Type 1 Cycling

Type 1 Cycling

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The 1000Km Month

I returned from a  three week trip to the US and Canada at the beginning of August.  In the run up to the start of the mHealth Grand Tour I made a commitment to myself. I had to get in shape and I wanted to do that by reaching 1000Km in a single calendar month.

I reminded my trainer of my plans regarding the tour and he said just follow this month's training program and you will be fine. So five days a week I got out of bed at 530am and went to training. I got in to a rhythm. My body got used to the time and the effort. As the month went on the training program got harder and I got stronger and fitter. 

That first week back was really hard. My legs just weren't working. That's what happens when you take too much time off. It's not necessarily a bad thing but you have to build yourself back up again before trying to ride like you never took a break. 

I also spent time tracking my sugars and how they were affected by the increased exercise. This was helped by receiving a huge box of energy gels and energy bars from Torq. Torq is one of TeamBG's sponsors. They sent the whole of Team Blood Glucose a package to cover their energy requirements for the month of August's training (note: you will have to pay a stupid amount of customs and other charges if you receive something like that in Israel). They have very easy to interpret nutritional information, such that a bar or gel or 500ml drink all has the same amount of carbohydrate (30g). This makes life very easy for a Diabetic. Additionally their products, especially the bars, taste great and are made from natural products too. 

I moved myself up into the fast group for the long weekend ride. It is hard sometimes to keep up with all of them but I am not the weakest so they are not waiting for me all the time. There are no more than seven of us in the group and we have our own support car. We work well together and on a good day we can really hammer along. Even so we look out for each other with a focus on riding well as a group As opposed to a few bombing off ahead as fast as they can. Long run its the best way. On the biggest hills the stronger guys will climb ahead. When they reach the top they turn round and descend until they reach the last man. Then climb up again with him. 

The final ride of the month we covered 115Km taking my total to 1089Km for the whole month. I was pretty pleased with my achievement. Carmi, my trainer, and I sat down once again. We realised I had just two weeks left until my stage of the tour. We planned out my final training. One hard week and an easy one to taper. 

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