Hi guys! I just joined TypeOneNation but have had type 1 for 6 years. With back to school happening, I am curious how everyone manages their diabetes when it comes to after-school sports. In high school, I ran cross country and was on the rowing team. I had to keep my insulin pump AND glucose gel packets in my sports bra when running. And for rowing, I kept a granola bar under my seat and wear flip flops to and from the boat to protect my feet! Surprisingly, my blood sugar never got too low, but I felt like I put in a lot of effort preparing for it. Does anyone else have weird/fun advice on managing Type 1 with activities? It’s been much easier in college since my intramural activities are very relaxed! I can leave at anytime to grab snacks if I forget them.
Hey! I saw this post and have been trying out some new things with after school athletics and Type 1 management and thought I’d share:) A lot of the time I would get frustrated about having to always eat lots of snacks when I ran (I run both Cross Country and Track and Field), feeling like I’d have to eat back all the calories I burned. I’m a on a pump and found that if I turned my basal rates down by anywhere from 60-80% around an hour and a half before practice I had a lot fewer hypos while exercising. I also eat a Quest bar about an hour before practice. This has become my all time favorite pre-exercise snack because of how low the net carbs are and how full it keeps me (each bar has almost 20g of protein). Not only do I hardly ever have hypos while I run, but I’ve also found that I don’t have as much of a spike in bg after exercise. So give Quest bars a shot! They’ve got loads of flavors and hold me over through a tough workout without crazy bg spikes:) Hope this helped!
Thank you for your post. My daughter, who is type 1, is a freshman in high school and is running cross country. We have really been struggling with after-school practice times. It seems that she tends to be low that time of day anyway. Adding running to the mix has been very challenging. We’ve been trying all sorts of combinations of lower temporary rates and snacking and we still can’t get it right. I’m wondering, when you speak about your use of temporary rates if you are lowering it by 60-80% from normal (so a temporary rate of 30-40%), or are you using a temporary rate of 60-80%? Again, thanks for any tips you can offer. We’ll give Quest bars a try.