More on Ragbrai

Hamballs

For those of you that aren't familiar with Ragbrai, let me explain. The idea is to ride your road bike, tri-cycle, mountain bike, recumbent, uni-cycle(seriously, I saw one guy riding a unicycle), tandem or elliptical bike across the state of Iowa. It is spread out over 7 days with an overnight town every 60-80 miles. Each day there are small towns to ride through that have food every 10, 15, 20 miles until you reach your destination of the larger, overnight town. Tradition is that you dip your back tire in the Missouri river at the start or the week and your front tire in the Mississippi river at the end of the week.

I've been dying to let you know that for one week I got a break from this thing that we never get a break from.  I was able to eat sugar, lots of it, and not bolus or worry about it. During the days of bicycling, I was on a diet of sugar and protein and I was thrilled. My plan was to eat a little bit in each small town throughout the day instead of entire meals. I would eat a banana for breakfast, ride to small town in Iowa, eat a hamball that was 50% brown sugar, ride to next small town, eat a bratwurst and an ice cream cone, ride to next small town. Wait. Is that homemade peach pie on the side of the road? I have to have me some of that pie!

The crazy thing to me, is that this worked! I lowered my temp basal to 50% and ate small amounts of sugar and protein as needed to get me through the next hour or two until there was more food. I did not bolus all day and my cgms remained a flat line!