Transcript

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett Corbett:

This is The Connection, a dirty free hub podcast connecting gravel cyclists to where they ride through short stories about culture, history, people, places in lands.

I’m Kira Corbett, and today on the podcast we’re joined by Jim Sipe, who shares insights and experiences from the perspective of an athlete living with Type one diabetes. Okay. So Jim, thanks so much for joining us today. I so appreciate it.

Jim Sipe:

Thank you. I’m excited to be on.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

Yeah. Do you wanna tell me a little bit about your cycling?

About like how much do you ride? I hear you’re like a fairly serious cycler.

Jim Sipe:

Yeah, I probably ride anywhere from 150 to 200 miles a week. I’ve been trying to up my mileage. Because I usually do a lot of mountain biking, which is more difficult to get more mileage because you have to put so much time in because it’s slower.

The past few years I’ve been doing a lot more gravel riding. I don’t ride a lot of road just because it feels more dangerous, and I like to try to get out away from people more than being on the road. So this year I have a goal to reach 6,000 miles. Which I’m definitely on track and I’m hoping to meet a little bit more than that.

So that kind of shows how much I write.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

That’s a fairly decent amount of writing. Yeah. And while you were writing, I know you also manage living with Type one diabetes. Could you tell us a little bit about the difference between type one and type two diabetes?

Jim Sipe:

Yes. I think that’s pretty important because they make it seem like with the naming that they’re similar, but they’re almost two separate things.

Type one diabetes really means I need supplemental insulin. I, my body either doesn’t use insulin properly, or I don’t produce any anymore because of an autoimmune thing, so I need insulin. It has nothing really to do with sugar. The cause of type one diabetes is not really understood. It could be genetics, it could be environmental, it could be from a virus, but it ends up being some sort of autoimmune disease where your body attacks your pancreas, where you create insulin and kills those cells.

So that happened to me when I was 21. Type two diabetes usually happens much later in life. And lots of times it can be genetic. Again, there’s not very many direct causes, but things that do cause it are poor diet, poor health, low activity and things like that. But not always, but they are significantly different.

In type two diabetes, you have to take. You don’t have to, but most people will end up taking a pill once a day or some sort of an injection, usually a pill once a day where for type one diabetes, like me, I have to take insulin all day long. Um, either injections or something like that. So they’re quite a bit different.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

So type one’s like a little more autoimmune related, whereas type two might be more lifestyle related perhaps.

Jim Sipe:

Definitely. Yeah. And a common way to think of it is, uh, type one is insulin controlled and type two is diet controlled. So usually people will change their diet and activity to help control type two diabetes.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

How did you learn to ride with type one? Like does it impact you whenever you’re writing or has it changed any parts about your writing?

Jim Sipe:

Yeah, it impacts pretty much everything in my life. When I first was diagnosed with diabetes, it was later in life for type one. Normally people are diagnosed much younger.

I was diagnosed at 21 and I had already been riding for three or four years pretty seriously. And then one time it just came up during a ride that I, uh. Felt pretty dehydrated and really tired in things. And so I went to the student health center at a SU where I went to college and right away after one blood test, I was there for maybe 10 minutes.

They came back and said, you’re type one diabetic, and I didn’t believe it, so I got several opinions because I thought that was just way too easy. But my blood sugar was around 2 48, which for a normal person it would be between 70 and one 20. So mine was quite a bit higher. It’s kind of an interesting story of how I was diagnosed and how I found out about it, but I won’t get into that.

I’ll answer your question, which is, um, it does impact. So I kind of understood how to ride, but it really made me try to learn how to manage what I’m eating when I’m eating, manage my stress levels, manage alcohol consumption, understand how sickness and things like that affect it. ’cause everything pretty much affects it and it’s not easily predictable.

So that’s something that I’ve had to learn with from the very beginning. I.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

I have, um, pots and so it’s also something, one of these things that’s very weird to manage because you just, it’s really hard to predict what’s gonna happen when, or it might be couple day delay reaction, but yeah, it can be very interesting.

Do you have to like get ready any differently before you’re riding? Or like, is there anything that’s important for you when you’re planning routes? Like if you are going a certain distance and need to have some sort of bailout point, do you have any routines with that?

Jim Sipe:

Well, potentially not. I don’t know if I’m the greatest person to say doing things safe, but I do have some ideas of what I want to ride and when I want to ride.

Planning for a ride, it’s difficult to do quickly after a meal. Even if you’re like a non-diabetic. It’s hard because sometimes you have upset stomach. I don’t ever have an upset stomach problem, and if I did, it would be catastrophic because if I ever, I don’t really care if my blood sugars are high, but I do care if they’re low and if I can’t hold down any sugars or anything like that, it means that I’m gonna have potential issues.

