gorgeous NYE up in Brisbane. I stayed with a friend of mine and we went to a RSVP (singles) event. It was hilarious, something neither of us had done before. Yes, for you nosy ones, we both `picked up', but didn't take them home. I managed to hook a 6ft tall Argentinian engineer, who spoke Spanish and Portugese! Unfortunately I'm the type who likes to talk (!) and the language barrier made it hard work ..... he ended up on the dance floor snogging some one else!

The fireworks were lovely and it was nice to be in city where it was only 27 degrees, while Melbourne sweltered. I came home on the Red Eye flight at 6am and drove straight from the airport to work. I had to get up at 4.00 am to be ready for the taxi to pick me up at 4.30 to take me to the airport, so by 2pm (summertime in Melbourne) I was wilting!

Seasons Greetings

2007-12-25T16:01:00.000-08:00

Seasons Greetings to All of you!

What a rush into Christmas. As a single person, I should have plenty of time on my hands, but if I do, I don't know where it is! I had been expecting to work right through the Christmas / New Year period, but some technical glitches with the program I'm working on have slowed us down a bit and suddenly I find myself with a weeks holiday. Hooray!

I dressed Vivian up for our last commute into town on Friday and we enjoyed a brilliant ride in full sun along the bike path. It was a bit of an adventure trip as the storms of Thursday evening had flooded all of Gardiner Creek and there were path wash-outs, debris up in the tree branches and under the bridges, and a tree down across the path. One of my co-riders from work, had tried to ride home after the storm on Thursday and found his way blocked by floodwaters all across the Glen Iris Wetlands. He and his friend had to beat a knee deep retreat across the T. H. King oval and back to High St. He noted that the ducks on the flooded ponds seemed a little distressed! So when the rain set in again on Friday evening, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and waited in town with a friend, until the peak hour rush was over, then caught a train home. Vivans Xmas decorations caused a few smiles amongst fellow passengers and calls of `Merry Christmas' from a few.

The slow down in my training routine over the past fortnight has caused some changes in BGLs again, and the sporadic training gives less effect in BGL reduction than when I am training on a daily basis. This makes it more difficult to predict hypos, so the patterns of insulin reduction and dosage management have all changed again! It gets exasperating, there is no question that the ability to maintain an extremely routine lifestyle makes the management of insulin routine & hypos easier. However No-one lives a perfectly routine life, and I am probably one of the worst, for changing my routine. New Year is approaching and it's time to get serious about the last 4 weeks of training. Have fun, be good and I look forward to seeing you all in 2008.

At Last! The Raffle

2007-12-10T03:14:00.000-08:00

1st Prize
The Path 1.
A fine black & white print on archival canvas.
A lone cyclist on a straight and narrow path gazes skyward
Ready to hang. David Johns. 2007

2nd Prize
Elms at sunrise, Chateau Yering . Colour print, framed and ready to hang. Andrew Chapman.

3rd Prize
`Campaign’ The Book. A new photographic odyssey through Australian Political Campaigns, 1971 – 2007, Andrew Chapman.

Tickets $10.00 - only 250 available.

Contact me by posting a comment to this site or emailing me to let me know if you want tickets.

OUCH!

2007-12-03T17:52:00.000-08:00

Well, never mind the divebombing birds! This morning it was a car door that `collected' me as I was riding in the bike lane. I was on the left of a long line of traffic banked up waiting to turn left. Fortunately I was only doing about 10kph, as I was being cautious, just in case the cars started to move forward. A passenger flung a car door open right in front of me and my front wheel went straight into it, followed by my right collarbone. Result - one badly bruised collarbone and one buckled front wheel :-( so that's damped down the training regime for this week.
The person responsible has said they will pay whatever costs are incurred. I'm hoping that it will be no more than a couple of physio visits and the bike repairs.
I'm always so careful when I'm on the drivers side of cars, and check their side mirrors to make sure they can see me coming etc. I just didn't see this one coming!

