This past weekend I tried my first 5k since being diagnosed diabetic. I've done a 10k (1 week after getting out of the hopital, and much to the surprise of my new endo) and a marathon - so you might thing a 5k would be no big deal.
It turns out that different distances pose very different problem in terms of maintaining good blood sugar numbers. While in a marathon I have to work on keeping my numbers from getting too low - a 5k poses the opposite problem for me. I finished the race with a reading of 185 - waaaay higher than I like to see. I suppose for diabetics that aren't low carb this is a common occurrence, but I haven't seen a number this high since the first few weeks after diagnosis.
The short time and high intensity result in my liver dumping out sugar that my body doesn't get a chance to use up before the race ends. I had a similar problem the first few times I did a crossfit workout. I took some insulin after the race and my numbers came back into line - but now I have to come up with a strategy to prevent this in the future. I found that taking a 0.5-1 units of insulin (Humalog) prior to starting a short, high intensity crossfit workout was useful, so I might try that at the next race.
Keep in mind that everyone responds differently to different types of exercise and we all need to do our own trial and error to find what works for us.
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