Weekend Grade: A+!

This weekend started with a bang at the DESA (Diabetes Exercise and Sports Association) annual North American Conference here in Boston. I had been stressing about it for a long time as I was asked to give a presentation, along with Jeff Godin, on diabetes and triathlon. I am not the world’s best public speaker and not knowing exactly how many would be in the audience, I was pretty nervous about the whole thing. But when the time came to deliver, I was fine and the presentation went quite well. Jeff gave a great, scientific view of a typical training program and I gave my experiences following such a program as a type 1 diabetic. A lot of good questions came from the audience and I really enjoyed myself. I have had to learn a lot of these lessons on my own and the possibility that sharing the lessons and experiences could help someone else avoid some of the difficulties I have faced was pretty exciting.

And even more exciting, I finally got to meet Phil Southerland, co-founder of Team Type 1. I have been a HUGE fan of Team Type 1’s for a long time now as I feel that no other group out there has done more for diabetic athletes than Team Type 1 has. And now that TT1 has set the world record and won the Race Across America yet again, they’re drawing more attention to themselves which is really exciting. It was pretty cool for me to meet someone I look up to like that.

Lastly, SWAG! I decided to race the Holliston Lion’s Sprint tri on Sunday. I went into the race tired, but feeling inspired having heard some awesome diabetic athletes speak on Saturday. Apparently that paid off as I came home with a 2nd in Age Group award. And not to split hairs but it should have been 1st in Age Group as the winner (of the entire race…she beat all the men too) was in my age group and the race directors gave her both the overall and the 1st in Age Group awards (totally lame and bogus, FIRM race directors). Short report: Most brutal swim ever, seriously. All the women started in the same wave (??), the course was an out and back and I was swum over by a dude in the 1st wave, coming the other direction and swimming off course, crossing the line. I was pretty beat up by the time I left the swim. I also managed to miss the timing mat and had to run back to cross over it again. Frustrating. Bike: My legs kind of escaped me but I still managed a decent pace. What else can you say about a 15 mile bike - it goes by pretty fast. Run: 5 miles and hillier than I was expecting. Let me tell you, those extra 2 miles in a sprint are painful. And to add insult to injury, my blood sugar went way high (I think the swim stress made it shoot up) so I started to cramp. Not my finest run but again, a decent pace.




















Then I took Monday off of work to do a 60/7 race pace brick. I must have used up all of my good luck over the weekend as it poured on me the entire 62 mile ride. I was so tired and uninspired that the only inspiration keeping me going was the thought of my iPod on the run. Then as I threw my bike in the car and got ready for the run, the clouds disappeared, the sun came out, the humidity rose to 11100007897%.....and then my iPod died. GLORIOUS! Longest run of my life.

But that’s okay. A tough Monday is a fair trade for an awesome weekend!