Lovely Day Hike

Yesterday Peter, Haiko, Ozzie, and Zeus, a loaner dog friend, headed out to the Sunol Regional Wilderness in the East Bay for a hike. We'd opted out of backpacking this weekend in part due to the promise of brunch quiches prepared by Thaddeus and Karen (if Thaddeus and Karen ever offer to prepare food for you, you should always go; it is always a good time and great company and amazing food).

We did the Maguire Peaks loop at Sunol, which is pretty untraveled, and, with the inclusion of the last little peak scramble, is about 6.3 miles and 1500 feet of elevation. We saw two other people the entire hike, a sweet middle-aged couple who helped us to identify the scarlet gilia on the high peaks.

I dialed back my basal rate to 40% initially, since my after-lunch carb-loaded lunch (decaf iced latte, snickerdoodle, half a turkey sandwich) had given me a bloodsugar reading of 130. By the time we reached the near top of Maguire Peak, after ascending 1500 feet, my bloodsugar had plummeted to 50, which is way too low. I opted against taking any bolus insulin (food-covering insulin), and ate about 40 grams of carb (two fruit leathers and some graham crackers with peanut butter); then I dialed my basal back to 20 percent, and we headed back down the peak.

I know that my dietitian would say that this is way too little insulin for way too many carbs, but at this point I have a pretty good handle on how much energy my body burns on a hike like this (and I was proven correct when we reached the truck three miles later and my bloodsugar was a perfect 93). My breathing at elevation is getting pretty labored. I do a lot of deep, long breaths in and out of my mouth and keep a steady pace, and eventually we get there, but it's both fascinating and frustrating to see how the increase in blood in my body, as well as the baby pushing against my lung capacity, makes it more difficult to breathe.

One of the things that's fun now about hiking is that Peter has to carry almost everything. I don't think he would agree that this is fun, but he does like going on hikes (even if they are slow ones) with his pregnant wife.

Elly alerted me to a fascinating Dutch study about preeclampsia, which reminds me that the Dutch are much more progressive in their medical studies than we American are. Elly and I hung out on Friday night and went to Kristin's Forrest yoga class, which was an hour and a half of sweating and stretching and flexing. Elly had never been to one of Kristin's classes before and she was kicking herself for not going sooner. "I went from feeling terrible to joyful in about 10 minutes," she noted. It's true. I don't know what it is about Kristin, but she can put the joy back into the most overworked and miserable M.Arch student's life in mere minutes.