My 10 Most-Read Posts on Diabetes, Exercise, and Transcontinental Running

I was looking at traffic for the T1Determined site recently and noticed that some posts really seem to resonate with people. I’ve collected the 10 most read posts as of August 2022 below:

1. Telling Your Story: Sponsor and Media Outreach for your Epic Run

HINT: It’s not about the money. It’s about building a moving story where everyone comes out the hero.

Read more here.

2. The No-Wake Zone: Why Endurance Swims Are Challenging-And Scary-for T1D Athletes

Imagine being out in the middle of a lake with a low blood sugar. Teen horror movies ain’t got nothin’ on that.

Read more here.

3. Who’s a Good Puppy? YOU Are! Dealing with Dogs on a Transcontinental Run

Most of the time, the dogs you run into are just being territorial. Here’s what to do when you don’t know what the dog is thinking-which is pretty much ALWAYS.

Read more here.

4. The Safety Dance: Long Distance Running, Hazards, and Situational Awareness

Between paying constant attention to your surroundings for 10+ hours at a time and having to act quickly to avoid being hit by traffic, there’s a lot to think about out there.

Read more here.

5. Eating a Bicycle: Creating Your Own Epic from Little Tweaks to T1D and Exercise

There’s a lot of truth in the old story about a guy who ate a bicycle by grinding it into powder and adding a teaspoon of it to his dinner for months on end.

Read more here.

6. Budgeting Time and Money for a Transcontinental Run

It doesn’t matter if you’re rich and full of sponsors or out of work and looking to find yourself. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to think about food, lodging, and All The Things. Here’s what to expect.

Read more here.

7. Transcontinental Mindset: Training to Run Across the U.S.

Simple but not easy. If I had a dollar for every time someone who just PR’d on a 100-mile run said, “I think I’ll run the U.S. It’s only 30 of these in a row”, well…I’d have the budget to run across the U.S. again! It’s the little things that matter.

Read more here.

8. Sympathetic Nervous System Overload And Why It Matters for T1D and Exercise

I call it: Pre-TSD. It’s not full-on, bullets-flying-overhead war zone stuff, but when you’re out there running against 70 mph traffic, just a few feet away on the shoulder, it’s not a cake walk either.

By far the most popular post.

An Army doc friend of mine clued me on in this one, and frankly–I think more study needs to be given to physiological and psychological stress, inflammation, and the effect of stress hormones on blood sugars.

Read more here.

9. The 411: Exactly How I Ate, Drank, Tested, Treated and Ran Across the US With Type 1 Diabetes

Starting with Eating. All. The. Foods.

You can probably pull off a marathon on a pocketful of runner’s gels and Dixie cups of Gatorade. But try pulling a stunt like that on a ~3000-mile run and you’re in for a world of hurt.

Read more here.

10. Why do Epic Multi-Hundred-Mile Runs Anyway?

A close friend once told me in an abundance of “you need to hear this” that running across the U.S. was, and I quote, “…a dangerous, vain and egotistical fool’s errand.” To be honest, some of it is for the bragging rights. On the other hand, those don’t sustain you through what is inevitably a physically and emotionally grueling journey.

Read more here.