So what I will plan for is to make sure that I had a good meal several hours beforehand, and the insulin that I took during that meal is largely outta my system. And then just plan, uh, what type of ride I’m doing. Because again, it’s not always the same thing. Some, like I mentioned with stress and being sick and being tired and how in shape you are and how hydrated you are.

What did you eat last? How long ago was it? All kinds of things can affect it. So I will generally look if it’s like an easier ride. I plan on eating more calories because on an easier ride, I burn more quick calories than I do for a more difficult ride. So calories for me at least come from different ways and so I’ll plan on things like that.

So, but usually if I’m picking a route, it’s almost always because I’m bored of some of the other routes that I’ve done and I try to do things that are a little more exciting. So

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

yeah, you gotta keep them interesting.

Jim Sipe:

Mm-hmm.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

What do you bring with you to feel safer?

Jim Sipe:

A few things. I always have a communication device that I know that I can communicate with.

Usually that’s some sort of satellite enabled device so that I know that even if I’m away from connection, I can talk to somebody in the case of an emergency. I really have never had to use it for anything related to diabetes. Um, mostly it’s been a mechanical issue with my bike, but the things that I bring along to be safe as a diabetic, one is I use an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor, so the insulin pump attaches to me and delivers insulin based on my settings and my own physiology and what I’m doing and all those things all the time.

And the continuous glucose monitor tests my blood sugar every five minutes and tells my insulin pump. What my blood sugar is, and the insulin pump will make choices based on that. It’s a pretty weak, fake or, um, replacement pancreas, but it works in most cases. But when I’m riding, I turn off my insulin and I’ll even turn off my insulin for a whole day because I don’t need it.

I’m like halfway between a diabetic and not, it’s super weird. So I will bring a blood tester along a manual one where you have to prick your finger and apply blood to it to tell me, because sometimes my CGM feels off or something like that, and I need to test to make sure of what action I want to take.

If I’m high, am I actually high? If my CG M says I’m high, sometimes I may not be, and there are things that can fake it out, like taking Ibuprofen or acetaminophen or something like that can give you false lows, so I’ll always have something else to test. I also bring something like a Glucagon emergency kit, which they have other types of them, but that’s the one that most people are familiar with, and it’s a quick injection that you give to someone when they have low blood sugar and they’re unresponsive.

And what it does is it makes your liver release a bunch of sugar. So that you get some sugar in your system so it’s not insulin. And then I also bring extra tubing for my insulin pump because it’s really easy mountain biking and gravel riding to catch a bush or something and rip the tubing out. And it’s, if you have an extra one, it means you don’t have to stop your ride.

I also bring an an insulin pen because there are times where my, in my tubing has been ripped out and I don’t have a way to deliver insulin. So that’s an alternative way in an emergency to deliver insulin. The last thing I bring is lots of calories. I mean tons of calories. So that’s pretty much what I bring.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

You could have so many snacks in so many beautiful places.

Jim Sipe:

Yeah, definitely.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

Tell me about a time that something went all south, like your blood sugar was either too high or too low, and you were riding. How are you typically managing that before and after?

Jim Sipe:

So I’ve had a couple, well, I’ve had a ton of them.

Like it happens almost every ride. I can tell you every ride my CGM is beeping three or four times because it’s telling me I have low blood sugar. So I almost never have high blood sugars, but I have things all the time that happen. I’ll give you one example is a few years ago. I went to Arizona to ride the old Pueblo 24 hour race in Tucson, which is a super fun race and it’s probably the biggest 24 hour event, definitely in the us, potentially in the world.

It’s super fun and I was riding for around three hours. I had been in great shape because I was training for a solo 24 hour race, so I was in really good shape riding for around three hours, eating my standard four to 600 calories per hour, but my blood sugar was still low and I had turned off insulin for the whole day.

I was not taking any insulin at all, and I was still getting low and so I kept taking, eating more gels, but I can’t eat too many more than 600 calories per hour, I guess. Pretty disgusting. So I tried that for around three hours, uh, when it got to hour six and I was still having low blood sugars. And when I say low, I mean.

Thirties and they say 30, you can start becoming unconscious. So it was pretty dangerous to take that risk. So I decided after six hours to call it quits, and that was probably one of the bigger ones that I’ve ever had. But I do have frequent things, you know, like I said, almost every ride. Yeah, and it was tough also because I prepared, so that race is in February.

I live in Bend, Oregon, where uh, it’s snowy all the time in winter. So training for that is really difficult. And so I made a lot of sacrifices to train and do lots of indoor training and lots of outdoor, snowy, cold weather training so that I was prepared to go to Tucson in February and we drove the whole way there.

So it was a pretty big let down to know that I didn’t get to even really give it a good try, but it’s better to be safe.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

It can be hard to make those calls, but it can bring so much more for your body later.