If it doesn't kill me, it will only make me stronger...

2007-11-28T03:09:00.000-08:00

What a week! It's been high drama on the commuter training runs this week.

I've been struck by divebombing wattle birds twice, one bird got me on the side of my brow between my helmet and my sunglasses, and the other got me from behind on the back of my helmet. Both took me completely by suprise at different times and places. So I've devised some bird swoop protection.

I have it on good authority that this will work, as the bird thinks you are looking at it.....

I've had two near collisions with taxis who completely ignore bike lane protocol (let alone road rules), and I've been told to "get off the road" (I was in the marked bike lane) by a fellow who stepped off the footpath without looking and went to open his car door right in my face. I called "Watchout" as I dodged him and had to swerve into the road lane to avoid colliding.

and....

I think I'm living on the wrong side of town. In the morning the wind direction is N/W and I cycle N/W into the city. In the evening it swings to S/E as I cycle S/E home. I run outside (from the office) at 4.00 and the wind is still N/W, "Fantastic" I think, "I'll have this fabulous tail wind on the way home.", yet when I step out in my lycra at 5.30pm, I find myself head butting a 25k South Easterly. Aiyiiii

However, I had a great Back Care class tonight - lots of laughter. I had provided a music mix CD for the class, and the boys were taking the mickey out of me for providing Girly music, Personally I think, Blondie, Corrine Bailey Rae, Norah Jones, Cat Empire and Jimmy Barnes are a great mix! (oh & I threw in a copy of Hanson's Mmm Bop, because it reminds me of happy times with my daughter)

Enough for now, I've a day off training tomorrow & a Corporate Xmas Party to go to Wooo Hooo!!!

Vivian goes bush

2007-11-25T01:55:00.000-08:00

Great News, I'm booked on the flight to Adelaide for the 2008 `Ride for a Cure! My thanks go to Brian and Daniel this week who have helped me towards the first milestone of $1000.00. My Mum has been busy raising pledges from all my relatives in Canada, but I don't think they've worked out how to use the site yet!
Tomorrow I go to meet with one of my major sponsors, David Johns, Photographer and Gallery owner. Check out the link to David's gallery on the right. I'll have more about David and his work later in the week.

This week I decided that all this commuter road riding was just getting a bit too hard!

On Thursday night I packed the car with Vivian and all my camping gear, and on Friday (after work) I took off for Enfield State Park, a little South West of Ballarat. I was a bit worried because the directions to get there told me to `turn West onto Misery Creek Rd.' Misery Creek! That's enough to make anyone think twice.

I arrived just in time to get the tent up and my dinner cooked, then sat back to watch a full moon rise over the top of the valley. Yes I said VALLEY. I was 6.5k downhill from Enfield, which meant that the only way out on my bike in the morning was UP. Enfield State Park has lots of interesting tracks and trails. Being a cautious sort of person, I looked at the map and thought that the sealed road from Misery Ck. to Berringa historic site might be a pleasant ride. Pity I didn't look a bit more closely at the map. My `sealed' road turned out to be 4.5 k of the toughest dirt road, full of washouts, potholes, eroded gullies, loose scree and gigantic pieces of quartz sticking out. And it was UPhill. At about the 3.7k point there was an odd pop, followed by a fast hissss and a sinking feeling. Vivian had her first puncture. Luckily, being a good girl scout, I had a full kit of puncture repair and tools and even better than that, a new spare tube. Still I was a little uneasy - I was on my own, past the halfway point in my waterbottle, and no-one had come past me at all. It could be a long lonely walk back to camp if I had a second puncture. After fixing the puncture it also occurred to me that I should run my tyres at slightly lower pressure than the high pressure used for urban road cycling!

It was a great ride - the downhill on the way back was exhilerating and made up for my sore thighs from the climb. I spent the rest of the day walking and exploring the remains of the goldmining activities that took place in the mid 1800's. I am trying to post the photos from the weekend on a slideshow link, but having no success, so I'll leave you with just one for now - the full moon rising on Friday night.

