LIVINGLIVING
car supplied by each area's local diabetes
network, driven by a volunteer who
tracked his progress as he went through
their city. Accompanying Griffiths on each
leg of the undertaking was nutritionist
Paula Chinchilla, who was also in the
car. Says Griffith's, "Paula could also see
my results on an app she had on her
phone as I've shared my data with her
from my account. She basically looks
after my health while I concentrate on the
running. She would ring me if she thought
I was dipping too low and needed to eat
something. I might not have noticed as I
was too busy concentrating on moving."
While Griffiths did the marathons
he wore a belt containing some sugary
gels and an insulin pen. He could resort
to those tools if he needed to push his
blood sugars up or down. "You would
expect that when you ran a marathon
you would go low," he says, "But oddly,
post-exercise, I tend to go high. I now
put my basal in a bit later in the day, and
occasionally I do a bolus towards the
start of the last mile of the run. Putting it
in then seems to help me come off the
run better."
People might assume that Griffiths
uses an insulin pump but in fact he uses
prefilled insulin pens of Novo Nordisk's
Levemir and NovoRapid. "Using insulin
pens seems to work for me just now,"
he says, "I am pretty settled and there
seems no need to change. When I travel
overseas I don't see many pumps, even
my disposable pre-filled insulin pen look
quite high-tech in some of the countries I
visit. The fact that I also inject makes me
more like the people I meet out there who
continued over
CONQUERING THE CASTLE. The DiAthlete takes Edinburgh castle, with a little help from
friends. Left-to-right: Peter Flick (Dexcom), Martin Frano (Dexcom), Bruce Smith (JDRF
volunteer), the DiAthlete, and Stephen Henley (Dexcom).