Jim Sipe:

Definitely. Yeah.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

What do you tell people about your diabetes that you ride with?

Jim Sipe:

So usually I just let them know.

Most people that I ride with will know that I’m a, A type one diabetic, but if it’s anyone that I’m not like a group ride, it kind of depends. I don’t wanna freak everybody out because I generally won’t have a problem. And if I do, it’s something I can handle. But if it’s something where I’m with a smaller group of people, I’ll tell everyone.

If it’s a larger group of people, I’ll just tell a few people so at least somebody knows. But what I tell them is. One, I’m a type one diabetic. Two, I may have an issue, but it almost never happens. And if I do have an issue, most of the time I will tell you before something major happens. And if something major does happen, I show them how to use my emergency kit so that if I do become unconscious or I crash or something like that.

They can know, look at things and know what to do, meaning they know how to use the kit, give me the injection. They also know how to look at my insulin pump or even test my blood sugar really quick to see if I’m low or high. One thing that is always cringey to me is when I watch movies and they’re like, this person’s a diabetic.

Give them insulin. Probably if I am unconscious, the last thing you wanna do is gimme insulin. So I even have a little necklace that I wear that’s a rider Id like a ride id, and on it it says if unconscious or unresponsive, do not give insulin because more than likely it will be bad ’cause I’m already super low.

Usually if you have high blood sugar, you can be okay for a while. If you have low blood sugar, it’s probably an emergency that you need to take care of in the moment. So you don’t wanna give more insulin at that point.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett

Definitely, and you are on these sometimes long rides, so it seems like a good idea to have those sorts of plans in place.

Jim Sipe:

People tend to be weird about it because they don’t know, but like I said, I rarely have a problem, but it’s always good to be safe and let people know because I think it would be rude for me to just all of a sudden collapse and then not know what to do, which I wouldn’t think would happen, but, and lots of times you don’t have identification.

You might have your phone with you. But unless you have it set up to show your, your information on the home screen, which you probably don’t, nobody can get in and see where you are anyway. So

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

do you mind sharing how you got into cycling?

Jim Sipe:

It’s kind of interesting. This happened in October of 93, so I was 21 at the time and I had been riding aan.

It was in October in Phoenix, Arizona. I was in a SU and I at that time, I was pretty crazy. I would ride like. 10 hours a day. Um, I would just be riding all the time. And so I was still going to college, but all I did was ride. I was feeling super shaky and really dehydrated, and I was urinating quite a bit for around a day.

And I had just come back from a ride and almost passed out driving home. Went to my dorm room at the time and laid down and took a nap, got hydrated, ate some things, which probably wasn’t the greatest, not knowing that I, um, was type one diabetic. Took a nap, woke up, still felt pretty bad. Talked to my roommate because I had some sores on my lower left, back around my pant line, my waistline, and it felt they were really painful and it felt like, um, you know, there was something happened and I had, I looked at it in the mirror and it looked like spider bites in a line.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever been bitten by spiders, where they’ll sort of crawl along and it’s not a poisonous spider. Hopefully it’ll crawl along and just sort of bite you as it goes. That’s what it really looked like. So I thought that I was sick. Maybe I was bitten by a brown recluse or something.

And that’s why. So I went to the student health center and they did a blood test really quick after I told them what it was, they came back, said my blood sugar was 2 48. They definitely said I was type one diabetic. And what ended up happening is for whatever reason, again, it could be environmental, it could be something.

That like PTSD related some sort of mind thing that messed with your body to do that. It could also be something genetic. No one in my family ever had diabetes of any kind, even gestational. So it wasn’t something that, that I had inherited. But what ends up happening is your body starts attacking itself, which weakens your immune system.

I had chickenpox when I was little, and chickenpox never goes away. It lives in your spinal fluid. So when my immune system got weakened, it allowed chickenpox to grow and it grew along. Uh. A nerve ending, which ends up being shingles. That’s what shingles is. So that was my first bout of shingles and I’ve had it six times.

Don’t recommend it. And that’s what it was, was because my body was attacking itself. It sort of presented itself as feeling tired and all of that, and then high blood sugars, but also shingles was there. So kind of a weird way to find out. And then another thing I would say is something about diabetes in general is.

It’s something that you can definitely learn to live with. The biggest thing I would say is similar to what you said with what you are dealing with, and that is, it’s unpredictable. It’s not something that you’re just gonna be able to say, I do this. Even if you do the exact same thing every day, things change.

You just have to be okay with that and not beat yourself up if your blood sugars are high or low or something like that, and try just to do your best. So.

Dirty FreeHub – Kira Corbett:

Well, Jim, thank you so much for taking the time today to share your stories and just inspire us all.

Jim Sipe:

Thank you so much. I’m really happy to, uh, share my story and I hope it can help or give some people some ideas or inspire them to get out and do some gravel rides as well.

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