Advice on a 50 mile bike ride I am doing

[scotty]

Hi everyone I am doing a charity bike ride called ride of the roses this sunday for clattebridge cancer hospital , I only decided I was doing it 12 days ago so training for it now, I did a 25 mile one on Saturday before leaving my sugars were 10.4 tested hallway threw ride and they were down too 6.7.'when I finished they were 4.4 , would my sugars go any lower than this ? I had a cereal bar with no insulin during the ride too,, should I be eating more? I think the ride on Sunday is roughy going to take me 5 hours , and any other advice appreciated
Here is the link for the ride I'm doing

http://www.clatterbridgecc.org.uk/events/rideroses.html

Thanks in advance scotty :

 

[Northerner]

Hi Scotty, I'm not a cyclist, so can't advise on that, but do run quite a bit 🙂 When you went for your 25 miler, when did you eat/inject beforehand? People vary so much in their reaction to sustained exercise it's difficult to say what you need to do - it's usually a case of trial and error. You don't have a lot of time befre the ride though, so not much time to discover what works best for you.

However, I would say that, if you had injected less than 5 hours before the ride then there is a possibility that you could drop lower, since you would still have active insulin circulating. On the other hand, most people need some insulin to be working wilst they exercise otherwise the body can't use the glucose in the blood and your levels would climb high.

I would suggest that you test your blood sugar regularly on the ride to see whether you need to top up with carbs if you are on the low side, or if you need to do a small correction if your levels have gone a bit high. Ideally, you want to stick in the 5-8 range if you can, but easier said than done! When I am on a long run I top up with a jelly baby every mile after the first mile, but I'm not sure how that would compare to cycling.

Good luck with the ride, let us know how you get on! 🙂