Mid week update

2007-11-21T03:30:00.001-08:00

How good are all you guys?!

Cath - thank you so much for your donation - I didn't even bribe you!

Diversiti - that was such an unexpected and delightful gesture from all of you, Casual dress days are so much part of the work culture now and to have you donate your proceeds from last week was a thrill. For those of my readers who don't know Diversiti, they are a great recruitment agency, and may I say, they really look after their Contractors - see their link on the right.

This week is exciting because I finally managed to do two full distance (return) trips to work, back to back. ie 50k on Monday and 50k again on Tuesday, despite a problem with my infusion set site, on Monday night. Yes there was a third reason why my BGL's started to escalate (see Monday's post). The site where I had the infusion set located stopped absorbing the insulin properly. I woke up at 3am on Tuesday morning with a BGL of 19.9, so, half asleep, did a `correction bolus' went back to bed, got up again at 4 and checked again. BGL was down to 16.9, so I figured that was OK and went back to bed until 6am, when it was time to get up for work. Ooops BGL's were still 16.9 (Sue I hope you're NOT reading this). The penny dropped "D'uoh, maybe I need to change the site and out a new infusion set in." I left for work with a BGL of 14.3, got halfway and checked and it was down to 5.6, so I suspended the pump & ate a couple of biscuits I had taken, just in case, and continued the ride to work. I arrived at work with a BGL of 7.8.

Ahh - the wonders of modern technology! The risk in this situation, was that the unabsorbed insulin would become absorbed as I exercised and create a double banger effect leading to a very fast and steep drop in BGL. Fortunately my strategy of checking levels and eating extra and suspending the pump action, worked. I returned to the strategy of reducing the basal load to 30% of normal for the ride home, stopped, checked levels & ate 2 jelly snakes at Hughesdale, and continued home feeling great. And even better was the fact that for the first time in two weeks I actually had a cross wind rather than a head wind for my homewards journey.

On Friday I'm heading off on a great adventure - I'm going camping with Vivian Viventi to an historic National Park. It has lots of Fire trails that are reputedly great for cycling on. What better way to spend an election weekend?

Vivian Viventi

More on Riding and Hypo's.

2007-11-15T16:09:00.001-08:00

The things you see when you're out riding! How cute is this? It carries a label on it's side that says `Messerschmidt', and it's a three wheeled (only one wheel at the back) vehicle.

Hypo's while riding are so frustrating. I find myself bowling along, really enjoying my ride, then I get slower & slower, and I start to struggle. I'll be thinking, "must be a head wind coming up" or "gee how come this hill (slight rise) is so hard today?" and it's not until I look at my bike computer and it's showing 9k p/hr, that I start to think, hmm, maybe my sugars dropping. But, of course I don't want to stop & check my levels, that's a pain, it's much nicer to ignore it and keep heading for home, hoping that it will pass (funny girl!) Finally I HAVE to stop, and my knees will be shaking, my brow sweating and hands trembling. At this point, I'm usually riding at about 5k p/hr..... and I've lost about 10 minutes of ride time. Argh - where's the jelly snakes??

After my day off on Wednesday, I rode the full distance into work on Thursday and had another hypo halfway in. Normally I reduce my basal rate of insulin to 50% of the normal rate, when I'm riding for more than an hour. Obviously that wasn't low enough, so in preparation for the ride home on Thursday, I reduced it to 30%. I still hypo'ed after an hour, although I had been quite high (16) before I started riding, and did not take a correction bolus of insulin.

As you can see it's quite tricky getting it all to balance. It will gradually settle down as my fitness builds up, hopefully in a week or two you'll hear me bragging about how good my `levels' are.

mid week crisis

2007-11-14T02:20:00.000-08:00

To train or not to train? that is the question that faced me on Tuesday evening. This post illustrates some of the difficulties of training when also dealing with insulin dependant diabetes - are the signals your body is sending due to lack of fitness, or fluctuations in Blood Glucose? Do you need to modify the training program or the insulin regime?

After being VERY tired after my Pilates class on Friday, I took myself off home & ran a hot bath, put on one of those gooey face packs and lay back with a glass of wine. Felt great afterwards, went to sleep, got up in the morning & had a light 10 k ride. Whoopsie! crashing BGL, ate jelly snakes all the way home, and arrived home with a BGL of 3.2
OK - Sunday I stayed OFF my legs & took the car for a lovely drive to Torquay, returning via Barwon Heads and Queenscliff.
Monday - I took the bike in the car to Caulfield, rode 10 k to work & 10k back in the evening, felt a little tired, but no massive BGL crashes. Right knee felt a little stiff.
Tuesday - did the scheduled full ride to work, 24ks. Cut 5 minutes off my time, one knee was a bit swollen.
About halfway through the day, my legs felt sore & my knees hurt! I did the full ride home, but really struggled :-( I stopped at Oakleigh and my knees were trembling. I didn't know if my BGL was dropping or I was just EXHAUSTED. I ate jelly snakes just in case, (I`d left my BGL meter at work - I have another one at home). I arrived home with a BGL of 12.4. Hmm must've been EXHAUSTION.

Today I took the train to work! I did my usual `back care' class this evening, which consists of strength training and stretching.

Tomorrow I'm cutting the ride home back to half distance again :-(

2007-11-11T03:15:00.000-08:00

I was just remembering what fun I had last year at the `After Ride' party. I ate and drank and danced all night and still managed to keep my BGL at 4.2 at 11.30pm. Of course that is what happens when you are burning up carbs chasing fast boys on bikes up hills! I'm just getting to the stage now with my training where my metabolism has started to speed up and I can find myself at risk of massive sudden drops in my BGL up to 48 hours after a big ride. This will go on for a month or so until my training level stabilises a bit. You can follow the build up of kilometres on the bike in the `Training' list window on the right.

Motivation

2007-11-10T04:29:00.000-08:00

Why? The big question. Why bother to do this? Why get up at 5.30 am to be ready to ride to work at 6.30am? Why run an email list begging people to give money? Why phone up people you've never met and ask them to donate something for a raffle? Why spend thousands of dollars on physio and new bikes and medical insurance?

25 years ago I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. That's half my life ago. Half a life living with a constant companion that dictates food rules, exercise rules, social rules, work rules. Half a life being ALIVE (when I should have been dead).

Half a life working out ways to `work around' the rules...... (otherwise known as cheating)

Half a life on the receiving end of advances in medical treatments that both improve my life expectancy and improve my daily quality of life.

One of the brilliant things about Medical Research is that it often has spin-offs across areas that it may not have originally focussed on, thus benefitting a bigger range of people than intended.
Research into Type 1 diabetes has discovered lots of things about the immune system and various metabolic functions.

The JDRF webpage, www.jdrf.org.au has many articles on the latest research and technologies now being trialled and implemented.

Knowing that I'm fundraising for research that will benefit humans in many ways, often unforseen, keeps me motivated.

Welcome

2007-11-09T03:36:00.000-08:00

This year I thought I'd do my weekly JDRF Ride for a Cure newsletters as a Blog post.

I'd like to give you some idea of how the other half of my life operates. That's the half that's not about work/career, relationships, fashion, buying the car, paying the mortgage.

This is a more personal side about living with diabetes 24/7, trying to achieve and stay on top of it all.

There'll be lots of snapshots of stupid things I do day to day and training notes and complaints about trying to keep my back & knees together to complete the ride, and there'll also be stuff about finding friendship with other Type 1 diabetics and learning to pace myself and accept the occasional flat spots.

So! Welcome to the first edition of my newsletter/blog.

I hope you like it enough to come back every week and see what I've been up to.